Making your customers talk about you

Different CX experts have different views about the number of stages in the customer lifecycle. Some say there are five, while some say six, while a few others even say there are seven. Irrespective of the difference in their approaches and practices, the majority of them would agree that advocacy is the final stage, which ties back to the first stage—awareness—and keeps the cycle going.

Businesses will certainly continue marketing their offerings and try to acquire new customers. Their efforts on that front won't stop at any point. Why then does customer advocacy find such an important place in the customer lifecycle?

Simply because people today are more aware and trust fellow customers to have their best interests in heart. They realize that marketing and advertising are done mainly to grab eyeballs, and they're wary of not falling for the lofty claims that businesses make. They believe that fellow customers can provide unbiased opinions about an organization's offerings, so they turn to online reviews, social media posts, and so on.

For this reason, customers' word-of-mouth marketing works more wonders than any other marketing or advertising campaign a business can come up with.

In a nutshell, advocacy is all about getting your customers to talk about you (in a positive way, of course!) and recommend your offerings to prospective customers. It's even better if the advocacy is customer-driven because such recommendations are more spontaneous and heartfelt—and prospective customers value them more. However, there's no harm in vendor-driven advocacy either. In this post, we'll look at some ways—both customer- and vendor-driven—to foster advocacy.

Customer-driven advocacy

Simply put, customer-driven advocacy is where customers proactively express their appreciation and admiration for a business or an instance of positive customer experience. This is hard to come by for businesses because it requires a deep-rooted and pervasive culture of customer obsession across the organization. However, here are a few practices that you can use as a springboard.

Deliver exceptional customer support

This must be your first focus area because the easiest way to get your customers talking about you to a wide audience is via social media. Platforms like X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, and Instagram are unique in that they function as both support and advocacy channels, as opposed to phone and email, which only facilitate support.

Prompt and effective customer support has always been and will always be a key requirement for customers. They don't expect a 100% perfect offering, and they do understand that things can sometimes go wrong. What matters to them is whether you provide a satisfactory resolution to whatever issue that might occur. And when you do that, your customers won't hesitate to give you a shout-out on social media, or at least share the experience with their family and friends.

Therefore, fix the bottlenecks in your customer support operations by:

• Establishing an omnichannel presence
• Having robust processes in place
• Providing prompt responses and resolutions

Be proactively empathetic

Empathy goes beyond customer support because it's about demonstrating to your customers that you care for them as humans and not just as someone who pays you money. We've seen several examples of how widely customers have appreciated and spoken at length about instances of proactive empathy from a business. Even as recently as last November, the world learned about the car fire involving a Stanley tumbler and how the drinkware company offered to give the customer a few Stanley cups AND a new car.

To be sure, not all organizations can emulate something of this scale, and Stanley themselves have admitted that they wouldn't be able to do the same in the future. Still, being empathetic goes a long way in garnering customer loyalty and advocacy. Here is a stellar example from pet food company Chewy, which has a culture of empathy ingrained in its operations.

Again, these examples cannot be emulated the same way by all organizations. So take these as inspirations and look at how you can ingrain this culture of empathy, inclusivity, and understanding in your organization. Also, educate your staff in customer-facing roles to be thoughtful of customer needs and empower them to make decisions by themselves in tricky situations.

Create focus groups

Next, for customers to talk about you to others, they should know that you listen to them when they talk to you. They need to feel assured that you actively listen to their needs and feedback and fine-tune your offerings accordingly. You could either have small focus groups with a select few of your active and loyal customers or foster a large user community where all your customers can participate—or both! With smaller groups, you can have deeper conversations about customer needs and use cases, while with a bigger community, you can facilitate peer-to-peer knowledge sharing and keep a pulse on overall customer expectations.

Much like social media, the user community is also a channel where both support and advocacy can take place. Therefore, you should maintain an active user community where you talk to customers and your customers also talk to one another. Since the user community is an online channel as well, even your prospective customers can check out what other customers have to say about you. The more customer-obsessed you are, the more positive things will be available there.

Vendor-driven advocacy

In contrast to customer-driven advocacy, this approach involves activities specifically aimed at getting customers to talk about you. And something like this is also essential for businesses because sometimes customers might not have any reason to talk about you to others. So you should find out if they're willing to talk about you and encourage those who are interested to share their experiences. Here are some things you can do under this approach.

Reward referrals

This is an activity that incentivizes advocacy among your customers. You can offer free credits, discounts on future purchases, goodies, or even cashbacks when a customer brings in another customer. Referral-based advocacy has high chances of success because your customers feel that there's something in it for them. However, retaining newly acquired customers in the long run depends solely upon the quality of your offerings and support. So don't become complacent when you start seeing a surge in your number of customers as a result of some referral program; keep working on your quality, reliability, availability, and other key customer expectations.

Publish testimonials and case studies

This is an advocacy activity that sheds a good deal of light on your customers' relationships with you. Testimonials provide a quick glance about what your offerings have done for a customer, whereas case studies provide a detailed picture of their journey with you. Even through this activity, your customers stand to enjoy a mutual benefit, albeit indirectly. While you may talk primarily about your offering, you give their businesses visibility in the process. So partner with your customers to create detailed, easy-to-access case studies. Having a dedicated section for testimonials and case studies on your website is the easiest way to make their existence known to the world.

Invite customers to speak at events

This is another activity that can spotlight a customer's journey with you. As part of your marketing activities, you're bound to participate in large-scale, industry-specific events and tradeshows every now and then. Invite your most loyal and long-standing customers to tell others the story of their journey with you. Again, even in this case, they get the indirect benefit of gaining more visibility for their own business. If they have to travel far (referring to their literal journey here!) for the event, make sure to take care of all their logistics and keep them comfortable throughout. That will demonstrate that you care for them and will reflect your appreciation for their loyalty—thereby strengthening the bond further.

A successful advocacy initiative includes both customer-driven and vendor-driven activities. So take a deep and broad look at where your organization stands with respect to customer obsession and relationships, and make changes where necessary. Finally, irrespective of whether your customers advocate for you or not, make sure to periodically thank them for having faith in you and choosing your offerings for their needs. Such gestures make them feel valued and appreciated and steer them gently towards advocacy.