“Our customer data is crappy.” We hear these words all too often from big companies, small companies; new companies, old companies. It seems to be the great equalizer. But what a crazy thing to just “accept” as a lost cause.
If the payroll data were “crappy,” would that remain so for very long? How about sales data? Contract data? When is the last time you heard about a clean-up project surrounding one of these data sets that was not considered a top priority?
Customers are at the center of our existence as businesses. Why would we think, if one database can slide, it’s the one that informs us about our customers; our bread and butter?
The challenge for Customer Marketing is knowing all the changes occurring on a monthly—heck—weekly basis in that customer data. Our customer advocate rockstars move on to new roles and new companies on a fairly regular basis. To maintain current and accurate data it takes a village. That village, most importantly, includes Customer Success, Account Management, and Sales: customer facing relationship managers. An operationally mature organization will include data maintenance as a performance measurement criterion for those with essential relationship insights.
For customer marketers, it’s not necessarily all customer data, but the information specifically about advocates that the program lives or dies by. This is a less daunting task as this portion is probably no more than 20% of the total, despite, it seems, our best efforts to increase that number by double or more.
Leadership Buy-In
Like most cross-functional processes in companies, leaders need to put their heads together, decide on mutually agreeable objectives, and communicate a common message to all the essential participants. As a first step, leadership needs a framework to get behind. Here’s the gist:
Ideally, the moment a relationship manager, such as a CSM, learns of a change within an advocate account, they record that information on the account, contact, or both. But in the absence of that level of data diligence, a periodic review reminder is needed. The more frequent, the fewer the number of changes that will be required. The list of updates is longer if those reminders extend quarterly or beyond. Additionally, there’s a greater chance that a user attempts to access outdated information and loses confidence in the data as a whole. We think every 2 months is the maximum cadence.
The most efficient customer marketing programs establish automation that use the most current data from the CSMs and update the customer advocate accounts and contacts in real-time. This is great for the relationship owners as they don’t have to go to multiple systems to update the data. They can stay in their own environments such as LinkedIn, ChurnZero, or Totango, benefitting from a steady feed of reliable information. Imagine one of your top advocates suddenly experiencing a health score drop. You don’t want anyone to find that account and ask them to advocate if they aren’t in a good place. Automation can save a lot of misfires like this.
The Takeaway
If you’re solely responsible for up-to-date advocate data, that will drive you insane. Recruit leadership and peer managers from the departments that have account visibility and educate them on the cost of having crappy data. The good news is that smart executives will soon realize that they will not be able to show the board how they are capitalizing on AI—enhanced customer experience, operational efficiency—unless data quality improves across the board. It really must become a shared corporate responsibility, maybe for the first time. AI is only as good as the data in it’s data model. The winds of change should sync your data quality objectives with the larger initiative reinforced by leadership muscle. Solving this common issue will lay the foundation for success when it comes to user adoption, advocate influence on lead gen and revenue, and at the end of the day, your company’s competitive position. Contact us today to learn how we can help protect and strengthen your advocacy program.
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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