Customer success stories are often included as part of a customer credibility programme. Too often, however, they are viewed as merely a ‘check mark’ to be completed and are sometimes even deferred altogether. Actually, customer success stories can play a critical role in driving both new and repeat business.
There are numerous studies that have shown that individuals are influenced by the behaviour of those around them. Psychologists refer to this as a type of informational social influence known as conformity.
But how many opinions does it take to conform or influence the crowd? Fewer than you might think. Studies have shown that it only requires three or four people making an argument for a specific choice to have a significant impact on the members of a group. In other words, you will only need three or four customer success stories to help influence your target customer’s brand preferences.
Beliefs versus actions
Customer success stories can help you to drive new prospects to purchase, but they can also help you to drive proliferation and customer loyalty. When it comes to human behaviour, our actions are generally driven by our beliefs, but when we do something that conflicts with our current beliefs (a state known as dissonance) it can actually force us to change them in order to restore the consistency. On a basic level, what this theory tells B2B marketers is that if you can influence a customer’s actions, you can actually change their opinions or beliefs about a brand.
For example, a customer might have purchased your product because they received a large discount although they considered the product merely ‘adequate’. If that customer gives an endorsement for the product stating that they purchased it because it was the best choice, they will actually end up believing what they said and become a much stronger product advocate. One important caveat to this is that the action must be public to be effective, but of course the whole point of a success story is to publicise it.
Endorsement choices
Your natural inclination is to pick the friendliest customers to give your brand the endorsement. However, you should focus instead on customers who are friendly enough to work with, but not ones that are completely committed to your product or service. By utilising these customers for endorsements, you can help to turn them into more firmly committed buyers.
In the end, you will not only have a good customer success story but also have directly increased customer satisfaction and driven increased proliferation and repeat business.
Modest rewards
When a customer has spent the time to provide a public endorsement, you might feel a need to do something nice for them in return. You might at first think that the larger the gift, the stronger a supporter the customer will become. In fact, the exact opposite happens.
Further results from experiments show that when a subject is rewarded for their original inconsistent behavior (i.e. where actions don’t initially correspond with beliefs), the reward itself gives the participant an ‘out’. Instead of ‘I did it because I like the product’, the customer instead thinks ‘I did it because of the gift I received’. So, while B2B marketers should certainly show their appreciation for customer testimonials, it should be in the form of a symbolic gift without significant value. Give them a certificate, take them out to lunch, but hold off on the free iPod.
Harvesting customer success stories is not particularly difficult or expensive, but all too often it gets relegated to an after-thought. In fact, customer success stories can form the core of your effective customer credibility program and have significant benefits. Strong references can help to close initial sales by leveraging a customer’s unconscious desire to conform to the group opinion. In addition, the act of providing a reference story helps to drive repeat business by increasing positive opinions held by the customer providing the reference. Clearly, customer success stories need to be considered as a critical piece of your marketing plan.
