Presentation by sameer murdeshwar

Mantra for Innovative Project Management
Sameer Murdeshwar
Marketing Communications
Unisys
Project Management National Conference, India 2014 1

Paper Title: Building a Sustainable Customer Loyalty
Program to Drive Business Growth
Theme: Mantra for Innovative Project Management
Authors:Sowmya Moni, Roopa Pereira, andSameer Murdeshwar

Contents
Abstract ............................................................................................................................................4
1. Introduction - Customers as advocates for your organization .................................................5
2. Building a sustainable Closed Loop Advocacy Process ..........................................................5
2.1 Introduction.............................................................................................................................5
2.2: Transform employee driven client references to customer driven advocacy and
engagement .................................................................................................................................6
2.3: The plan: Creating the advocacy advantage.......................................................................7
2.4 Sustaining the model .............................................................................................................8
2.5 Execution model.....................................................................................................................8
3. Managing the Program ........................................................................................................... 11
4. Measuring Customer Advocacy ............................................................................................. 12
4.1 Customer Advocacy and Net Promoter score (NPS®) – Sticky Wicket ............................. 13
5. Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 14
6. References.............................................................................................................................. 15
7. About the Authors ................................................................................................................... 15

Abstract
Buyers have always turned to their peers before making any purchasing decision. For a large IT
organization, it is imperative to have a strong advocate base to actively promote products and services.
The easiest way to find advocates is to start with the most satisfied customers. However, organizing this
group and converting them into advocates can be challenging. Building customer advocacy must be a
strategic initiative within an organization.
Your organization can build a sustainable Closed Loop Advocacy Process by starting with identifying
requirements, forming a program team, and creating a Responsibility Assignment matrix (RACI).
Establishing the process objective comes next, which focuses on delivering a tailored program to drive
new customer acquisitions. Using inputs from customer insights and feedback, you can then shortlist the
strongest advocates before formulating anAdvocacy Messaging Framework to emphasize your
strengths and customer benefits. The next step in the process is to create an Integrated Outreach
Program which includes speaking opportunities at events using an Advocacy Toolkit with standardized
templates such as customer engagement summaries, video testimonials, cases studies, and brochures.
The final step involves creating and maintaining an Advocacy Efficacy Tracker to monitor and measure
process efficiency and effectiveness against KPIs through standardized dashboards.
Our paper will demonstrate best practices of building a robust customer advocacy program, which
when effectively implemented, can significantly increase customer loyalty while giving your organization
the competitive advantage. The authors will share their experience of setting up and managing customer
advocacy programs in the paper.
Keywords - Customer loyalty, Customer satisfaction, Customer advocacy, Success, Engagement, Case
Study, Closed Loop Advocacy Process, Responsibility Assignment Mat rix (RACI), Advocacy Messaging
Framework, Advocacy Toolkit, Advocacy Efficacy Tracker

1. Introduction - Customers as advocates for your organization
Over the years, an organization would have already decided the kind of relationship it wants to keep with
their customers. In most cases, customer relationships are shaped as part of an organization’s
missionand values, and are cemented over a series of projects with their first customers. This comes from
the way delivery and operations help customers achieve their goals, the amount of time and money spent
on customer engagement skills, and the mode of collecting and acting upon feedback from customers.
We believe that enhancing customer relationshipsto turn valued customers into loyal customer
advocates is a strong business driver.
How can an organization ensure that their initial efforts at building a customer-centric strategy can help
turn their small base of valued customers into a large base of loyal and profitable customer advocates?
To achieve clear and sustainable competitive differentiation, enterprises can start by aligning their
services and relationships with their customers’ go-to-market strategies and goals at multiple points of
their engagements. This also means that rising customer expectations must be met. Today’s customer
experiences go beyond tangible metrics such as cost reduction and increased efficiency. Exceeding
customer expectations involve understanding the softer or more emotive aspects of a customer’s needs
and delivering on these expectations. As most large organizations operate globally with hundreds and
sometimes, thousands of clients, building these impactful customer experiences can be challenging,
especially in times when organizations need to prioritize their spending and investments.
The first step in achieving a strong customer loyalty base is to initiate a continuous and recurring
customer satisfaction program where an internal team or an external agency reached out to customers
on a regular basis, typically once a quarter, to gauge their service provider experience. This provides a
quick and simple view of customer support, reference-ability, and potential customer loyalty for future
customer advocates. This paper will detail the steps on how to leverage this customer base to set up and
manage a strong and sustainable customer loyalty program.
2. Building a sustainable Closed Loop Advocacy Process
2.1 Introduction
The traditional ‘push’ marketing has lost much of its influence in the shaping customer behavior.
Today’sB2B customer ischaracterized by:
 A declining trust in large institutions
 Heavy reliance on social media
 Large network of peers and colleagues
And as a report from Forrester research, titled “Tip the Balance from Reference Customers to Advocates”
tells us - Marketers must face a new reality: Empowered customers are educating themselves through
professional and peer-created content that is available online. Many claim to progress more than halfway
through the purchase cycle before they reach out to vendors.
And we found ourselves facing a similar reality. While the organization had invested in a Customer
Reference Program (CRP), which involved creating ‘reference material’ such as glossy case studies, and
customer success stories that sales could utilize when asked for quick customer references. Given the
change in customer buying behavior the efforts of the customer reference program could not satisfy all
the needs of our sales teams.

