What is Customer Advocacy? Why is it essential for the success of a brand?

If your goal is to increase the bond of trust with your customers and grow your business by expanding your customer base, one of the first aspects you need to start working on is Customer Advocacy. Here's how you can develop it within your company.

In a context where purchasing processes are increasingly centralized on the customer and his needs, Customer Advocacy becomes not just a simple tool, but a real mindset which, if adopted and integrated in a strategic way, can guarantee the company the achievement of important results, from different points of view. From the purely economic aspect to the working aspect, up to the image and reputation of the brand: the factors that are directly influenced by Customer Advocacy are many, as are the benefits that can be drawn from the development of this approach.

Let's see in detail what is meant by Customer Advocacy, what are its advantages and how to integrate and measure this type of approach within your company.

What is Customer Advocacy?

Customer Advocacy is a specific business approach that moves an organization to act for the best of its customers and favors the consolidation of their trust to the point of generating positive word of mouth which, in turn, helps to bring in new customers.

Organizations that adopt a customer advocacy vision then apply it to every aspect of their business, from the smallest interaction with the customer to the most strategic decisions.

Customer Advocacy vs Customer Experience and Voice of Customer: what's the difference

Customer Advocacy should not be confused with Customer Experience, which defines the customer's overall experience with a company through its services, products and policies, nor with the Voice of Customer, which indicates information that can come directly from customers and relate to their experiences and needs.

Although they are three distinct concepts, a business approach based on Customer Advocacy directly influences both the Customer Experience and the Voice of Customer.

Why Customer Advocacy is important: 3 strategic advantages for your brand

We can identify three fundamental factors that can lead an organization to consider Customer Advocacy as a key asset for its strategy :

• Facilitates the ability to attract new customers. Customer expectations are evolving much faster than in the past and under the best circumstances a company's services and products can create a positive gap between customer needs and what the company offers. In this very favorable circumstance, a brand can take advantage of Customer Advocacy to implement solutions and innovations that help maintain the positive gap, and help generate an attractive resonance towards new and potential customers.
• It helps to give a useful overview to all company departments (marketing, product design, customer service, etc.) and to create an active mental approach aimed at highlighting and satisfying customer needs as guiding objectives .
• It helps the company not to waste its resources and to identify the right direction to be able to meet customer expectations. Thanks to Customer Advocacy it will therefore be possible to focus on how to make the best use of activities, time and resources within the organisation.

How Customer Advocacy develops in the company

It is possible to understand how much customer advocacy is developed within an organization by observing the level of integration between individual departments:

• in the event that individual employees are designated as Customer Advocates, we are faced with a first level of development of Customer Advocacy; in this case the approach envisages, in fact, exclusively direct help to customers who require information to resolve urgent needs.

• the second level of development is represented by the establishment of a Customer Advocacy Team, which, in addition to solving customer needs, is responsible for collecting information useful for identifying customer needs and prioritizing them. The purpose of this activity is to indicate to the company which direction to follow in order to improve its services and products.

• the third level is configured with the establishment of a specific team within the organization, which is responsible for coordinating and applying Customer Advocacy across the entire company.

• the fourth and final level is reached when the principles of customer advocacy are applied in all the strategies of the organization and every employee performs customer advocacy activities.

Knowing your customers: the heart of Customer Advocacy

Among the cornerstones of Customer Advocacy, knowledge of one's own customers is certainly in first place : knowing what their needs are, what they expect and what their experiences are, in fact, constitutes the fundamental element for being able to best apply the principles of this approach.

The sources that a company has at its disposal in order to obtain this information are many; from product reviews on the various marketplaces (Amazon, Google, Trustpilot, Tripadvisor), through social networks, to the customer service of a company.

Despite this, very often companies are not able to take advantage of this important amount of information; in order to make the most of them, it is therefore important for an organization to first identify the sources from which the multiple information comes and subsequently determine which ones to take into consideration.

