The importance of customer engagement as a central part of customer advocacy is well understood. It may not always be executed to the fullest, but like with any type of relationship you value, care and feeding is necessary and assumed.
Do you apply the same principle to your stakeholder relationships, those stakeholders you turn to for advocate nominations, those who could really use your help if they knew about you? Engagement includes regular reminders about what your program does, how it is leveraged, what it’s done for those who use it, and how it’s continuously adapting to stakeholder needs.
It’s not okay to launch a program then go radio silent until you need something. We’ve all had “friends” like that. How did that once-in-a-blue-moon “ask” feel? Kind of selfish, right?
Here are some examples of how program managers who’ve mastered engagement stay in front of their stakeholders:
Marketing, Sales, Customer Success, Product Marketing. They all have team meetings, and CMA leaders should be visible, if not have a recurring spot on the agenda. The point is to stay in touch with their challenges and strategize ways to infuse advocates for the best outcomes. Nothing builds business relationships like comradery, commitment and consistent follow through. That results in trust.
Customer Advocacy is a [team sport]. The entire company owns it. These meetings are an opportunity to give examples of how every employee’s interaction with a customer contributes to their experience, both good and bad. The customer advocacy program is the hero for placing customers on the podium, their stories in campaigns and PR, or on the company website. Or, it’s the scapegoat for upstream company “sins,” unable to coral the appropriate number and type of advocates when they’re requested. Another benefit of being visible to the entire company is when someone brings up a need for customer advocates, there’s a good chance someone nearby remembers you and the program and acts: “Remember at the last All Hands…?”
In between all the facetime opportunities, there should be a steady flow of useful information to stakeholders, especially examples of how they can gain from what the program has to offer. Like product marketing, they should be kept informed of changes and improvements to the “product,” and given tips for maximizing the value they gain from the program. Slack and Teams are great for short bits, newsletters for more detailed information.
Some program managers create 30-second video updates that are both informative and entertaining. When stakeholders look forward to these videos, you know you’re on to something. Like the written communications, this is a great way to share recently completed customer videos, advertisements featuring customers, and excerpts from event presentations.
First impressions. New hires are so thirsty for anything that will help them become productive faster. They are impressionable, and somewhat malleable. So if they don’t meet a member of the advocacy team (live, web or video) in their first week, that’s a real missed opportunity that can’t be replayed.
Effective customer advocacy hinges not only on engaging customers, but also on maintaining robust, active connections with internal stakeholders. Regular engagement—through meetings, communications, and visible presence—keeps the program relevant and responsive. Building trust through consistent interaction and follow through on commitments helps embed customer advocacy deeply into the organizational culture, making it a shared responsibility. Such sustained engagement prevents the program from being a forgotten resource and ensures it remains a vital, recognized force within the organization. To learn how ReferenceEdge can help keep your customer advocacy program organized and make cultivating stakeholder relationships easier, please contact us today.
As this infographic illustrates, a mature advocacy program is responsible for continuously identifying advocates, maintaining accurate advocacy data, protecting customer relationships, and aligning with top company goals to accelerate growth.
The infographic contains six key components. Here's a description of each for you to translate into your own talking points.
Every advocate starts as a customer.
The journey begins when account teams, customer success managers, support teams, and services organizations create positive experiences that build trust and confidence.
As customers achieve success, some become enthusiastic supporters of the company, its products, and its people. These customers are identified as potential advocates and introduced to the advocacy team.
The advocacy team interviews these individuals, learns about their experiences, captures important details about their interests and expertise, and creates a searchable advocate profile.
The result is a discoverable advocate: someone who can be found, matched, and engaged when the business needs credible customer voices.
Without this process, valuable customer relationships remain hidden inside co-workers’ heads or team spreadsheets, unavailable to the broader organization.
Great advocates are rarely discovered by the advocacy team alone. It’s really just too much to ask of any one part of the organization. Every customer touchpoint plays a part in cultivating and retaining advocates.
Customer success managers see customer enthusiasm firsthand. Account teams hear success stories during business reviews. Support teams witness customer loyalty. Product teams interact with passionate users who influence future direction.
A successful advocacy program creates a systematic way for all customer-facing teams to identify and nominate potential advocates, as well as a means for customers to self-identify..
Think of it as building a talent pipeline.
The broader the participation across the organization, the stronger and more diverse the advocate community becomes.
This collective effort ensures the advocacy database reflects the full spectrum of customer success stories across industries, products, geographies, and use cases.
The advocacy team serves as the steward of the organization's advocacy data.
Their responsibilities fall into three primary areas.
First, they recruit continuously. Advocates change jobs, priorities shift, and customer enthusiasm naturally evolves over time. Maintaining a healthy advocacy community requires constant replenishment.
Second, they keep information current. Customer stories, product deployments, business outcomes, and willingness to participate all change. Outdated advocacy data quickly becomes unreliable.
Third, they measure and report value. Advocacy programs must demonstrate their contribution to business outcomes such as customer acquisition, retention, and expansion.
Beyond maintaining records, the advocacy team actively shapes the composition of the database to align with company growth objectives. This is essential if the program is to be seen by executives as a strategic lever vs. a low-level function an intern can run.
If the company’s strategic direction includes expanding into healthcare, launching a new product, selling through a new channel, entering Asia, or targeting a specific buyer persona, the advocacy team ensures the advocate population evolves accordingly.
In many ways, they function as portfolio managers for one of the company's most valuable assets: customer credibility.
Most organizations initially think of advocacy as a sales resource.
Sales certainly benefits from customer references, but advocacy creates value far beyond the sales organization.
The common thread is credibility.
Advocates provide something no marketing budget can purchase directly: authentic proof from real customers.
Most mature advocacy programs include additional components that extend value for both advocates and the business.
These activities are connected mechanisms that strengthen relationships, increase engagement, and create additional opportunities for customers to contribute.
Together, they help transform advocacy from a transactional activity into an ongoing customer experience.
The ultimate purpose of customer advocacy is not activity.
It is business impact.
In Summary
Advocates are valuable assets. The advocacy team's job is to make sure those assets are available when needed, protected from burnout, and aligned with the organization's most important priorities.
When done well, customer advocacy transforms customer success into measurable business value. It is an enterprise capability built on trusted relationships, reliable data, and authentic customer voices.
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