The demands rangedfrom:
2.2: Transform employee driven client references to customer driven advocacy and
engagement
To meet the needs of sales and marketing efforts we needed to build a program that would continue to
create compelling content but with new elements to respond to the demands of the new agecustomer.
The project objective was to gather satisfied and committed customers and convert them to “advocates” –
or loyal customers who were willing to support word of mouth referrals, secure patronage for our
organization and improve marketing efforts. Attracting and influencing loyal customers and inducing them
to participate in a relationship to help sell our firm’s productswere the objectives of this ‘advocacy
program’. We found that advocacy program could lead to better brand positioning, strategic customer
relationship development and even enhance product and service delivery.
The authors built the Advocacy Messaging Framework on the existing foundation of the Customer
Reference Program, and developed the client advocacy framework using the following guiding principles:
 Loyal and satisfied customers – We had solved their biggest IT challenges and had developed
a close relationship with influencers in their organizations.
 Credible source of product information – Customers who were trusted as sources of reliable
product information. Since they were not paid to advertise our services and other firms would be
willing to listen to their recommendations more than content marketing
 Leveraging their size and scale – Utilizing the influence of even a small number of large and
well known customer brands we believed could go a long way in spreading our sales and
marketing messaging.
Tapping into these loyal customers gave us a new sales tool for entering new market segments and
gaining new customers. The difference however was that the new model allowed for transitioning from
sales led selling to a customer led selling approach (Refer Figure 1)

Figure 1 – Transitioning from customer references to a strong customer advocacy program
2.3: The plan: Creating the advocacy advantage
Finding the right people and getting them to speak at the right time was an important objective of the
model; to achievethis we followed a Three Step approach(ReferFigure 2):
Figure 2 – Three Step approach for an advocacy advantage

2.4 Sustaining the model
Once the framework was built we needed to ensure that it could be sustained we introduced the following
Closed Loop Advocacy Process (Refer Figure 3):
Figure 3 – Closed Loop Advocacy Process
2.5 Execution model
The team for this project was based on the following hierarchy (Refer Figure 4)
Figure 4 – Customer Advocacy Team and Roles

The team was given access to all sales, marketing and customer-related information. Using this
information the team worked with senior marketing managers,to develop a consistent advocacy
messaging framework.
Guidelines for advocacy selection and the Advocacy Toolkit
The team procurred an exhaustive client list from the sales teams and then categorized them to select
the top advocates for certain services and solutionsThe guidelines for categorization, included factors
such as such as –
 Whether the customer is a marquee client (present in the FT 500 list)
 Revenue contribution to the organization’s global sales
 Recent Customer SAT scores, and net promotor scores
 Duration of relationship with the company
 Reference status.
Each category was assigned a weightage. And a sum total of the scores determined who was to be
‘top’ advocate and who was not. The team stored all their data in a common, sharable database called
the Advocacy Toolkit (Refer Figure 5)
Figure 5 – Advocacy Toolkit
Standardized customer approved templates
•Client Engagement Summaries, Case Studies, Customer
Whitepapers, Logos, Press Releases, and Analyst Reports
Customer Advocacy List
• List of all customers who have signed up for the Advocacy
Program
RACI Matrix – Responsibility chart to list down
all stakeholders and program members with their
roles and responsibilities
Integrated Outreach Program
The first choice for our top advocates to speak was to speak at premier events . To meet this goal and
ensure we had a sufficient pool of advocates for speaking events we set up a ‘customer advocacy panel’
which comprised clients from different verticals who have bought similar solutions. A customer advocacy
panel was set up for each of our high growth solution areas and these clients were given speaking slots
at premier industry event. The global advocates were also present at webinars and round t ables
organised by the company or at a partner event.
Besides events the customer advocacy panel was assembled on a regular basis to meet with a senior
representative from the company , to discuss and talk about their experiences. This first hand customer
feedback was looped back to delivery heads and product development teams to enahnce our services
and solutions.
We also ensured we had a ”Voice of the Customer Section” on our company website , which housed
interviews and video blogs besides quotes on successful implementations.

