Customer Experience Advocacy

CX professionals must aspire to be evangelists not iconoclasts. Unfortunately, too often we are the latter not the former. 👨⚖️ Iconoclasts point out what’s wrong. They stand outside the mainstream, calling out contradictions and what’s not working. While noticing and calling out bad ideas is valuable, ONLY pointing out deficiencies is not. It’s tiresome. I should know. I’ve been guilty of doing that in my career. To be fair, it can be seductive. Think about it. Are there plenty of customer experience flaws to point out at your company? Undoubtedly. But focusing only on the negative is not a formula for changing minds. Far better to have a compelling story for people to be persuaded by – a picture of a better tomorrow that you’re asking your colleagues to embrace. 🌄 Telling that story is the behavior of an Evangelist. ⛪ And #CustomerExperience Professionals must be evangelists - sharing the good news about customer experience. Because, like true believers in any discipline, #CX pros make great evangelists. We truly believe that everything is better in a world where all companies have embraced customer-centricity. 📈 So we should be only too happy to travel far and wide to tirelessly spread the word of the good works of customer experience. 🗺 What should be in your story? 1. The huge business benefits that come from improving customer experience. 📈 2. The benefits to employees and the company culture when delivering great CX becomes a priority. 👩💼 3. The value of the work your customer experience team does. 🎇 4. Tangible results from work you’ve already completed to show that what you’re advocating for is doable. 📊 In my experience, many CX pros don’t include all those elements when they tell the story. I include myself in that, this post is motivational self-talk as much as anything. The other important element of being a good evangelist for CX is not just telling the right story but telling it often enough. 💡Tell your story, tell it again. Be happy at every chance you get to tell the story. Quoting my colleague Danielle Rojas, “Say it until you feel like you’ve said it enough, then say it 5 more times.” 💡So let’s be evangelists for the value and importance of customer experience, rather than Iconoclasts standing on the side, throwing rocks. What have you found to be most persuasive when you tell your CX story? 

100% of my customers in EMEA are advocates 💃🏾 How’d I do it? Assumptive Advocacy 🤓 Salespeople know about the “assumptive sale”. It’s a tactic where you approach a conversation with confidence that a buyer is already on board. This mindset can help ease friction and make the journey to “yes” feel natural. But what if we took that same mindset into customer advocacy? 🤔 I’m calling "assumptive advocacy" a proactive approach to customer partnerships where we don’t just wait for our customers to be ready to share their success; we build our relationships with the assumption that they want to become advocates. Here's how it can look: 💫 Showcase Success Early: Instead of waiting for a “perfect time” for customers to speak up, we actively identify opportunities for them to share their journey, whether it’s through case studies, keynotes, or reference calls. 💫 Normalize Their Expertise: Frame their experiences as valuable lessons for others. By positioning our customers as leaders in their space (which they most likely are!), we empower them to see advocacy as a natural part of their success and of their journey with us. 💫 Make Advocacy a Milestone, Not an Ask: We don’t approach advocacy as an extra favor but as a key milestone that reflects our shared success. When advocacy is assumed, it’s integrated into their journey as naturally as our other growth metrics. With Assumptive Advocacy, we create a customer experience where advocacy becomes a celebrated extension of the relationship. It’s about helping our customers take pride in their wins, while they help elevate our shared story. Could this approach help you redefine your customer partnerships? Or maybe I’m just good at manifesting ✨ customer advocates 😁

