Customer Management Lessons from "The Walking Dead"

If you hate a hamburger, it is reasonable to stop eating. If you hate a book, it is reasonable to quit reading.

But, apparently, despising a television show is not a sufficient reason to cease watching, at least as long as that show is called "The Walking Dead."

AMC’s smash zombie drama continues to dominate the ratings race, routinely topping all but a handful of broadcast shows in the important adults 18-49 demographic despite airing on a narrower-reaching cable network. Media, from insider trade publications like Variety to zeitgeist-driven outlets like Entertainment Weekly, shower the show with coverage. Television audiences, quite simply, have not been able to shake their "Walking Dead" infections.

And yet, if one were to investigate fan discourse on the show, he would likely be amazed at how negative the reaction is to nearly every piece of dialogue, nearly every storyline development and nearly every character.

A friend’s Facebook status, "Seriously, [The Walking Dead] has to be the first show I've continued to watch despite loathing essentially every character," serves as a perfect portrait of the most vocal dialogue one will find about the blockbuster AMC hit. From Twitter to Facebook to comment boards on sites like The Onion’s AV Club, the socially-acceptable reaction to "The Walking Dead" is, within many circles, one of disgust.

Common complaints include disappointment over the monotonous pacing, frustration over the lack of stakes for some characters (eg, Lori gets into a major car crash, survives fairly-unscathed, and the issue is a distant memory one episode later), dissatisfaction with the frequent logical leaps, outrage over character development, sadness over a lack of zombie action and annoyance with the bad acting and accents. From such complaints, one would assume "TWD" is one of the worst shows on television.

And yet, its ratings success persists. And few, if any, of the vocal fan critics are not back week-after-week, ready with new criticisms for the latest episodes.

How is something so "hated" within fan circles so successful at keeping them engaged?

To answer this question, we look at how some customer management themes and best practices tie into "The Walking Dead." Some explain why it might be irrationally-hated. Others explain why it is able to rise above that hate.

All, however, provide guidance for developing brand loyalty and satisfaction with customers, regardless of whether your company’s product is a television show or a vacuum cleaner.

Competing on the Customer Experience: By any measure, "The Walking Dead" is high art as far as the zombie genre is concerned. No matter how one feels about the specifics of the dialogue and storytelling, the series is clearly better than most zombie movies at developing the human characters and investigating legitimate philosophical concerns, including the notion of "morality vs. survival" in a world overrun by monsters.

But critical viewers are not simply comparing "TWD" to zombie flicks, just as critical customers are no longer comparing an organization simply to others within its industry. They are looking at the broader question of how the service stacks up against the totality of elite performers.

For "The Walking Dead," that means that it will be compared to fellow AMC series "Mad Men" and "Breaking Bad," two of the most-expertly written, best-acted series in television history. It will also be compared to the ever-inventive "survivor" series "Lost," known for lofty storyline aspirations and rigorous, creative characterization throughout its six-season run.

When one compares "TWD" to those kinds of shows on the technical elements, he is likely to endure frustration with how the show is conceived and executed. Similarly, when one deals with a cable company’s customer service team, he will be looking for the quality customer service he expects from any brand interaction—not the reduced quality stereotypically offered by cable providers.

Putting Customer Complaints in Context (or "Know Your Audience"): If there is one unfortunate consequence associated with the rise of online and social media, it is a tendency to greatly overweigh the importance of customer complaints. Negative customer sentiment is never ideal and should almost always be addressed, but brands need to remain careful about how they assess feedback within the market.

While the negative feedback to "The Walking Dead" totally dominates many website comment boards and segments of the customer universe, it is actually coming from a small portion of the overall target viewership. Most viewers do not discuss television series with any degree of depth, and therefore are not necessarily having their opinions reflected in new media.

Sure, the hardcore, aggressive television commenter is likely to make comparisons to shows like "Mad Men" and ponder why creative gems like "SouthLAnd" and "Parks & Recreation" don’t have audiences but "The Walking Dead" does. But for most of the viewership, the show evidently represents an accessible, enjoyable mix of action, horror, suspense and drama.

"The Internet" (now famously treated as a proper noun) does not speak for every customer, and it is absolutely wrong to assume that social comments reflect the entirety of customer sentiment.

For every bit of attention paid to customer complaints, consider who—and how many—have opinions but are not commenting. Depending on the situation, it is very possible that they represent the most important segment of the target demographic.

Garnering positive social discussion is a great objective for any customer-facing business, but it should not supersede the goal of developing the most valuable experience possible for customers. Let’s never see another company "cave to customer complaints" (without a very particular cause) when the amount of satisfied customers is in the hundreds of thousands and the amount of complaining customers is just in the hundreds!

