A solid partnership amplifies the customer voice within your organization, ultimately leading to positive business outcomes like expansion, renewal, and retention. Recognizing the crucial role of this partnership is what led us to add the CS Advocacy Accelerator award to our CAP Award category lineup—it’s time we start acknowledging (and appreciating) those who are effectively bridging the gap between customer success and advocacy.
Why CS Should Be Your BFF
Customer Success Managers (CSMs) are the unsung heroes of customer relationships. They’re not just account managers—they’re customer whisperers, problem-solvers, and opportunity spotters. They forge deep, trust-based connections with customers, providing them with an intimate understanding of customer goals and challenges. And they’re often the perfect matchmaker for connecting the right customers to your advocacy efforts, whether it’s for references, testimonials, product feedback, or case studies.
Strong partnerships with your CSMs can enhance customer loyalty, drive long-term customer value, and foster a collaborative environment among all customer-facing teams.
Not Your Basic Bestie
CSMs go beyond managing accounts—they’re on a mission to create lifelong brand champions. The best CSMs focus on developing multi-tier relationships within customer organizations, helping to build trust, foster loyalty, and uncover new opportunities for advocacy and growth.
As Nisarg Mehta, Manager of Customer Success at BrowserStack and 2024 CS Advocacy Accelerator winner, puts it, "CSMs build unparalleled trust with customers—trust that translates into genuine and credible endorsements. Their deep understanding of customer needs allows them to tailor advocacy opportunities that resonate."
Think of CSMs as the ultimate hype squad for your brand, building a community of superfans who don’t just love your product but feel like VIPs in your company’s success story. For them, their job isn’t just focused on generating acts of advocacy; it’s zeroed in on fostering a community of engaged customers who feel valued and empowered to champion the brand.
CSMs have a unique perspective on customer problems and use cases, allowing them to connect the right reference customers, place seeded quotes or conversations in the right platforms, and provide communities such as forums or roundtables where customers can meet, learn from, and grow alongside their peers.
“We are here not only to identify and nurture advocates, but make sure we built the best experience possible for them to want to be an advocate, and remain one. So, by aligning with customer success, and by being embedded in their processes and systems, it ensures we are fully integrated into ensures that we are integrated into critical parts of the customer journey.” - Charlotte Kennett, Sr. Director, Customer Experience, SS&C Blue Prism, 2024 CS Accelerator applicant.
Team Up For Customer Success
Advocacy thrives when teams come together, and CSMs are the key to making that happen. When CS joins forces with other departments (like sales, marketing, and product), they form the Customer Delight Dream Team. Cross-functional collaboration allows teams to uncover deeper customer insights, prevent customer burnout, and meaningfully elevate the customer experience.
At Lytho, “we've developed an Advocacy dashboard that provides visibility into who is able to publicly be referenced by product, industry, location, and health and who has been tapped for a recent reference/advocacy event. Democratizing this data has been key to partnership with Sales and Marketing to help deliver relevant references, case studies, and event speakers without over-tapping the same customers.” says Brittany Pais, VP of Customer Experience and 2024 CS Advocacy Accelerator finalist.
Gabrielle Herrera, Sr. Marketing Manager of Community Growth at HubSpot and a 2024 CS Advocacy Accelerator finalist, says, "Customer Success has a unique perspective on customer problems and use cases, enabling them to connect the right reference customers, place impactful conversations on the right platforms, and foster communities where customers can learn from and grow alongside their peers."
This cross-functional team effort strengthens product development and enhances customer trust and engagement, making customers feel involved in the process.
Furthermore, collaborating with additional departments, such as data and analytics teams, helps CSMs identify customers primed for advocacy. Data-driven collaboration enables teams to target the right customers at the right time and enhance advocacy efforts in scalable ways.
Nisarg advocates, "Collaborating with the data and analytics team allows us to track key advocacy metrics like NPS and review activity, pinpointing the customers most likely to advocate."
Collaboration among teams throughout the organization not only strengthens advocacy programs, it also helps create seamless, meaningful customer experiences, driving long-term advocacy.
The Benefits of an Advocacy Bestie
So, how do all these efforts translate into measurable business impact? The impact of a strong CS-Advocacy partnership is not just feel-good fluff—it’s measurable and significant. From the applications we received this year in the CS Advocacy Accelerator category, here are just some of the success stories we heard, demonstrating the quantifiable impact CSMs can achieve when they prioritize advocacy:
- $1M in Customer Success Qualified Leads (CSQLs) by tracking job changes of advocates
- Secured 200+ customer reviews
- Developed 300+ referenceable customers
- Advocacy-engaged customers had a 50% higher renewal rate and spent 20% more
- $2M in generated opportunities within the last year through organized in-person meetings and events
- $300k+ in support costs saved through advocacy-driven ticket deflection
- 141% increase in NPS score and a 214% boost in overall response rates
- 19% of the customer base participated in advocacy initiatives in the last 12 months
Now that’s something to celebrate! And if these impressive numbers aren’t enough, there are also some less tangible (and frequently overlooked!) ways advocacy and CS partnerships can drive impact. For instance, Lytho’s strategy leverages advocates in risk playbooks. As Brittany explains, “connecting customers, giving them community, is key to reconfirming they’ve made the right decision with your product and your services.”
Additionally, advocacy can boost employee morale like a shot of espresso on a Monday morning. “When employees witness customers advocating for their brand, it can boost their confidence, pride, and motivation to deliver exceptional customer experiences. This can result in higher employee engagement and productivity, leading to better overall business performance,” shares Brittany.
All of these outcomes demonstrate the far-reaching impact of strong advocacy and customer success partnerships, fueling deeper customer loyalty, building a sense of community, and generating internal momentum—all of which contribute to long-term business success.
Buddy Up to Accelerate Advocacy
So, are you ready to make CS your new bestie? Start by breaking down those silos and engage in some honest reflection:
- How well do your teams work together to drive advocacy?
- Are you fully leveraging customer success insights to identify your strongest advocates to create the most impactful customer stories?
- What barriers are preventing your teams from sharing valuable customer data?
As we’ve gleaned from our CAP Awards finalists, starting small—by sharing insights, celebrating customer wins company-wide, and democratizing data across your organization—can make a big impact. Remember, when customer success is your bestie, magic happens. And your customers—and your bottom line—will thank you.
Want some tips on how to become BFFs with your CSMs? Check out our blog “CSMs: Your New Best Friends” for some practical ways to do it! And if the CS Advocacy Accelerator sounds like an award that should have your name on it, sign up to get notified when our CAP Awards open next year.
