The Key to Customer Advocacy

Most B2B organizations have nailed the lead generation and conversion pieces of the sales cycle. Majority of products and services revolve around your customers but once the sale is closed, how do you keep the customer as the focus of the business? Enter Customer Advocacy. Stopping by the Behind the Post podcast is Bev Barnett, Senior Customer Advocacy Manager at Workday. She breaks down step by step the importance of the voice of your customers, the role of community, and best practices for social media managers. Bev shares that the Nirvana of customer advocacy is finding the intersections between what's important to your customers, the stories they want to tell about their successes, and what the organization is looking to tell about its own path. Throughout the episode, Bev stresses the importance of meeting your customers and community where they are and letting them facilitate the conversation. She leaves the show with one very important yet overlooked piece of advice–take a step back. Customer advocacy is not about you, it’s about the customer. Customers are people and we have to respect their time, and space and respect their “no.” Hot Topics: How Customer Advocacy differs from Customer-Based Marketing Taking control of the processes, workflows, and documentation around customer advocacy and leveling the importance alike any other marketing activity Creating customer facilitated community focused on best practices and relationships