Zombie Loyalists

Have you ever walked out of a store or hung up from a call feeling truly valued—so much that you couldn’t wait to tell your friends about it? Peter Shankman’s Zombie Loyalists: Using Great Service to Create Rabid Fans starts with that feeling. He argues that the most effective form of marketing in today’s overhyped digital world isn’t a bigger ad budget or a viral post—it’s delivering consistently great service that makes your customers so obsessively loyal, they become your brand’s most fearless promoters.

Shankman reimagines loyal customers as “Zombie Loyalists”—people who, once “infected” by incredible service, lose their ability to keep quiet about you. Like metaphorical zombies, they spread the “infection” by sharing stories, posting photos, writing reviews, and bringing new customers straight to your doorstep. The book’s metaphor is playful but pointed: if you feed your zombies well (with attention, care, and consistency), they’ll devour your competition for you.

The Service Crisis and the Loyalty Opportunity

Shankman reveals a striking disconnect between how companies see their customer service and how customers experience it. According to his research, 80% of businesses believe they deliver superior service—yet only 8% of their customers agree. This gap creates an enormous opportunity: if everyone else is providing mediocre service, simply being one level better than crap can make you stand out. A company that provides consistent, human, attentive service immediately positions itself as extraordinary in a marketplace dominated by indifference.

His opening story drives the point home. On a flight, Shankman enthusiastically showed off his gadget-filled SCOTTeVEST jacket to a seatmate, who quickly bought several for her family. No ads, no press releases—just genuine passion from a satisfied customer. That spontaneous sale, Shankman notes, is more effective than any marketing campaign. Customers trust other customers more than they trust brands.

From Ordinary Customers to the Infected Elite

Zombie Loyalists don’t need discounts, gimmicks, or clever slogans. They need reasons to care. Shankman defines their transformation as a chain reaction that begins when an employee, empowered and happy in their job, delivers a surprisingly good experience. That single spark spreads because people today are wired to share. A customer who gets recognized, listened to, or made to feel special will post about it faster than any ad can load on their phone. That’s why he urges readers to “be amazing to the customers you have to get the customers you want.”

He also dismantles common excuses about cost, arguing that most legendary customer moments—from an unexpected greeting to a personalized follow-up—cost little or nothing. As he puts it, there’s no higher return on investment than kindness. A smile, a thank-you note, or even a 30-second acknowledgment can create more revenue than a million-dollar campaign. (In this way, Shankman’s argument resembles the cultural philosophies of Tony Hsieh’s Delivering Happiness and Fred Reichheld’s loyalty insights from The Loyalty Effect.)

The Blueprint for a Zombie Takeover

Each section of the book lays out a progression—from fixing broken service cultures to empowering employees, from “infecting” your first customer to building an unstoppable army of loyal fans. Shankman provides case studies ranging from small bodegas to brands like Morton’s Steakhouse, Bose, and Ritz-Carlton. The common denominator is never massive budgets but company cultures that put humans first. His formula is cyclical: happy employees breed happy customers; happy customers generate positive buzz; and that buzz attracts more business, making employees and customers happier in return.

Shankman’s zombie metaphor runs deeper than gimmickry—it underscores the idea of single-minded devotion. Real zombies feed to survive; loyal customers feed on belonging. Once someone’s emotionally invested in your brand, they’ll defend it fiercely, forgive its missteps, and evangelize it to others. But that relationship is fragile. Lose your customer’s trust, and a former zombie can turn into your most dangerous critic. One angry ex-loyalist can “infect” hundreds in reverse.

Why Loyalty Beats Advertising

Ultimately, Shankman’s thesis challenges how we think about growth. Instead of obsessing over lead generation or viral marketing, he insists that scalable growth starts with microscopic acts of delight. A loyal customer base that markets for you is effectively an unpaid sales force. As social media and word-of-mouth grow ever more powerful, businesses no longer control their brand story—customers do. Being “beyond awesome” to the customers you already serve is not idealism; it’s strategic survival.

Core Argument

In an era where we expect bad service, the easiest way to stand out is to be genuinely good. Loyalty is contagious, service is the new marketing, and every employee is part of the epidemic. If you treat people as if they matter, they’ll make sure the world knows you do.

By the end of Zombie Loyalists, you realize that customer service isn’t a department—it’s your company’s heartbeat. When you empower your people, delight your customers, and stay one step ahead of mediocrity, your business doesn’t just attract attention—it builds an army. And in Shankman’s world, that army is unstoppable.