To strengthen ties with the advocates the company also invested time and effort in creating an awards
program for customers. Two awards are given out annualy an ‘innovator award’ and a ‘channel partner
award’. A nomination process and a selection comitte was set up to shortlist and choose the winners.
The awards were presented at a special awards ceremony with press releases and ample media
coverage.
Figure 6 – Integrated Outreach Program - Putting the plan in action
Customer
advocacy team
•Buy-in and budget approval from marketing leadership team
•Team selection
•Access to all sales, marketing and customer related information to the team
Guidelines for
advocacy
selection
•Listing and categorization clients
•Guidelines - Marquee client (from the FT 500 list), Share of wallet, CSAT scores,
length of relationship, reference status -Mapping solution-specific messaging with
each advocate
Events and
platforms for
advocates
•Speaking slot / booth at premier industry events
•Building a customer advocacy panel
• Invitations from advocates to attend their events, and setting up a co-branded event
and annual awards

3. Managing the Program
As part of the core team, we believe that the foundation of a successful Customer Advocacy Program is
based on sustaining relationships, and that by managing the following principles, this program can grow
to meet the meet the needs of the global sales and marketing teams.
 Regular interaction – We created a central advocacy-focused marketing communications
strategy as part of their plan to engage and nurture an active community of customers which can
then be leveraged to reach out to potential clients. This helped provide an integrated marketing
outreach platform with clearly defined benefits for our advocates, and tools to collect feedback.
Partnering with the Digital Marketing team helped us use social media as a tool to support the
program through promotions on our organization’s Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and blog pages.
 Keeping an ear out –To collect and analyze feedback, the team paid more attention to the online
feedback mechanisms to gather reviews and comments on the organization, tweaked our
customer satisfaction surveys to collect more direct feedback, and supported the portfolio
marketing team to churn out client-facing collateral focusing on innovation delivered through our
products and services.
 Proactive responsiveness – We also started to work with the global PR teams, subject matter
experts (SMEs) and marquee company spokespeople to elicit responses to frequent issues and
concerns brought out by customers through though leadership pieces, external client webinars
and blogs.
Managing a global base of strong customer advocates can be a very challenging process.A few of the
challenges we faced and how we managed them is listed as follows –
 Advocate identification process - The team needed to convince the account manager
community first to encourage their accounts to participate in this program. Using the influence of
the Program Sponsor, the team launched an internal promotion campaign to convince accounts
with high
C-SAT scores to join the program. As part of this launch, promotional material was created to
share with regional sales and account team, videos were created to showcase the benefits of the
program and meetings took place across business units and regions.
 Retain the customer base needed to build a strong advocacy platform - As some of the
high-profile, marquee customers fell in the public sector space with a few others having a strict
no-reference policy, the team had to modify their pitch to these accounts to encourage them to
continue supporting the program. The team worked with the Quality Assurance team to institute
an ‘Innovation Delivery’ channel which focuses on the innovation delivered through our solutions
rather than focusing on the specific customer issues and concerns. Separate innovation delivery
mechanisms were created and customers were then invited to sign up for these groups as part of
a global panel. This method was instrumental in convincing advocacy -shy customers to join an
innovation-driven panel and act as spokespersons for the organization.
 Recruiting new customers - We worked with the Learning & Development team to develop a
series of external customer focused webinars, in two categories – by offering and by industry
vertical. Promotions for these webinars was driven by the PR and the Social Media Marketing
teams across various channels. All new client attendees were then mined for inclusion in the
advocacy program.
 Maintaining an active, calid repository of assets - Direct inputs on new product features,
information on new product development, customer requirements gathering, messaging, creating
marketing communication, and access to the organization’s reference library helped the team run
the program seamlessly. We worked with the reference team to ensure that all customer
references, including quotes, logos, summaries, and case studies were refreshed regularly, with
new accounts being pursued to grow the reference pipeline and become more reactive to