In order to proceed in this sense , we can identify five fundamental steps:

• identify all available sources through which we can obtain information about our customers
• define, among these, those on which to base your feedback collection activity
• collect and catalog feedback according to well-defined patterns that can be shared internally in a simple and explanatory way
• equip the organization with technological tools to analyze data
• define roles and responsibilities .

How to measure customer loyalty with the Net Promoter Score (NPS).

Among the tools that we can consider in order to measure the degree of customer loyalty, we find the Net Promoter Score created by Fred Reichheld.

The Net Promoter Score is configured as a quantitative survey methodology that helps organizations measure the degree of satisfaction of their customers through a simple question: " How likely is it that you will recommend us to others? “.

The vote is expressed on a scale ranging from 0 to 10 and, based on the score expressed, it is possible to obtain three specific categories which constitute the degree of loyalty to the brand :

• Promoters (9 and 10)
• Passives (7 and 8)
• Detractors (from 0 to 6)

The authors of the book “ The Ultimate Question 2.0 ”, Reichheld and Rob Markey, declare that companies that can boast a higher NPS in their reference market will grow more than double the reference average, demonstrating how decisive Customer Advocacy is also for a question of economic return.

Brand Advocates, or when Customer Advocacy reaches excellence

The Net Promoter Score also makes it possible to distinguish potential Brand Advocates , among customers who have expressed a vote of 9 or 10. Brand Advocates are in fact those customers who are very satisfied with their experience with a company, who for this reason spontaneously share with other people information relating to products or services that they have used or are using, without any compensation or incentive.

The action of each Brand Advocate decisively influences the purchase intentions of other customers: according to the Nielsen Global Trust in Advertising 2015 , the most credible advertising comes directly from the people we know and trust and 83% of customers rely on recommendations from friends and acquaintances to make a purchasing decision.

The study also reveals that among the "trusted" there are not only people included in our restricted circle: as many as two thirds of people (about 66%) declare that they trust and are also influenced by the opinions of consumers published online.

Customers who decide to buy a certain product therefore do so very often following recommendations from friends and acquaintances or even through product reviews on the web; this obviously also applies in the opposite case: in the event of a negative experience, the product will be discouraged through word of mouth.

6 tips to preserve the loyalty of your Brand Advocates

Based on these premises, it is easy to understand how important it is to identify Brand Advocates and above all to value their contribution: companies that can boast active promoters must think of a recognition plan for these figures, who, as shown in the diagram below, they have specific expectations towards the brand.

Brand Advocates believe in our company and it is therefore necessary to maintain and increase their trust for as long as possible, through a series of best practices:

• Mutual respect . The Brand Advocate is convinced that the product or service chosen is of excellence and expects any disservices or malfunctions to be promptly taken care of and resolved. Without this reciprocity there is a high risk of losing their trust.

• Appreciation. Another very important aspect is to express appreciation and gratitude to the Brand Advocate, even with a small gesture that shows him our consideration and further strengthens his belief in the brand's products / services.

• Accessibility. Giving customers the opportunity to be able to contact us in the simplest possible way and to be easily accessible is an essential step. Promoters like to stay in touch with the brand and it is therefore essential to guarantee easy, direct and immediate connection methods, for example by exploiting social networks or other channels and places of contact.

• Active listening. Advocates expect companies to listen to their advice and to implement it, therefore it is very important to ask your customers what their needs and wants are and ask them for feedback once a shopping experience is concluded

• Recognition . Recognizing your supporters for their important contribution to achieving the company's goals is another key factor in making these supporters feel important and increasing their loyalty.

• Presence. Participating in discussions and being present is the best way to show your Advocates your support and gratitude. Placing a simple like or sharing one of their posts are small gestures that can really make a difference

To conclude

Customer Advocacy is one of the pillars of a brand's success, because it has a 360-degree influence on everything that determines the growth and results of a company, from the Customer Experience to the return on investment up to productivity and internal working methods. organization. Reserving the right space for this approach and starting to develop and measure it with the right resources is therefore essential to more easily achieve one's goals.