"Center the customer in everything you do." This kind of advice is tossed around a lot in customer success. At the surface, it's great! *Of course* we should center the customer!! Buuuutttt.... How, exactly? I like to use the ACT Framework to make this general concept more actionable. "ACT" - Advocate, Connect, Translate. This framework helps anyone in a customer-facing role (but especially CSMs) earn customer trust, drive value, and influence internal priorities, by keeping the customer at the core. 🙋♀️ ADVOCATE: Be the voice of the customer – internally and externally. Build credibility and trust by relentlessly championing the customer’s success – internally with teams, and externally with the customer. - Build trust by showing customers you understand their goals, frustrations, and business context - Internally, consistently represent customers’ needs in product discussions, roadmap planning, and enablement - Example scenarios: ▶️ External: Your customer is struggling with onboarding delays. Instead of saying “that’s handled by another team,” you say, “let’s walk through the blockers together – I’ll escalate and stay with this until it’s resolved.” ▶️ Internal: During a roadmap or release review, you say, “This request has come up from 3 of my strategic accounts – it’s tied to their quarterly KPIs. Can we scope it for Q4?” 🤝 CONNECT: Tie everything back to your customer’s business outcomes. Drive value by aligning product usage to what matters most to them – revenue growth, patient care, efficiency, etc. - Go beyond product usage – understand how your solution fits into customers' broader goals and challenges - Use this context to personalize recommendations and measure success - Example scenarios: ▶️ “You mentioned one of your focus areas is reducing time spent on administrative tasks like charting after patient appointments – let’s look at how your team’s adoption of [Feature X] is trending and what we can do to increase ROI.” ▶️ “This workflow would reduce manual reporting by 20+ hours/month – that's a win you can share with leadership.” 📣 TRANSLATE: Turn insights into action for both sides. Bridge the gap between customer language and product/engineering language – and vice versa.  - Translate customer feedback into clear, actionable insights for your internal teams - Translate product updates and capabilities into value-based messaging for your customer - Example scenarios: ▶️ External: “This new release includes [Feature Y] – which should save your team at least 3 hours/week based on the process we mapped out last month.” ▶️ Internal: “Here’s what customers actually mean when they say the platform doesn’t work for their workflow – it’s not the functionality, it’s the lack of integration templates.” How do you "center the customer" in a practical way??

Keep your $50 Amazon gift card. Your customers don't want it. They want a product experience worth talking about. Your customer success playbooks say to: ‣ Offer gift cards ‣ Create advocacy programs ‣ Send fancy swag ‣ Make it "quick and easy" Yet your advocacy metrics stay stubbornly low. Why? Because you're solving the wrong problem. The most successful CS teams I've worked with don't focus on getting testimonials. They focus on creating experiences worth testifying about. When customers genuinely value your solution, they'll advocate without incentives. When they don't, no amount of gift cards will change that. Think about it - when's the last time you enthusiastically gave a testimonial? Was it because someone offered you $50? Or was it because the product genuinely changed how you work? As CS leaders, we track NPS religiously but rarely ask: "Would I personally recommend this to a friend if I wasn't employed here?" Before building complex advocacy programs, ask: ‣ Are we creating "aha moments" that customers want to share? ‣ Do we solve problems in ways that make our champions look like heroes? ‣ Have we made our customers' lives measurably better in ways they can articulate? The best customer advocacy strategy isn't about streamlining the testimonial process. It's about delivering experiences so valuable that customers actively want others to know about them. No advocacy program can compensate for a mediocre customer experience.

There’s a difference between customer advocacy and collecting logos. Too many early stage SaaS companies still think the game is: ☑ Get a big name logo ☑ Put it on your homepage ☑ Job done (Dare I even say one of our competitors' site has quite a few logos that aren't their customers, some are even ours 🤷 ) ...and I think buyers are wising up to this... Same goes for influencers. If they’re not using the product or if they’re not mentioning you without being paid to, you’re not building brand. You’re renting inauthentic attention. At trumpet 🎺 we’ve started leaning heavily into real advocacy. The kind that isn’t bought, briefed or branded. What it looks like: → Users looping in colleagues offering great case studies → Our Slack channels getting DMs oh how users are getting results and telling us excitedly → Prospects mentioning us before we’ve even reached out → Champions posting about us unprompted on LinkedIn → Customers recording walkthroughs for their wider team → Referrals landing in our inbox with a one-line intro That’s the gold. It doesn’t just drive pipeline. It compounds. If you want to actually use advocacy beyond a throwaway customer quote on your site, here’s what we’ve found works: 🔁 Give them a reason to share. Make the product so damn useful (or delightful) they want to talk about it. Most advocacy is a reflection of product quality, not just marketing effort. 🧠 Involve them early. Co-create features, roadmap check-ins, share sneak previews. People advocate for what they help shape. 📦 Re-Package the advocacy. Turn casual quotes into killer social proof. That Slack comment? It can become a slide. That LinkedIn post? It can become an ad. But only if it’s genuine. 🙋 Celebrate the humans, not the logos. Spotlight your champions. Not the company they work for, but the person who took a bet on you. They’re the ones who’ll take you into their next company. We're not perfect at this yet - but it’s the main kind of “marketing” that doesn't need large budgets and that everyone can do. Logos are easy. Advocacy is earned.

