Customer Advocate, the person entrusted within a company to analyze the needs of the customer and to help satisfy those needs in a timely and cost effective manner.

Many companies are quickly realizing the importance of creating a structured customer advocacy program to improve customer loyalty. Such a program generally will extend across all areas of typical customer contact, including customer service, sales, marketing and engineering. The activities of these internal groups need to be aligned around 'the customer', addressing the needs highlighted by the customer advocate, to ensure complete success with the program.

Customer advocacy must be integrated into a company's strategic goals and measured through customer satisfaction, retention and profitability.

We Can Be The Customer Advocate

A facilitator connecting customers and the company trained in cross-functional roles. This person is empowered to provide customers with assistance in all areas of the business. The role of the customer advocate is as follows:

• To be the main contact for the target customer, responsible for handling questions, concerns, suggestions or problems
• Keeps the customer updated with timely and frequent updates as to the progress of resolving the issue
• To facilitate a resolution by bringing together the appropriate leaders across various departments
• To implement a procedure that ensures the problem is not repeated in the future
• Recommends new products and services, or enhancements, to better meet customers' needs

We Can Develop Impactful Customer Advocacy Programs

A customer advocacy program must encompass a structured methodology that can be quickly and easily implemented, follows a consistent well-defined proven process and one where the results are measurable. Some of the features of the program include:

• A dedicate person to manage the program who is responsible for its success and outcomes. This person should have a strong background in project management, relationship building and be able to articulate the needs of the customer.
• A defined program that can be followed to guarantee results (process and methodology).
• Internal stakeholders must be aware of the program and willing to do whatever it takes to support the initiative. This includes sales, support, product management, account managers, legal and others.
• Customer engagement – conduct a series of meetings with key customer stakeholders to gain insight on issues, concerns and areas of improvement.
• Written reporting to communicate status, progress and expectations (includes outcomes, metrics, goals, etc.).

When to Engage Us As A Customer Advocate

There are many reasons for a company to engage a customer advocate in a specific target customer account. Proactive engagement with healthy accounts is always recommended, prior to any issues that may arise. This scenario creates a win-win vendor-client relationship and establishes open dialog, trust and strong customer loyalty. Engagement with a client when they are experiencing a problem is considered reactive engagement, but an important way to address outstanding issues rapidly. In this mode, you typically are able to transition a bad or critical situation into one that achieves a positive outcome.

Focus On Your Top Customers - proactively engage your most important clients to ensure their needs are being properly addressed and that customer satisfaction is high.

      Outcomes:

• Maintain a high level of customer satisfaction
• Open continual dialog for issues, feedback and concerns
• Provides vehicle for open communication, fostering a strong lasting relationship

Problem Customer Accounts - when you need to resolve critical a situation expeditiously with a defined 'get-well' approach.

      Outcomes:

• Ability to define scope problem of the situation before it spirals out of control
• Create a formal action plan for quick resolution
• Engage the right company resources to resolve the issues
• Provide ongoing communication regarding expectations and status

General Customer Feedback - when you desire to obtain valuable customer feedback to help influence product development, solutions or company practices.

      Outcomes:

• Clients are able to have an impact in new product development
• Clients' needs are translated to define product development scope
• Create win-win working relationship / partnership