customer feedback. Customers who opted out of the reference program were pursued
aggressively to convince them to participate in the advocacy program as panel members.
4. Measuring Customer Advocacy
One of the biggest limitations in the field of customer experience management is the lack of clearly
defined variables and instruments to effectively measure those variables. Some of the key questions to
ask would be:
 What is the kind of data we have on our customers?
 What metrics are most important to capture on our customers and relevant to business?
 Is the metric to be a raw measure or will it be derived or modeled from one or more data sets?
 How will it be measured and what is the source?
 When and how frequently will the measure be made?
 Are there known gaps in the data?
Enterprise CRM tools such as Salesforce.com can help create customer profiles and revenue views but
unfortunately, that is only half the story, as data by itself does not mean anything unless it is actionable.
Today, most companies are sitting on a goldmine of data that is being underutilized. Customers provide
new information each day to companies about their status in the marketplace. With enough customers,
this information creates patterns that can not only help identify least loyal customers that are most likely
to go to your competitors, but also help identify those most loyal and help you foc us your sales and
marketing efforts and dollars on the right groups. This is where, having a Customer Advocacy
Measurement Framework (refer to Figure 7) can help companies think about customer loyalty and help
them identify customer loyalty metrics to help them better measure and manage business growth.
Figure 7 -Customer Advocacy Measurement Framework

Customers are broadly classified in these four categories with associated measurement metrics as
described below. This classification is maintained in what we call as the Customer Advocacy Efficacy
Tracker and it continually gets updated quarter on quarter.
 New Customer Measurement Metric = Acquisition Score: Is derived from new logos or first time
customers. Weightage is assigned to each customer based on market recognition (Global 1000,
FT 1000), size and industry along with some specifics around the deal.
 Returning Customer Measurement Metric = Retention Score: Customers with high CSAT
ratings (>=8 above on a scale of 1-10) and are open to cross sell and upsell opportunities.
 Loyal Customer Measurement Metric = Reference ability Score: Is derived for customers who
are willing to refer and participate on request in sales opportunities. Weightage is assigned based
on size of customer, share of wallet, breadth and depth of offerings and willingness to refer within
same industry.
 Advocate Customer Measurement Metric = Advocacy Score: Customers are assigned this
score and hold the highest form of loyalty status and who are willing to invest in development of
marketing programs and like to pro-actively stay engaged. They are willing to talk openly about
their experiences in the social media and other digital channels. They act as strategic partners to
your business growth.
4.1 Customer Advocacy and Net Promoter score (NPS®) – Sticky Wicket
Today, Net Promoter score (NPS®) is considered to be the standard for measuring and acting on
customer loyalty data. The Net Promoter model (Refer to Fig: 1.2) is an approach in which you use your
Net Promoter score to drive improvements in customer loyalty and ensure profitable growth. It is based on

one simple question that is asked to customers which is , "On a scale from 0 to 10, with '0' be 'very
unlikely' and '10' being 'extremely likely,' to recommend the company, product or service to a friend or
colleague." Scores of "9" and "10" are recognized as "promoters." Scores of "7" or "8" are recognized as
"passives." Scores of "6" or lower are "detractors." The percent of responders that are "detractors" are
subtracted from the percent of responders that are "promoters." The result is the net promoter score
(NPS).
Figure 8 – Net Promotor Score
From a scientific perspective there is some skepticism about the NPS. Some argue that customer loyalty
is not only about numbers and percentages, but also about causes, consequences and correlations. NPS
takes into account customers, while also a lot of non-customers can act as detractors and generate bad
word-of-mouth publicity. Furthermore, the NPS disregards important differences in the answer score
distribution: no distinction is made between a 0 score and a 6 score, while there is obviously a substantial
discrepancy between those two. It also makes no difference whether there are 70% Promoters and 30%
Detractors or 40% Promoters and 0% Detractors. Both result in an NPS of +40 which doesn’t seem very
logical.
Therefore, we recommend caution in using NPS as the measurement indicator for highest level of
customer satisfaction as we believe that NPS can serve well as an indicator and not the absolute
measure for customer advocacy. Macro factors such as industry, competitor landscape also play a vital
role for understanding customer experience.
5. Conclusion
Investing in a sustainable customer advocacy program gave our customers more control and
accountability in our interactions with them, thus strengthening the case that we are now truly living in the
age of the customer. Once this program was in place and managed well, we realized better relationships
with our clients, continous improvements in our product portfolio, an improvement in internal stakeholder
satisfaction from the sales and account community, and a more streamlined alignment with your
company’s core strategy and growth plans. As this is a continously evolving program, the program team
and the marketing department gained greater insight into customer concerns and issues, leading to an
improved execution model to deliver greater financial returns for our company.

6. References
Forrester research report – “Tip the balance from reference customers to advocates” by Peter O’Neill,
February 05 2014
7. About the Authors
Sowmya Moni has 14+ years of proven experience in technology marketing. She holds an MBA in
Marketing from MDI, Gurgaon and is a certified PMP.
Roopa Pereira has 10+ years of experience in the IT marketing domain in marketing communications and
project management. She has a Master degree in English Literature.
Sameer Murdeshwar has 6+ years of experience in market research and marketing communications. He
holds an MBA in Project Management.

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