The Power of Advocacy

Adam Joseph, Founder, CustomerSuccessManager.com

The exponential growth of Customer Success has seen enormous benefits for leading businesses all over the world.  Traditionally, these benefits have been measured in financial (e.g. net retention), customer satisfaction (e.g. NPS) and adoption (e.g. product usage) terms.  However, I would argue that one of the most effective measures of whether your Customer Success strategy is truly delivering on its promise to maximise customer value is advocacy.
 
The advantages of an advocacy programme can be felt across the enterprise and especially in Sales and Marketing.  This is evidenced in research from the Harvard Business Review which showed that 84% of B2B buyers are now starting the purchasing process with a referral, and peer recommendations are influencing more than 90% of all B2B buying decisions.
 
There are several different examples of what could be included in an advocacy programme; examples of which include:

• A customer allowing their logo to be displayed on your website
• Writing a positive review about the impact of your solution
• Being a reference customer
• Speaking at an industry event
• Being part of a video and/or written case study

 
Given the compelling evidence above, it is absolutely clear that advocates make a positive difference, but how can you identify them?  Based on my experience of running Customer Success both as an employee and a consultant, here are some key tips that will make the difference:

• NPS Promotors:
  • Most B2B companies run NPS (Net Promotor Score) surveys all asking a variation of the “would you recommend” type question.  Customers responding with a score of 9 or 10 (i.e. highly satisfied) are called ‘Promotors”.  When I see these types of responses, I follow up with a call shortly afterwards to thank them for their score and understand what motivated them to give it.  A natural follow-up request would be to ask them if they would be willing to join your advocacy programme.
• Get to know your top users:
  • If you are able to access usage information down to the contact-level, identify who your “top users” are.  These are not necessarily those that log in the most, also look for those that leverage a wide breadth of your solution’s functionality.  Ask them what is fuelling their usage – how does it help them to be successful in their day-to-day job?  The answers to these questions could well make them ideal candidates to become advocates.  
• Customer engagements:
  • Every single customer engagement is an opportunity to build/foster a relationship and understand the positive difference that your solution is making.  Advocates could be potentially discovered during support interactions, training engagements and even email correspondence – especially if they indicate a high level of value from using your solution.  Executive Business Reviews are especially useful as advocacy from a senior (C-Level) stakeholder is incredibly powerful.​
• Customer champions:
  • If your company runs an online community, look for contributors who regularly post topics or help answer other people’s questions.  Not only can these “champions” be excellent candidates to trial new beta functionality, they can also be excellent candidates to be part of your advocacy programme.
• Repeat customers:
  • I have seen several examples of senior executives moving to a new company and bringing in a trusted solution at the earliest available opportunity.  Very often the reason behind this is that they are looking to make an immediate impact and are relying on your solution to do so.  These repeat customers can talk to how your solution works in a variety of use-cases and whose story would be extremely compelling to potential buyers.    
• Customers who renew/grow:
  • Clearly, the renewal is a critical milestone in the life-cycle of any customer.  In the age of all budgets being heavily scrutinised, no solution is renewed without a lot of thought and evidence needing to be provided about what makes it an “essential” purchase.  A successful renewal is an ideal time to ask whether we can share that rationale publicly.  This is even more true for customers who have procured additional solutions from your company.

 
Finally, one of the most important ways to generate advocates is for CSMs to change their mindset.  Often, CSMs are too focused on issue resolution and this can lead to a mind-set of “we need to put everything right” and are relieved when a customer expresses delight.  We need to be automatically tuned so that when a customer gives us a glowing review of our solution that we should be thinking “could this be a potential advocate?”.