Knowing Your Influencers: The decision to think before blindly backing down to social complaints is a good one. But it does not mean brands should refrain from targeting specific, minority segments of the market. For "The Walking Dead," its success in generating support from the television and mainstream media has paid dividends. It appeals to what these critics and reporters want.

And so despite the customer outcry, many prominent reviewers remain hooked on the show, and that assures they continue to provide it with favorable publicity across their channels.

This, therefore, keeps the flame burning and solidifies "TWD" as a fixture in American pop culture. In addition to the legitimacy factors associated with media coverage, which serve to minimize the impact of customer disappointment over quality, the mere idea that "TWD" is locked into the zeitgeist by the media provides an incentive for viewers to stay up-to-date on the show.

When marketing your own products, you absolutely must determine whose voice will serve to legitimize and popularize your product with the target audience. Who is most capable of making it "must-have?"

Because Experience Matters: No matter how much we may want to create a brilliant product, it is important not to discount the value of the "experience."

Even if "The Walking Dead" makes some artistic mistakes along the way, it carries immense appeal in generating material for water cooler discussions. That provides some experiential value for viewers, who may sit through a less-than-stellar product in order to keep up.

And even beyond that, the show still does enough to keep viewers emotionally involved in the program. Sure, viewers have said they hate certain characters—namely Lori and Dale—and that others are embarrassingly underscripted (T-Dog). But the fact that they are invested enough to care about these characters, while also praising those like Daryl, speaks to the fact that the show is creating a compelling experience for viewers.

For customer management professionals, it is important to remember how invaluable experiential factors are in building customer loyalty. Simply creating an emotional identity and therefore humanizing the relationship with customers can create a major advantage.

Remembering That Results Also Matter: Unfortunately, experience is not everything. No matter how friendly the sales representative is and no matter how well-supported your product is in popular culture, if it does not provide good value, and if your service team cannot back it up with meaningful solutions, you will face a significant success bottleneck.

For all the flack "The Walking Dead" gets on an episode-by-episode basis, it has generally handled its most-meaningful developments superbly.

The fall portion of the current season was plagued by viewer outcry over the tedious "Sophia" storyline—one of the young girls in the survivor camp disappeared in the woods during a zombie chase, and the entire camp dedicated itself to finding her. Most assumed she would turn out alive and they would move on, effectively rendering six prior episodes moot, but the show threw viewers for a gut-wrenching loop when it revealed she had suffered a zombie attack and was now "undead."

Even for those who predicted Sophia’s fate, the closing scene of the fall finale was brilliantly executed. The powerful resolution saw Shane, the more explosive of the camp’s two alpha males, open a barn that had been containing zombies (Hershel, the owner of the barn, believed them to be "sick" rather than "dead" or "evil" and thus felt keeping them in a contained setting was the only humane option) and lead a charge in shooting each zombie "dead." Then, sure enough, Sophia walked out, and the group was forced to kill her as well, wrapping up the Sophia storyline in a bang, while also reminding viewers how powerful questions of morality, survival and leadership can be on this show.

This past Sunday, "TWD" again made tediousness worthwhile, tragically-killing off a character (Dale) who had spent the entire episode (and really much of the season) showing off his ridiculous bug-eyed facial expression and annoyingly preaching about morality. The ironic catch? He died before he could learn that the camp actually refrained from killing a prisoner it believed to be a serious threat to their survival and believed he had failed to drive them to that decision. There was also an homage to "Spider-Man" in the death; like Peter Parker, young boy survivor Carl was ultimately responsible for "freeing" the zombie responsible for Dale’s death.

No, "TWD" is not yet "Lost" when it comes to raising the stakes (although indications are that another major character is dying this season), but as long as it shows it is willing to deliver satisfactory resolutions, it will enable viewers to look past some flaws in the build-up.

For the typical brand, mistakes will happen. IVR systems will occasionally mess up, and agents will occasionally struggle to find the right solution.

But if the follow-through is correct, and users know they can count on brand for valuable products that will be successfully serviced after purchasing, they will have no reason to abandon their loyalty.

Like all shows, there will come a time—perhaps not too many years down the road—when "The Walking Dead" will run its course and fall from grace as both a ratings magnet and a pop culture phenomenon. But if it wraps up its current season well and continues to make good on its commitment to viewers, it will develop a loyal following that will stay with it to the very end.

Your brand can achieve the same thing. By crafting an experience of value to the customer, by knowing the difference between a social complainer and a social influencer and by delivering the right mix of experiential and results factors, your company will be anything but dead.

Photo Credit: AMC