Before you can create raving fans, Peter Shankman insists, you have to eliminate what kills loyalty in the first place. Most companies aren’t losing customers because of competitors—they lose them because of bureaucracy, fear, and neglect. Chapter 2 of Zombie Loyalists is a brutal mirror: ten habits that sabotage any business’s ability to breed loyal fans.

Culture as a Mission, Not a Project

Many companies treat customer service initiatives like short-term campaigns—a new “project,” a motivational meeting, a few training modules. Shankman argues that this mentality ensures failure. Like the mob initiation in The Sopranos, once you’re in, you’re in for life. Companies such as Zappos internalize this with policies like offering new hires $2,000 to quit if they don’t believe in the culture—investing only in true believers who see delighting the customer as their life’s work.

Communication Breakdowns and Fear of Initiative

Most corporate pain originates from silos. Departments email instead of talking, frontline workers follow scripts instead of solving problems, and customer complaints vanish into bureaucracy. A fast-casual restaurant Shankman analyzes could take days to reply to customers because every message had to pass through legal. By the time the “safe” answer arrived, the customer had already moved on. That’s the opposite of loyalty. In a real zombie culture, employees react instantly, because they’re empowered to act.

The yogurt shop story from Shankman’s teenage years perfectly captures the issue: when he polished brass poles to attract customers, his manager barked, “I don’t pay you to think.” That sentence, he argues, kills innovation more effectively than any competitor. Empowerment must replace punishment if employees are to infect customers with enthusiasm.

Rules That Serve the Company, Not the Customer

Shankman’s most memorable anecdote involves two banks with opposite philosophies. One kicked him out for bringing a harmless Labradoodle inside; the other handed his dog a branded biscuit. In one afternoon, the second bank earned a lifetime Zombie Loyalist. The moral: write policies that protect customers, not executives. Procedures built to “cover your ass” destroy goodwill faster than bad interest rates.

When Process Replaces Logic

Cable companies and telecoms, Shankman notes, exemplify what happens when employees are trapped by scripts. His nightmare call with Verizon—racking up thousands in “global roaming” charges—illustrates how blind adherence to policy costs far more than allowing discretion. A simple, humane decision would have gained loyalty and positive publicity instead of ridicule. Deals designed around scripts and fees, he warns, breed drama instead of bragging—fuel for the kind of online outrage that can sink a company overnight.

Leadership Starts the Infection

Empowered employees can’t exist in a vacuum; example flows from the top. Shankman recalls an email from John Korff, president of the New York City Triathlon, who personally thanked him for running eight times. The message took two minutes but built lifelong loyalty because it showed the boss cared. When followers see leaders embody courtesy, gratitude, and responsiveness, they mirror that behavior with customers—and loyalty multiplies organically.

In Shankman’s formula, customer loyalty begins with employee loyalty. Chapter 3 is a roadmap to designing a company culture where people would rather wow customers than quit jobs. If your staff feels stifled, overmanaged, or invisible, they can’t create Zombie Loyalists—they’re too busy surviving.

From Micromanagement to Mastery

The story of Michelle, a garden center worker, shows the difference between control and trust. Her boss hovered over every sale, correcting her mid-conversation until customers fled. Eventually, Michelle left and founded her own thriving business built on autonomy and respect. Shankman’s principle is simple: hire talented people and let them fly. Managers who micromanage rob employees of ownership—and customers can feel that suffocation instantly.

Make Work Meaningful

Meaning fuels loyalty. Shankman highlights Thule, the outdoor gear company, where employees take lunchtime bike rides on custom trails and join river cleanups instead of mandatory morale events. The result? Workers talk about Thule not as employees but as fans. Similarly, when Shankman ran Help a Reporter Out (HARO), he read success stories over Friday lunch—reminding his team how their work literally changed lives. When employees see outcomes, they attack Mondays with passion.

Perks and Flexibility That Matter

Forget table tennis tables and espresso machines. The best perk, Shankman argues, is autonomy. Flexible work hours, recognition of personal interests, and trust that people will do the right thing are stronger motivators than raises. His story of a boss who let an employee use a corporate supercomputer to simulate wingsuit physics shows how faith in people returns dividends in creativity and engagement.

Failure and Change as Core Values

Great companies let people fail safely. At IBM in the 1960s, a manager who lost millions on an experiment expected to be fired; instead, the CEO said, “I just spent $10 million educating you.” That mindset still transforms companies like Ritz-Carlton, which authorizes any employee to fix a customer problem on the spot. And because markets shift quickly, flexibility is nonnegotiable. Shankman’s parable of the baboons guarding the banana drives home a warning against “that’s how we’ve always done it” thinking. Culture dies when change does.

