Customer Reference

Bending Without Breaking Your Customer Reference Program

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Customer Engagement, Customer Reference, Marketing Musings

Part 3: Open Up the Gate
In Part 2 of this series, I discussed several CRP pitfalls when your program’s point of entry (POE) always begins with a case study. This can often happen naturally as case studies are packed with information and exposure of the reference customer, but can impact your ability to build up a reference database in a timely manner. Additionally, it can limit your ability to leverage your reference customer’s compete product or service experience and potentially ignore customers who can only participate at a lower exposure.

The good news is that there is a (relatively) easy fix! Try lowering the “walls” of your program by changing the POE to become a “reference.” This approach treats all reference activities equally. If a customer does not have the capacity to participate in a case study, but is willing to speak with prospective clients privately, recruit them! As explained in the diagram, there are a lot more references out there once the walls are lowered for customers to participate. By changing the POE, your CRP fully utilizes the extent of its happy customers, whether it’s through logo usage or participation in analyst reports. This is especially important for the inclusion of big-name brands, which are generally less comfortable with or unable to create case studies and other high exposure activities. Another perk of opening up the gate is the ability to instantly utilize customers who are willing to participate (instead of waiting for the case study to publish). This contributes to a more cost-effective approach when products are changing at a faster rate.

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Gratitude Is the Right Attitude for Customer Reference Programs

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Customer Reference, Marketing Musings

One of the first and most important values we learn in life is gratitude. It’s not by chance our parents reminded us to say “thank you” for even the simplest gifts when we were children: an apple, a small toy, or even to pet someone’s more-than-welcoming puppy. Today, we experience gratitude in our personal and working lives every day, and it even seems obvious to say that gratitude is a value that will never go out of style. But has the attitude toward appreciation changed over time? And if so, how has this change affected our customers?

JD Rucker, author of the blog Flowtown, believes that, “Mass production, improved transportation, instant communication channels, and increased competition slowly degraded business over the past decades, culminating in recent years with a completely impersonal business style that lacks humanity.” Most of us can identify with this change through our experiences in the role of the customer. Fortunately, times are changing, as gratitude is beginning to re-emerge in our fast-paced, virtual lifestyles, allowing the opportunity for customer appreciation to re-enter everyday business practices.

In his new book, The Thank You Economy, Gary Vaynerchuk explains how businesses are reinstating the value of gratitude by using social media to re-engage with customers. This change is turning forced social behaviors to ashes because we can no longer rely on stale codes of conduct to express our appreciation. Projectline’s Book Club discussed The Thank You Economy on May 24 and came to the same conclusion: social media is a “must-have” to express appreciation and appreciation is a “must-have” for Customer Reference programs! It’s that simple.

So how can we apply this “Mom and Pop” approach to appreciation to a Customer Reference program? First, consider the program’s key stakeholders—the people the program absolutely cannot function without. Generally, these are your customers and sales force. First and foremost, it is critical to express appreciation to customers who are willing to act as references for your business. Whether sending a gift basket or an appreciative tweet, thanking these customers for the time and energy they put forth on your behalf is essential. (P.S. Don’t be surprised if karma acts in your favor! We often find that appreciated customers will give more and last longer as a reference.)

Less obvious, but very important, are the stakeholders of Customer Reference programs: the “middle men”—the sales force responsible for the customers you are working with in reference activities. These individuals take time away from their own initiatives to support your program. Although these stakeholders do rely on customer references for their own activities, thanking those who support your program goes a long way. If your company uses an internal social media platform, try giving people kudos online in front of their peers! A hand-written note or personal call to say “Thanks!” can also do the trick.

As Anika put it, start at the heart. If you can remember to take a moment to share your appreciation with people who support your efforts, you will not only create happy, returning customers, but a strong Customer Reference program in the process.

The Key Elements of a Customer Reference Program

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Customer Reference, Marketing Musings

It’s no surprise.

When working with our clients on planning, launching, or expanding their customer reference programs, we often start with this simple idea: there are three primary ingredients to a successful program. One of the three elements is so essential, that it is practically assumed to be present, even without discussion. And this goes for most customer programs, not just reference programs. What is this ingredient? A sales channel? Budget support? A popular product? A reference manager? A customer relationship management (CRM) tool? No.

Happy customers.

It doesn’t matter how great your product is, or how valuable the service you provide, how supportive your executives are, or even how successful your sales team is, if in the end, you don’t have happy customers. And no amount of customer reference program wizardry, a brilliant strategy, heaps of dedication from the team, or the biggest budget can help a program that struggles due to a lack of happy customers.

Although this little blog can’t solve the customer problems you may have, at least let us suggest that you ask the question as you plan and run your customer programs: Are my customers happy? Start at the heart—it is no surprise that your program’s success, like your company’s success, will rest on your ability to satisfy customers.

Once that ingredient is in place for a reference program, your work to make sure you have executive support and get close to account executives, sales teams, partners, or whoever sells your product or services, will result in a very healthy program.

Marketing Metrics matter (but they don’t need to take over your vision)

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Business Analytics, Customer Reference, Marketing Musings

A few weeks ago, I ran the Warrior Dash, a demanding obstacle race. After months of anticipation leading up to the event, I came and conquered…well, not really conquered, but the event exceeded my thrill-seeking expectations.

