Why do customers choose to be advocates? Answer this question early in the life cycle of a customer reference program because it drives one of the most fundamental functions: attracting customer reference program members. It’s never too late to assess your environment if this question wasn’t answered earlier, or if the dynamics of your customer relationships have changed recently (significant sales turnover, executive turnover, mergers/acquisitions, etc.).
The companies that are most successful at building a solid customer reference base have strong customer relationships.
There are 3 basic reasons customers choose to be a reference
Consider all three drivers when developing a recruiting approach/model.
Strategies for Service Excellence / Chemistry Advocates
If service excellence (and most likely chemistry with an account exec or CSM) is at the heart of a customer relationship, then the people closest to the account are in the best position to identify and even invite the customer to join the reference program. However, don’t limit your thinking to only leveraging the AEs and CSMs. Strong relationships may exist between customers and:
The account “owners” ought to be able to identify who will likely have the greatest goodwill accrued with the customer.
Love of the product/solution and perceived value of brand association elevate the customer’s loyalty to the company, transcending the individuals closest to the account. Recruiting campaigns (i.e., direct outreach) from customer marketing are more likely to be successful in these situations. Not to discount the relationships, but the recruiting process is faster and more prolific if 1-on-1 recruiting conversations don’t need to be coordinated across multiple departments and people.
Consider how each program prospect relates to your organization before deciding on the best approach for recruiting for the customer reference program. It’ll save you trial and error time and get you to your ultimate goal more efficiently. That goal being a robust, qualified, and relevant database of customers ready to engage in a variety of reference and advocate activities.
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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