Ultimately, every employee—from cleaner to CEO—must believe “it’s my job.” Shared responsibility builds shared pride, leading employees to care about outcomes as if they owned the company. When workers feel valued and trusted, you don’t need slogans or scripts: loyalty spreads from within.

Once your company culture is ready, it’s time to spread the virus—of loyalty, that is. In Chapter 4, Shankman shows how to “infect” the very first customer who will become your Patient Zero. The secret? Underpromise, overdeliver, and personalize relentlessly.

Turning ‘Eh’ into ‘Amazing’

Most customer experiences fall into three buckets: bad, “eh,” and amazing. Because standards are so low, Shankman says, moving from “eh” to “amazing” is surprisingly easy. In one case, a simple oil-change shop became remarkable by adjusting its promises. Instead of guaranteeing a fifteen-minute wait, staff promised thirty and finished in twenty—a small act of honesty that made customers grateful rather than frustrated. Adding a follow-up email twelve weeks later, with a discount for friends, turned one visit into two customers and a self-replicating sales force.

The Power of Small Gestures

Shankman presents a gallery of small miracles that forged lifelong loyalty: a New Jersey bodega worker who danced with a regular customer; a Honda dealer who fixed a car window for free when a customer’s husband lost his job; and a pub owner in Halifax who occasionally surprises followers with free coffee deliveries ordered via Twitter. None of these people launched ad campaigns—they paid attention. Customers don’t expect perfection or extravagance; they crave acknowledgment and empathy.

Observation and Recovery

At Boca Raton’s Greek Corner, an observant owner noticed two customers having a rough day and offered a “Bad Day Discount” and two complimentary shots. That empathy converted a bad mood into a yearlong relationship. Likewise, when Halifax’s Red Stag pub owner randomly brought coffee to guests, it wasn’t about freebies—it was about saying “I see you.” In Shankman’s world, noticing is the most potent infection vector.

Every business type—from diners to game stores to membership websites—has opportunities to add personal touches. Write a real email, print a thank-you card, remember a name. No one needs another loyalty program; they need you to care enough to remember them. Loyalists aren’t born—they catch loyalty from the person who first made them feel like more than a number.

In Chapter 5, Shankman demonstrates how small gestures can scale into massive revenue when built on trust and repeatable systems. These aren’t theoretical models—they’re stories of real businesses whose human touches created global fandoms.

Quality + Kindness = Endless Loyalty

Stuart Tracte’s decade-long love affair with Bose headphones epitomizes this equation. After breaking multiple pairs, Bose repeatedly replaced them—some even purchased elsewhere—without question. Stuart has since evangelized Bose to everyone he meets, demonstrating Shankman’s premise that loyalty is worth far more than replacements. Similarly, Morton’s Steakhouse famously surprised Shankman himself with a full steak dinner delivered to an airport after a joking tweet. That story went viral worldwide. Morton’s didn’t buy an influencer—it served one well enough that he sold for them.

The Tiffany Principle: Personal Attention for Life

Tiffany & Co.’s letters to customers—starting with CEO Walter Hoving’s seven-word personal note approving a young woman’s credit line—illustrate how acknowledgment creates generational loyalty. Decades later, employees still replicate that spirit, accepting late returns from new fathers without hesitation. Every touch tells customers “we value you more than policy.” Compare that to the cold detachment of call-centers and you see why Tiffany’s customers still tell those stories forty years later.

Rewarding Loyalty with Humanity

Other shining examples include Maker’s Mark distillery sending a framed ad and a handwritten note to a homesick New Yorker, RSC Contracting gifting a photo album to a family whose home they rebuilt post–Hurricane Sandy, and a Maryland spa building years of repeat business after surprising clients with a $15 cookie cake celebrating an anniversary. These moments, while inexpensive, generate exponential goodwill. As Shankman says, it’s not about ROI—it’s about ROE: return on empathy.

When employees are motivated to do “something nice, just because,” they create viral word-of-mouth chains that money can’t buy. Every delighted customer becomes an unpaid spokesperson whose stories compound in value over time. That’s how small kindness snowballs into an army of zombies spreading devotion across markets—and continents.

After you’ve created fans, you must arm them to share. Chapter 6 argues that in the social media era, every happy customer is a broadcasting station—and your job is to give them content worth sharing. The more exclusive, surprising, or delightful their story, the faster it spreads.

The New Marketing Channel: Emotion

Customers believe people, not brands. Shankman shows how brands like Trump International’s Chicago hotel gained thousands of positive impressions when they sent milk and cookies to guests’ children—who then shared it online. The photo of comfort and care became a marketing campaign crafted by the customer. Emotion travels faster than slogans.