If I were to start over today in customer experience, I would not begin with surveys, nor with likeable characters, nor with immaculate journey maps that live in presentations and die in operations. I would begin by unlearning. Unlearning empty frameworks, dashboards no one consults when real pressure hits, promises of instant empathy that have trained us to do the right things, but not necessarily the things that transform. And yes, this truth can be uncomfortable. CX has become an accessory, something that is communicated, but not governed. A “look how beautiful our journey is” while the decisions that truly matter are taken elsewhere, based on entirely different criteria. If I were starting today, I would do this differently. And it is what I recommend to any leader who doesn't want to lose time: 1️⃣ I would start with blocks action, not with the customer: Organisations love collecting preferences, but customers do not decide based on taste; they decide based on friction. If you do not understand what enables or blocks an action, everything else becomes analytical vanity. The driving force behind the business is not what we would like it to be. It is the unresolved micro-pains that no one takes into account when making decisions. 2️⃣ I would design the system before the experience: There is no consistent experience when decision-making is inconsistent. This is why I developed CUSTOMER™, to move CX away from being a collection of initiatives and turn it into: → a prioritisation guide → a shared business language → a real backbone for sustainable growth 3️⃣ I would speak more clearly and more humanly: In CX, empathy is discussed endlessly. Uncomfortable conversations are avoided. If I were starting today, I would choose the right friction: the kind that opens eyes, not the kind that looks good in a handbook. Because the future of experience does not depend on more data, but on more truth. And the truth is that many organisations do not need new tools. They need more courage. More decisions taken from the customer’s perspective, at the right moment, with accountability for impact. CX is not a deliverable. It is a way of leading. And when it is genuinely adopted, it changes the entire business. If I were starting from scratch today, I would choose to help organisations move: → from decoration to design → from noise to intention → from linear to living systems → from tactical execution to true strategy Save this post if you are rethinking your CX strategy for 2026.

Hard truth: if you can’t tie CX to business outcomes, you'll be treated as overhead. Lately, I’ve noticed CX professionals suddenly talking about how CX needs to drive growth. Here's what's interesting: this isn't new insight; it's always been true. CX leaders have always needed to focus on growth. Yet many have been so focused on perfecting CX practices that they lose sight of why those practices matter—solving the problems that keep executives awake at night. That's what gets them sidelined or eliminated. It's an ongoing challenge for CX professionals: we must create measurable value for the C-suite if we want to be seen as strategic partners. Here's the disconnect: The Problem: Many CX professionals over-focus on journey maps and satisfaction scores, while executives lose sleep over growth and churn. Journey maps are valuable tools—but they're not outcomes. We're speaking different languages. The Reality: The C-suite cares about customers. They simply refer to it as revenue, retention, and competitive advantage. They don't need another presentation about "customer-centricity." They need transformation strategies that use CX as the lever. Example: Instead of "We improved CSAT by 15 points," try "We identified friction in checkout that was costing $2M annually in cart abandonment. We fixed it, recovered 60% of that revenue, and here's the roadmap for the rest." The Evolution: Thriving CX leaders aren't just customer advocates—they're business transformation strategists. They lead with: "Here's how customer friction is costing us $X in growth, and here's our plan to fix it." The Truth: If you can't connect your CX initiative to the business outcomes that keep leadership awake at night, you won't be seen as a strategic partner. You'll be seen as overhead. It's time for CX leaders to become change catalysts who happen to specialise in customer experience, not the other way around. Honest question: Is your CX team driving measurable transformation, or are we still documenting problems without owning solutions? #CX #CustomerExperience #BusinessTransformation

