Advocate Communities
The summer has been distracting with vacations and glorious hot days. Our postings have not been as frequent but we still muse about advocacy all the time. Thanks for your patience and followship.
Thinking about advocates, in an article in the recent McKinsey Quarterly on leading business and technology trends, advocacy of course came up. In the article, they mention that 70% of executives said that their comapnies created value through Web communities, the ultimate advocacy network.
One example given was from Intuit which is worth mentioning here. Intuit hosts customer support groups for its financial and tax return products where more experienced customers provide advice and support to those in need of help. These Intuit advocates build their reputation credibility by noting the number of questions they answer and the number of thank yous they get from those they help.
Thought this was a great way of using advocates to help build loyalty to products and generate good vibes. McKinsey has the numbers to prove it. They found that when customer communities of advocates handle an issue, the per-contact cost can be as low as 10% of the cost to resolve the issue through traditional call centers. That’s a good ROI for advocacy.
Worth mentioning here on the advocacy blog.
Tags: Advocacy, advocates, communities, Intuit, McKinsey