Surprise and Delight: Cheap, Simple, Viral

Few examples trump Red Robin’s comped meal for a very pregnant diner, accompanied by a note reading “Mom 2 Bee—Good Luck.” The customer’s Reddit post reached millions, costing the restaurant just $11. Shankman dubs this the “unbridled act”—a corporate culture where small, spontaneous kindness is encouraged. Likewise, LÄRABAR’s free samples turned one blogger into a marathon mouthpiece, and Dunkin’s secretive Black Card made loyal fans feel like VIPs while quietly expanding reach.

Playfulness and Authenticity

Even humor can fuel zealotry. An office supply salesman pulled an April Fool’s prank by pretending printers were voice-activated; customers filmed themselves shouting commands while laughing. Instead of losing respect, he gained dozens of referrals. His lesson: show personality. People follow humans, not manuals. Kum & Go’s social media team, for instance, retweets fan photos of their branded coffee cups, feeding an online subculture of joyful absurdity.

Shankman’s rule: give your zombies something to brag about, then thank them publicly when they share. Gratitude generates a bragging–sharing feedback loop that accelerates brand awareness organically. “You feed them BRAINS,” he writes—short for bringing random amazement into normal situations. Do that, and the infection never stops spreading.

No business is perfect. What distinguishes great ones is how they respond when things go wrong. In Chapters 7 and 8, Shankman gives crisis management a zombie twist: if you lose a loyalist, act fast before they bite others.

Recovering Lost Loyalists

When United Airlines’ then-president Larry Kellner personally called Shankman after a complaint about upgrade fees, the two-minute conversation bought decades of loyalty. By contrast, Jawbone’s refusal to replace a missing $2 cable lost a tech journalist and thousands of potential customers. The lesson: fix the small stuff instantly, because minor irritations often trigger mass defections. As Shankman quips, “No one ever left a brand because it listened too much.”

Hearing the Early Warnings

Monitor patterns, Shankman urges: if a daily customer stops showing up or tagging your brand online, reach out. One gym owner called a frequent boxer after noticing his absence, learned he was traveling, and even found him local gyms abroad. That call not only retained him but turned him into a raving advocate. Silence on social media, he notes, is often the first symptom of decaying loyalty.

Always Own Your Mistakes

When Shankman’s own conference call collapsed mid-session, stranding 700 paying listeners, he salvaged trust by immediately posting a transparent apology, rescheduling the session, and personally following up. The result? More attendees than before. Customers forgive honesty faster than excuses. Conversely, restaurants that promise to “make it up next time” rarely get a next time at all.

Zombie Loyalists forgive—once. Treat every mistake as an inoculation opportunity. The quicker you admit, apologize, and overcorrect, the stronger your army becomes. But ignore them, and abandoned zombies mutate into haters bent on destroying your brand from the inside out.

Even the most dedicated fans get bored. The final chapters remind you that loyalty needs renewal. Shankman’s mantra—Bring Random Amazement Into Normal Situations (BRAINS)—is both acronym and strategy. Without surprise and gratitude, even zombies wander off.

Reigniting Passion with Small Gestures

Barry Diller’s daily habit of calling ten random contacts as Paramount’s CEO kept him top of mind—and helped turn the studio around. The same logic applies to any business: check in just to say hi, not to sell. Similar acts, like Rent the Runway sending breakup flowers or a snow-removal worker visiting a widowed client, prove that spontaneous empathy is the glue of lasting loyalty.

Institutionalizing Kindness

At brands like Ritz-Carlton, kindness is operationalized: every employee is authorized to “move heaven and earth” for guests. Steiner Sports extends this idea by abolishing its customer service department entirely, declaring that “we’re a customer service company.” Every interaction is everyone’s job. From free cookies at Jersey Mike’s to surprise upgrades at the Chicago Symphony, joy becomes a system, not a slogan.

Data-Driven Humanity

Shankman also praises American Express for balancing personalization with privacy. Amex proactively sent him a chip-enabled card after noticing he traveled internationally—no request required. That’s caring scaled by data. By contrast, tone-deaf automation (“Dear [CustomerFirstname]”) kills affection instantly. Smart listening tools must feel human, not mechanical.

In the end, Shankman believes the companies that thrive will combine automation with authenticity—systems that notice, respond, and thank at the human level.

Key Rule

Feed your zombies BRAINS: Bring Random Amazement into Normal Situations. Surprise them, thank them, care for them—and they’ll march for you forever.

“Service,” Shankman concludes, “is the new advertising.” Whether through a smile, a follow-up, or a small gift, your daily gestures accumulate into something priceless: relevance. In a future where algorithms surface only what’s loved, relevance is survival. The brands that endure will be those whose Zombies never run out of reasons to stay hungry.