The one thing that I had not expected was a weekend full of discussions with my friends about the event’s numbers. With close to 90,000 fans on Facebook, Warrior Dash has sold out ten events across the country. The Dash I attended drew almost 10,000 participants in one weekend, at sixteen heats per day and 350 people per heat, and I started to wonder: How do they keep track of their success? How do they measure repeat attendees? How do they keep their unique event vision creative and still mind the numbers?

In my working life, I often think of numbers in terms of success measures. Especially now, with tightened purse strings, metrics are essential for validating customer engagement programs. Often executives ask questions like: How many references are in the program? How often do they participate in requests? What opportunity dollars are associated with the reference activity? Are there gaps in the available reference pool? And it’s up to you to supply the answers and validate your program.

As proven by the Warrior Dash, metrics don’t have to stifle your creative, thoughtful vision. Use the metrics to your benefit. While parameters should be defined, metrics shouldn’t be restrictive in the creative sense. When thinking about metrics for your organization:

  • First, consider what makes your program stand out among other reference programs. By knowing the unique identifiers for your program, you can keep the program integrity intact and align your metrics to your distinctive program.
  • Second, ask yourself what metrics really matter and focus your energy on achieving the relevant numbers without compromising the program vision. For instance, if your program vision is get dynamic customer references across all verticals, assign a goal for each vertical and then report on how you’re tracking against that goal.
  • Third, consider automation. By automating the reporting functionality of your efforts, you can spend more time on the program itself. Having the extra time to keep current program participants engaged and enlist new references will not only help you achieve your goals, but also give you time to carry out your program vision.

When you think about success measures as a tool for protecting your program creativity, you can not only meet your program mission, you can also achieve measurable results.

To find out more about how to maintain your true program spirit and creativity and obtain the metrics you need to support your vision, visit our page on reference marketing.

Dispatch from the Customer Reference Forum: Julie Tung on Oracle’s reference success

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Customer Reference, Marketing Musings

This week at the Customer Reference Forum in Santa Clara, CA, I was excited to hear Julie Tung, VP of Global Customer Programs at Oracle, speak about her experiences and best practices managing a successful global reference program.

Julie described how Oracle built an impressive customer reference program by fostering a company-wide customer focus and paying attention to the best interests of their customers. Her presentation really jibed with my experiences in evidence and case study management as a reference professional. Highlighting advocacy, customer centricity, loyalty, and strong relationships as the building blocks of a customer focused culture, Julie spoke specifically about how Oracle expresses its focus. They listen to customers, respond when they have an issue or question, and collaborate with them. It may seem simple, but these small things have made an enormous difference for the company.

In addition to the fundamentals, I’ve found C-level engagement and executive sponsorship are crucial in creating a successful reference program. For Julie, this was also part of the action plan. She and her team specifically targeted executive sponsorship from both parties during customer engagement, along with customer advisory boards and one-to-one issue resolution. Executive sponsorship is important not only because it can mean the reference program gets funding but it can then validate projects and get buy-in from sales and marketing groups around the company. This type of upper-level involvement can also help break silos between teams so they can work together towards a common goal.

At Oracle, the results of creating a company-wide culture of customer focus spoke for themselves. The reference program saw increased participation, a larger pool of customers and communities, open dialog with executives, and an increased ability to fix programs in response to early warnings from customers. In short, customer focus led to happier customers, C-level engagement, and better customer references.

One of the most impressive parts of her program is that her team is able to do all of this successfully while supporting 9,000 Oracle products with 100 reference professionals. Her ideas on how to leverage executive sponsorship to scale her program and meet the demands of the sales team within such a company are remarkable—I’m glad she brought them to the forum.

Guest Post: Managing Your Customer Reference Program with a Specialized Application or a Spreadsheet

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Customer Reference, Marketing Musings

This week, we’re honored to share a guest post from Joshua Horwitz of Boulder Logic:

With tightened budgets all around, this is the most common question we hear: do I need a customer reference application, or will a spreadsheet for my reference program be enough? To help our clients make the decision, we advise them to consider the specifics of their situation and the pros and cons of each approach. Let’s take a look.

We advise starting by jotting down answers to some basic questions. What is the size of your customer base and how many referenceable customers do you realistically foresee? If you really won’t be expanding beyond a couple dozen or so reference customers, the challenge of keeping track of everyone’s activities is more limited. What is the size of your sales force? Organizations with more than a handful of team members, particularly if they are geographically distributed, tend to struggle more when tools and processes are informal. What is your vision for your customer reference program? The complexity of everything increases as you expand the activities you support, serve more stakeholders, or attempt to provide a more consistent experience for your customers and prospects.

While your initial plans may be modest, we recommend thinking several quarters ahead. It’s much harder to build a new IT justification or reset stakeholder expectations down the road. Too often we see customer reference program managers unable to expand and evolve their program because they’ve become hostages to a process filled with manual tasks that didn’t seem overwhelming earlier.

With the points above in mind, let’s look at the pros and cons of spreadsheets compared to a formal customer reference application.

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