It’s a question that comes up once or twice a year in our domain. Does it make more sense to buy “off-the-shelf” customer advocate management software to run your program, or to build it? It’s pretty attractive to think about the license fees that can be avoided if the internal IT group can develop a tool. So why not go down that path? 3 simple reasons:
There aren’t too many developers in a typical IT group who know much about customer advocate management systems. What company, besides a specialist, has this core competency? We’re still expanding and evolving our knowledge base as client needs morph even after nearly 15 years in the space. The process of specing out an application and translating that to a user-friendly, robust tool is not trivial. Thus the reason we hear about companies still working on a solution IT promised 12, 18, 24 months after embarking on the journey. Meanwhile, the program limps along running on spreadsheets.
The feature set and processes designed into an off-the-shelf solution is the result of hundreds if not thousands of data inputs from a variety of clients. Designing an application for one company’s needs often leads to quirky results. The design might accommodate particular people and their idiosyncrasies or company dysfunctions, which lead no where good when environments and people change. We’ve heard, “I don’t know why we built it this way. It was way before my time” more than a few times. If you don’t have any basis for comparison to what has worked best for other programs it’s hard to recognize that there’s a better way.
With the right executive support it’s possible to get the resources and budget for an initial customer reference management software build. The plan is often to build in phases with the first phase being the “bare bones” tool to be enhanced over time. Sounds good. Get something into the hands of program managers and users as soon as possible. Here’s what usually happens. IT gets pulled into a high priority project after phase I. Afterward, they’re pulled into another high priority project, and so on. Then a key developer of phase I leaves the company and knowledge of the application follows. The program still needs enhancements to get the application truly usable for the long-term. But now IT resources are too busy and hard to come by. The project is in a holding pattern…forever.
Can you blame IT? They did make a commitment to build and continue enhancing the application. But is that the best use of their time? Was customer advocate management software ever a company competency or priority? It isn’t 99% of the time. So the natural pull of competing priorities does its thing and the program is stranded.
When we replace a home-grown solution, regardless of what platform it’s on, we find the following:
At the end of the day there is a price for this cost-saving fantasy. It’s the time spent by IT resources on an application with no real future. Its lost benefits from a truly effective application that helps sales and marketing find advocates in a few clicks and complete processes efficiently so that deals can close and marketing events include compelling advocates. Opportunities to influence buyers, analysts and the press are lost forever. Was it all worth the cost savings in terms of licenses?
Learn more about our purpose-built application ReferenceEdge, and save your company from the highly foreseeable outcome. If you’re in the unenviable position of having to tell leadership that the home-grown decision made a year or so ago was a mistake, just know we’ve helped migrate companies from home-grown to ReferenceEdge many times. It won’t be our first rodeo.
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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