Customer Advocacy Missteps to Avoid: Customer Ed Nugget 23

Customer advocacy is a powerful force that can make or break any brand. As many companies have discovered, there are no guarantees. But here’s the good news: customer education teams can be instrumental in developing loyal, vocal fans.

How so? Education plays a key role in attracting, onboarding and supporting customers throughout their journey. It’s an ambitious agenda. And along the way, it’s easy to lose sight of whether customers are genuinely enthusiastic about your products and services. So, you’ll want to avoid moves that can derail your efforts.

What advocacy pitfalls should you keep in mind? How can you steer clear of them when educating customers? Join me as I tackle these questions on this Customer Ed Nuggets mini-podcast!

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Nick Eriksen, CTO and Founder, Eurekos

Today’s Guest Expert

Nick Eriksen is one of my favorite go-to customer education sources.

As CTO and Founder of global customer training LMS, Eurekos, Nick knows first-hand how organizations of all kinds manage customer advocacy. And of course, he’s deeply familiar with unforced errors that can jeopardize customer engagement, enthusiasm and endorsements. So, I’m thrilled to welcome him back to discuss these issues.

10 Customer Advocacy Missteps to Avoid

You know you’ve hit your customer education stride when your advocacy program is paying dividends. But the path from first purchase to brand champion isn’t a straight line. That’s why you’ll want to prevent customer advocacy mistakes like these…

1. Unclear Goals — Willy-nilly advocacy efforts are bound to fall short. Your brand reputation deserves a thoughtful commitment. Create an action plan that includes relevant objectives, tactics and metrics so you can track results.

2. Choosing the Wrong Advocates — Don’t select brand champions solely on their reputation or the revenues you generate from them. Consider more factors, such as their enthusiasm, commitment or influence. Also, think creatively about how to help brand ambassadors improve their standing within their personal or professional sphere.

3. Not Leveraging Your Community — Your best candidates are likely to be hiding in plain sight. Carefully evaluate your customer base. For example, if you’re a software company, identify the most active user group participants. Then create a systematic process to reach out to the best candidates and empower them to act on your behalf.

4. Expecting Too Much — Your customers are busy. Respect their time. Take care not to overload anyone with too many requests for references, testimonials or event participation.

5. Not Providing Value — Remember, customers are primarily interested achieving their own goals. Be sure to offer meaningful incentives, so they find it worthwhile to get involved in your program.

6. Ignoring Feedback — Don’t treat customer advocacy solely as a promotional tool. It is also an opportunity to gather vital feedback that can help you improve your products and services, and the advocacy program, itself.

7. Failing to Define and Measure Success — Don’t overlook the importance of establishing key success metrics and putting those metrics to work. Gather the right data and generate actionable reports, so you’ll have access to insights that will demonstrate progress and guide improvements.

8. Not Offering a Personalized Experience — Treating all advocates as if they’re cut from the same cloth isn’t helpful. Each customer is unique. That means each will view your program through a different lens. Let ambassadors choose how they participate and how often they contribute.

9. Failing to Recognize Advocates Publicly — At the end of the day, every customer advocate is a human being. People naturally love to bask in the warm rays of public praise. If you want to reinforce their efforts, remember to acknowledge them early and often.

10. Forgetting to Refresh — Don’t set it and forget it! Customer advocacy doesn’t work that way. Your business is always changing and so are your customers. By building-in opportunities to review and adjust your program, you can continuously enhance your efforts and improve your outcomes.

Watch This Episode of Customer Ed Nuggets

Want to learn more about how to identify and avoid customer advocacy issues? To find out which mistakes Nick and I believe are most crucial to address (and for tips to deal with each), tune in to the brief video below…

If you’d prefer to listen to our conversation, tune in to this Customer Ed Nuggets audio podcast right here at TalentedLearning.com.

The Bottom Line on Customer Advocacy Missteps

Are your customers genuinely enthusiastic about speaking on behalf of your brand? If not, take a step back and look around at successful companies in your industry.

What are they doing to promote positive word-of-mouth in the marketplace? How do they celebrate customer success and drive customer advocacy? More importantly, what are they not doing to get in their own way? I’m sure you’ll find that these companies are working hard to avoid the pitfalls we’ve outlined above.

This 10-point list isn’t comprehensive, but it can give you a solid start. If you address each of these items, you’ll be well on your way to developing stronger ambassadors and gaining more brand visibility — for all the right reasons.

Learn More About Eurekos

To find out more about the Eurekos learning system, check out the vendor profile, including my review, the product demonstration, case studies and more in our Learning Systems Directory. Or visit the Eurekos website directly.

Also, check these other Customer Ed Nuggets with Nick, focused on various phases of the customer lifecycle:

• Episode 1 — Pre-Sales Mistakes to Avoid
• Episode 7 — Onboarding Pitfalls
• Episode 11 — Providing Ongoing Customer Support
• Episode 22 — 10 Benefits of a Customer Advocacy Program

In addition, Eurekos CEO Anders Willumsen recently shared a fascinating update on the state of the European customer education market on the Talented Learning Show Podcast. Tune-in to that conversation here…

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About Talented Learning Customer Ed Nuggets

Hosted by Talented Learning CEO John Leh, the Customer Ed Nuggets podcast is a trusted source of advice, guidance and best practices for customer education professionals of all types. In this series of brief video and audio “nuggets” (each 10 minutes or less), we explore key topics with numerous guest experts.

Join us anytime here or on our YouTube channel to explore all facets of customer education, from how to build a persuasive business case, to effective strategies, technologies and content that help professionals create, deploy and grow successful customer-centered programs.

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