“Let’s be careful not to ask the Sales team to do too much.”
“CS already has a lot on their plate, let’s keep them out of this."
These are quotes from people in leadership roles when hashing out the processes and design of a customer advocacy program. On the surface, they sound like respectful, reasonable positions. But are they? Is the bigger picture being missed?
After the staff reductions over the past 12–18 months, it’s a safe bet that every department is trying to juggle the same amount of work with fewer people. It’s not really clear that Sales or CS are uniquely under resourced. But even if they are, effective customer advocacy offers these teams disproportionate efficiencies with a small investment of time to provide essential information they and they alone have.
But the bigger issue with these statements is that it’s presumed customer advocacy is some sort of burden, an over-and-above function; not a part of each stakeholder team’s responsibilities. That’s problematic, and just plain unfair.
The reason customer advocacy exists is to contribute to company growth through both acquisition and retention. Isn’t growth the end goal of every department in an organization? Customer experience is every employee’s responsibility. Great CX leads to advocacy. This quote, while from a B2C company, really sums up our belief.
“The purpose of a business is to create a customer who creates customers.”
– Shiv Singh, former Global Head of Digital at PepsiCo
Who benefits from a well-run customer advocacy program? It’s quite a list.
That’s a lot of value from a single function! Is it really possible to deliver on that promise? Yes! We see programs that are killing it every day. Here’s the catch: a program manager/team can’t know everything about every customer relationship. Intelligence from the field is essential.
– Who is a potential advocate and, precisely, for what?
– Which advocates are happy and available today?
– Who has left their position and is no longer an advocate?
– Are there are any service/technical issues affecting sentiment?
– Is the contract being renegotiated?
– Has anything about the account’s profile changed in the past 6 months?
Is it practical for the advocacy program to keep asking customers these questions to obtain regular updates? Most companies limit asking customers for information to NPS and customer satisfaction surveys. That’s a small portion of the information a customer advocacy program requires.
However, customer-facing team members have the answers to these, and many other questions of high relevance to an advocacy program manager’s ability to do their job. Without the answers, how can a program manager pull it off, especially a team of one? But the lives of our advocate contacts are fluid in ways that only relationship managers can stay on top of.
Given that the greatest beneficiaries of a customer advocacy program are also the people the program must rely on for a chunk of it’s intelligence, is their participation in the advocate ecosystem really a burden, an ask that goes above and beyond? Doesn’t the “Help me help you” rule apply here?
Now, do these statements really make any sense?
“Let’s be careful not to ask the Sales team to do too much.”
“CS already has a lot on their plate, let’s keep them out of this.”
We don’t think so. A change in perspective is in order. Without a clear-eyed understanding of the relationship between advocacy and the rest of the enterprise, a program will always be swimming upstream, never reaching its potential. And who will take the blame? The customer advocacy program, of course.
It’s easy to understand the hesitation with involving busy teams like Sales and Customer Success in your customer advocacy practices and processes. However, effective customer advocacy is an integral part of a strategy that supports the growth and efficiency of the entire organization. One element of a successful customer advocacy program lies in recognizing that advocacy is a collective effort, not the domain of one, discrete team. When teams collaborate and share essential customer insights, the program thrives, benefiting everyone involved.
By shifting our mindset and embracing customer advocacy as a core function intertwined with every department’s goals, we create a robust foundation for growth and customer satisfaction. The “help me help you” principle underscores the reality that participation in advocacy efforts is a shared pathway to mutual success. Adopt this philosophy and harness the true potential of customer advocacy to drive company success. Discover how our supplemental staffing services can enhance your customer advocacy program and improve overall company success.
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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