How to set up a customer reference program
Gayle Mestel
Is your company doing everything it can to generate customer
referrals and positive word-of-mouth?
If you suspect the answer is “no”, then you should consider setting
up a formal customer reference program.
Customer reference programs-an increasingly important constituent of
corporate sales and marketing plans-groom customers for customer
reference activities. These customers then can help your company with:
* Case studies for publication on your Website, distribution by sales
reps to prospects, or for use as collateral at trade shows.
* Video testimonials.
* Press interviews.
* Quotes for press releases.
* Testimonials for use in brochures, trade show back walls,
advertisements, or other marketing collateral.
* Giving talks or presentations, or sitting on panels at trade shows
and conferences.
* Hosting on-site visits from prospects or agreeing to serve as
direct references by phone or user conference meetings.
Does your company currently ask customers to participate in these
kinds of activities? Whether you already do or are thinking about it,
keep in mind that a formal customer reference program ensures you don’t
inadvertently inundate customers with reference requests.
By centrally tracking customer touches, you coordinate all reference
activities. Each line of business, as well as your sales, marketing, and
PR organizations, will know which customers you’ve approached and how
they’ve responded. You’ll protect the goodwill happy customers feel
about your company.
And your company will be able to use customer references
strategically.
Here are some guidelines to consider if you decide to establish a
customer reference program for your company.
Scope is everything. To
maximize the effectiveness of your reference program, engage all
stakeholders who can contribute to or benefit from the program.
It’s likely - especially as your program becomes established -that
both sales and marketing will want to leverage the program. Sales will
want access to the customers to help them gain inroads into new accounts
and close deals.
Marketing will want your customers to provide quotes or take press
calls.
It’s, therefore, important to include leadership from both
organizations in the planning and management of your reference program.
Equally important: Define responsibilities.
Will ownership of the program be shared? Who will fund it? Who will
contribute resources to management of the program? Another issue to
address is how the two organizations will provide and share data.
Establish your reference program on an enterprise-wide basis. If your
company spans multiple lines of business, track reference activities
across those organizations. Then you will have a comprehensive record of
each customer’s relationship with your company. You eliminate the risk
of the customer fielding reference requests from multiple lines of
business concurrently. And you’ll be more readily able to identify
opportunities to strategically leverage customers.
In-house or outsourced.
There are several potential benefits to outsourcing your customer
reference program, including the ability to ramp up more quickly and
leverage established experts.
But if your company has the resources and is willing to commit
long-term to managing the program in-house, it might make sense to
handle it internally. Or you might want to outsource only a portion of
your program such as request fulfillment.
The database. The
foundation of any customer reference program is a database of customer
information. Depending on your company’s size and the scope of your
reference program, you can track this information using something as
simple as a spreadsheet.
Larger companies might want to create a custom database; this might
be integrated with corporate ERP systems. There are also off-the-shelf
software applications available.
As you evaluate options, consider how large the database needs to be.
Good searchability is important, as is security.
If the application resides on a network or corporate intranet, you
need to make sure safeguards are in place to protect its integrity and
the privacy of your customers.
The data. Minimally, you will want to track basic information about
each customer: contact information, status of the relationship, what
products or services the customer purchased and account manager.
You also should note what reference activities each customer has
agreed to support and how often you tap them for participation. This
helps ensure you don’t under- or overuse particular customers.
What resources will you need?
There are several categories of tasks that are associated with managing
a customer reference program.
These include administrative functions such as data entry, and higher
skill tasks such as approaching account teams and their customers to
gauge their willingness to serve as references.
You need to allocate resources for each of these responsibilities.
You also should prepare for growth, because once the program is
established and its value recognized, demand for it is likely to grow.
The fine print. Another
critical component of your customer reference program is to ensure that
you and your customers follow the proper protocol from a legal
perspective.
Your company always should get written permission from customers
before using their names or brands. In addition, you need to give
customers the opportunity to review any materials you publish about them
to ensure you are not disclosing information they consider proprietary.
Always respect your customers’ wishes and publicity policies and
protect your company from the potential liabilities associated with
disclosing customer information without permission.
A “customer first” attitude. Using customers in reference activities
can deliver tremendous benefits. It’s important, however, that you
balance those potential benefits against your customers’ needs. If you
place too many demands on any one customer, for example, you may put the
relationship at risk.
Be sensitive to customers’ responses to your outreach activities.
Maintaining the highest standards of courtesy is a must.
But you also need to take it a step further.
If a customer’s response to a particular request is lukewarm, it may
not be wise to apply pressure. Instead, use the exchange as an
opportunity to understand why the customer might have reservations about
participating.
Stay in touch with customers and be sure to follow up. Sometimes
events don’t go as planned. Meetings get cancelled. Reporters fail to
call.
Make sure you notify your customer immediately if the circumstances
around a particular activity change or get delayed.
At its heart, a customer reference program is about fully leveraging
the reciprocal nature of your professional relationships. Make that the
guiding principle of your program, and the benefits to your company will
include not only the value of the references themselves, but also the
continued goodwill of your existing customer base.
Sales and
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