Customer advocacy is a proactive strategy to establish and sustain robust, long-lasting customer relationships by prioritising their needs and concerns in all business decisions while utilising current relationships to attract new ones. When enabled with scalable through-channel marketing automation (TCMA) platforms, customer advocacy can have a significant impact on a company’s overall customer satisfaction, loyalty and in return on your revenue growth.
When asked about the primary benefits of employing a customer advocacy program our answer is always the same: it enables companies to gain a deeper understanding of their customers’ needs and preferences (and this is not a small thing!) By actively seeking out and listening to customer feedback, companies can identify areas for improvement and develop products and services that better meet the needs of their target audience.
By placing the customer at the centre of all business decisions, companies can create a more positive and memorable experience for clients, which can lead to increased customer loyalty and retention. This also maps perfectly into an outcome-based sales (OBS) strategy which can also map into an outbound Account Based Marketing (ABM) approach to new prospect engagement.
Marketing automation platforms and customer relationship management (CRM) systems, can be used to support customer advocacy efforts by providing a centralised location for managing interactions, feedback and monitoring satisfaction. These technologies can also help companies to segment and target specific accounts, providing more personalised and effective customer service on the back of high client retention. For many companies in the IT space an important driver of success often revolves around customer advocacy; regularly obtained through partner channels which may be one, two or more layers. Maintaining consistancy is very hard to do especially considering data protection and compliance frameworks including GDPR, however if successfully achieved the impact can be transformational.
Another advantage of customer advocacy enablement with TCMA offerings is that it can support a company’s drive for more revenue from existing customers. By building strong, long-term relationships with customers, companies can increase the likelihood of repeat business and upselling and cross-selling products and services. In turn, satisfied customers are more likely to recommend a company to their friends and colleagues, which can lead to increased word-of-mouth marketing and new business opportunities. The opportunity for a “Land and Expand” approach increases as more and more happy clients are engaged.
In addition to revenue growth, customer advocacy can also help companies to improve their overall customer service ROI. By focusing on meeting the needs of clients or users, organisations can reduce the overall costs of customer service, and increase the effectiveness of their customer service efforts. This is because channel partners often have a lower cost of customer acquisition than the company itself and can also help to increase the overall reach of a customer service campaign.
A key challenge of customer advocacy is to ensure that channel partners are aligned with the company’s overall customer service goals and objectives, this is only important when the company employs a channel model of course. Success via a channel can be achieved by setting clear guidelines and expectations for partners, and by providing them with the necessary training and resources to effectively implement customer service campaigns, offer the correct and applicable solutions in the first place and ensure the partners are focused on consultative selling of the same or similar overall outcomes. In addition, companies can use TCMA platforms like CapametriX to track the performance of their partners and to provide them with real-time feedback on the effectiveness of their customer engagement and advocacy efforts.
The benefits that, customer advocacy enablement can provide empowered and multiplied with scalable TCMA technologies can have a significant impact on a company’s overall customer satisfaction, loyalty, and revenue growth. By placing the customer at the centre of all business decisions and actively seeking out and listening to customer feedback, companies can gain a deeper understanding of their customers’ needs and preferences and create a more positive and memorable experience. When including a combination approach by adding TCMA to support customer advocacy efforts, companies can drive more revenue from while improving their overall engagement ROI. If you are looking to build a product that your customers will not only buy now but will also still be buying in the future then starting a customer advocacy program is certainly a wise move.