The fastest way to fix customer experience …. is to fix employee experience. We spend millions studying customers. NPS trackers, CSAT surveys, design sprints, VOC dashboards. But here’s the truth we often forget: The customer’s experience can never exceed the employee’s experience. - If your frontline feels unheard, customers will feel unattended. - If teams are overworked, customers will feel oversights. - If employees are scared to escalate issues, customers will suffer delays. -If your culture celebrates heroes instead of systems, customers will feel inconsistency. We don’t need to fix the “customer”. We need to fix the system around the people serving them. A customer doesn’t meet: ▪️ policies ▪️ budgets ▪️ KPIs They meet a human being who carries the weight of all three. So before we redesign customer journeys, let’s redesign employee journeys: 🔹 Leaders who listen 🔹 Processes that enable, not restrict 🔹 Tech that helps, not burdens 🔹 Metrics that measure outcomes, not hours 🔹 A culture where asking for help is strength, not weakness When employees feel valued, trusted, and supported, customers don’t just notice - they feel it. If you want to transform CX, don’t start with a tool. Start with your people. Because at the end of the day - Customer experience is just employee experience passed on! #Business #CX Pic: break time during workshopping enterprise experiences with partners

Here's an email between two CMOs. One who understands why CMA budget should not be cut, the other considering making cuts. Feel free to share. --------------- Subject: Rethinking Cuts to Advocacy – Hidden Costs, Missed Revenue Hi Sharon, I understand you’re considering scaling back your customer advocacy program as part of broader marketing cuts. I completely understand the pressure—we’re all being asked to do more with less. But I’d recommend you to take a closer look at the real ROI of that program before you finalize. Here’s the thing: cutting advocacy seems like a logical place to save budget because it’s not always effectively tied to pipeline in a dashboard. But that’s precisely the trap. It’s a revenue enabler that looks like overhead—until you don’t have it. We ran the numbers before our last board review, and here’s what surfaced: - Deals with advocate involvement closed 25% faster - Win rates were 18% higher in competitive cycles when customer references were used - Our team spent 70% less time chasing references, freeing up bandwidth for actual selling - Without the program, we’re flying blind. Reference fulfillment becomes ad hoc and reactive. Our top customers get over-asked, and sales spends valuable time scrambling for “the right customer” instead of focusing on closing. In a high-stakes, low-confidence buying environment, peer validation isn’t a nice-to-have—it’s table stakes. The advocacy function is one of the only marketing levers with direct influence on late-stage pipeline. Cutting it now is like reducing fuel to your most efficient engine because it doesn’t sit on the front of the plane. If helpful, I’m happy to share how we tied advocacy metrics directly to revenue and earned executive buy-in to protect it—even as we trimmed elsewhere. Let me know if you want to compare notes. Happy to jump on a call.

Why do some SaaS customers become advocates while others quietly churn? I've mapped out the 6 critical stages every SaaS customer goes through, and the touchpoints that make or break their experience: 📍 Awareness → They discover you exist 📍 Consideration → They evaluate if you're the right fit 📍 Acquisition → They sign up and start onboarding 📍 Retention → They stick around and see value 📍 Expansion → They grow with you 📍 Advocacy → They become your champions Success isn't built in one stage. It's built across all of them. ✅ In Retention, it's not just about check-ins. It's about: - Proactive customer education - In-app tooltips that guide before they're stuck - Support that feels like partnership, not ticket resolution ✅ In Expansion, it's not pushy sales. It's about: - Account reviews that uncover real needs - Usage reports that highlight untapped value - Personalized upsells that solve actual problems ✅ In Advocacy, it's not asking for referrals. It's about: - Creating experiences so good they can't help but share - Making it easy to tell your story - Building a community where success is celebrated The customers who reach Advocacy? They started with seamless onboarding, felt supported in Retention, and experienced growth in Expansion. Every touchpoint matters. Every stage builds on the last. What stage are you investing in most right now? Drop a comment - I'd love to hear where you're seeing the biggest impact (or the biggest gaps) in your customer journey👇