“It’s the Search, Stupid” is a twist on an old campaign slogan that applies to customer reference program success. If you’re old enough, you may recall a famous quip from a political advisor in 1992 concerning what he thought should be a presidential campaign messaging priority.
There were plenty of concerns and priorities back then, as there always have been, but at the end of the day, if voters didn’t feel the economy was working for them, they wouldn’t care about anything else—a sort of voter Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Sometimes the priority is that straightforward and simplistic.
Similarly, many factors make a customer reference program tick or not. Our customer success team has a checklist full of best practices related to program promotion, user training, executive support, cross-functional coordination, member recruiting, and more. Yet even when all these “pistons” are firing, the stakeholder’s experience comes down to one simple thing: Can they find the reference(s) they need? It doesn’t matter whether you’re a salesperson, a PR manager, event coordinator, or executive; if the search doesn’t result in what you need, the rest doesn’t matter much.
Reading this observation, it seems pretty obvious, right? But how does that translate into how a reference database is built and maintained? It is not unusual for program managers to put out a request for customer reference candidates then gratefully accept whatever comes back in the “net.” Unfortunately, this thinking does not result in a well-built database. Imagine 100 new customers come into the database. If the primary demand is for director-level, IT references in banking and insurance using products A and B together, and only four of those 100 additions match the need, what was the value of the recruiting effort? If these 100 new customer references are touted as a major success, then, with great expectations, users go to do their first search and can’t find what they need, the program gets a black eye. Users return to their old, inefficient way of finding references: Slack, Chatter, Teams, email, etc.
This is no small misfire. Consider the consequences:
So how do you avoid such a setback?
To answer these questions, we recommend having a formal or informal advisory board for your program. Members will tell you what they need. For instance, marketing stakeholders will have calendars for press releases, events, and analyst calls. It’s good to know of any deadlines involving advocates and as far in advance as necessary. Your advisors will also ensure you understand how they need to search. If they don’t have the means to filter as needed, the data may as well not exist. For more on advisory boards, see this post.
Once you have this information, you’re ready to start recruiting, which is an art and science unto itself. The exact methods and channels used will vary based on the needs you’ve uncovered. For instance, if you found that VP and CxOs are a priority, then you’ll likely find that your company’s executives, not salespeople or CSMs, are in the best position to act as recruiters to at least initiate the conversations. For more on recruiting best practices, check out this post. Completing the described exercise helps ensure that your colleagues’ time is well-spent and produces many, many successful reference searches building confidence in the program and stakeholder support that keeps on giving in a virtuous cycle.
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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