One of the sections in our Change Management Playbook addresses the sustainability of a customer marketing program. Although it seems pretty obvious, the topic is planning for extended time out of the office. Sometimes it seems like you’re not away from work enough; maybe more likely true than not if you work from home, right? The reality is that there are plenty of reasons to be out-of-office from maternity/paternity leave, to illness, caring for a sick or injured family member, leave-of-absence, vacation, and so on. Frequently your absence is not predictable or avoidable.
You might be tempted to think the program can survive your disappearance for a few days, a week, or even longer. Kudos to you if you’ve bullet-proofed the need for your personal oversight of the program, but you’re likely an exception, not the rule. Our experience, from the vendor side, is that a program can begin to disintegrate surprisingly fast without a proper day-to-day leader. By proper I mean sufficiently passionate, knowledgeable, focused and available. Even if you have a majority of requests being fulfilled on autopilot (i.e., self-service), there are the request outliers; the ever-changing advocate needs related to new initiatives in PR, events, digital, social, content, etc. You know how these can come out of the blue, often without a lot of lead-time? Then there are the left field data or report requests, often from leadership. What about advocate recruiting activities in-flight? Presumably, the recruiting initiative came as a result of need/demand, and your being out of the office doesn’t change that. You don’t want to be perceived as ghosting a potential advocate when you’re the one who initiated the outreach. Ouch!
When you built your program, do you remember how much time it took to convince salespeople and other stakeholders to trust you? You convinced them they could trust the advocate data, the process, the SLAs. They could trust you to jump in and assist if they had an extraordinary need. You had their back. After all, your goals are the same: revenue growth and retention. Were you to disappear for a day, a week, or even longer, this trust would be in jeopardy. As is the case in any relationship, it’s hard to build back trust when your (internal) customer has been burned. You may never be able to build it back, which really stinks given all the effort you put into getting the program off the ground. When trust collapses then old habits return. As an example, the reference shadow market will be back with a vengeance as soon as salespeople get the sense they’ve lost you as a teammate.
Think about who might be in the best position to cover for you based on familiarity with what you do, their involvement in the advocate ecosystem, skill set, availability (i.e., excessive travel isn't compatible), etc. Probably easiest if they're on your team, but that shouldn't be a hard prerequisite. Then run your ideas by your manager, get their approval, and have them set up a meeting with the backup to discuss details. There is always a cascading effect to consider as well. If your backup needs to hand-off some of her responsibilities for a period of time, who can take those on in a reasonably successful way? Document the plan and get your manager's final sign-off.
Having a list of the processes you've established, such as processing nominations, fielding complex advocate requests, uploading content into a system, rewards management, community management, whatever, along with any SLAs you've established will be invaluable. No matter how small or common sense some activity might be, write it down. You can organize these documents however they make sense, such as by general area (e.g., recruiting, reporting, data maintenance, etc.), or cadence, such as daily, weekly, or monthly activities. Collaborate with your backup so the organization is familiar when they need to find the necessary documentation.
How can you ensure your backup doesn't have to assume your responsibilities cold? That's really hard and may be under pressure given how many things in customer marketing are time-sensitive and urgent. Is there a not-too-onerous way to keep them somewhat connected to your day-to-day (e.g., periodic program review meetings/calls)? They might periodically join a weekly/bi-weekly cadence call with your Point of Reference account director, if you're a client.
Things change. If your backup leaves the company that's a clear reason to revisit the plan. But the backup's role may change such that they're no longer a viable candidate. If you're aware of such a change, don't procrastinate redefining your backup plan. Anticipate the unexpected.
Like insurance, you hope to never have to employ your backup plan. But you’ll be so happy it’s there when it’s needed, and so will those people who’ve come to depend on you to effectively do their jobs, whether it’s salespeople, event managers, demand gen managers, or anyone who relies on advocates and their stories. And of course, we're always here to help!
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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