Feedback on the Course So Far: A View from the Church of the Customer's Jackie Huba

I recently received some excellent feedback from the Church of the Customers' Jackie Huba, a customer-evangelist-extraordinaire, and co-author (with Ben McConnell) of Creating Customer Evangelists. Jackie looked at the initial framework of the course and gave it a thumbs-up so far. She said that she liked the idea of having students posting and commenting on the course blog and thought the course topics sounded fun to learn about. She also added this helpful note:

Only feedback I would have is just wondering if you are going to have any discussions of loyalty as it relates to word of mouth. As you know, we believe that WOM is a long-term marketing strategy which comes from 1) having a product/service worth talking about 2) cultivating a passionate base of loyal customers.

After reading her comment I realized I didn't highlight loyalty in the topics or course objectives. I planned on covering loyalty in the discussion on the academic history of WOM as well as when we covered the six tenets of customer evangelism as part of a module on influential practitioner frameworks for WOM. I agree with her that loyalty, as well as advocacy, are important enough to be highlighted in a title. So here's what I came up with:

"Haven’t We Always Known About WOM? Tracing the History of Academic and Popular Press Ideas of WOM, Loyalty, and Advocacy"

Part of this discussion will focus on why customer loyalty and advocacy are especially important in today's marketplace.

Thanks for the feeback Jackie!

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Tags: WOM word of mouth Word-of-Mouth Marketing buzz marketing viral marketing marketing communication customer loyalty customer evangelism