Episode 3: How customer advocacy became more personal

Host  0:00  
Welcome to the Advocast, where we discuss all things customer advocacy, discover the latest trends, best practices, and tangible advice as we talk to some of the brightest and sharpest professionals in the industry. 

Host  0:17  
Hi, Deena and Liz, ladies from Captivate Collective, thank you so much for coming here to The Advocast. This is our customer advocacy podcast, and you have been in the forefront bringing up true throughout leadership pieces in customer advocacy, and this talk will be a lot about customer life cycles, but before we start digging in into that. I really wanted to find out, like, how do you think over the years this field has changed? Did you see? I mean, I mean, no, you see it evolving, so I'm just pointing there.

Deena Zenyk  0:56  
Yeah, I mean, I can, I can jump right in. When I, when I started in customer advocacy, for one, there were no tools, so the tooling is really what has changed as the practice has matured, going from really kind of a asynchronous approach to customer advocacy to being more fully embedded into the data and systems of the business has allowed practitioners to drive value that is more meaningful for the business rather than value that is siloed just in in the programs,

Liz Richardson  1:33  
so and I'm a little bit, a little bit later to the game than Deena.

Deena Zenyk  1:40  
slightly smarter and funnier.

Liz Richardson  1:43  
so I came on with kind of the evolution of tooling for customer advocacy program. So I think that one of the biggest changes I've seen, and of course we've seen a lot of changes over the last 10 years, is when I launched my first advocacy program. It was novel. This was not something many B2B organizations were doing, and in light of that, it got a lot of attention. It got a lot of engagement, because our customers were being asked to collaborate with us in a way they weren't being asked to collaborate with any other software vendor that they were working with today. We're so aware that programs have been adopted, which is fantastic. We think every B2B organization should be collaborating with their customers, but it is more mainstream. It's still not totally mainstream, but it's definitely more mainstream, and now our client's attention is being vied for. You have to compete not only with external programs that many other software vendors have now spun up, but you also have to sometimes compete internally with all the programs your own organization has set up as well, so there is a lot more effort to be put into the front end around the value proposition of your program. It's not enough to just exist and be cool, because there's a lot of other programs out there, and also the brand of your program. What's the affinity that you want your customers to have with that, and so I think that's a big change, is there's a lot more effort to be done in getting your program to stand apart.

Host  3:32  
Amazing, yeah, I totally agree. And I was curious, Dina, when you were talking about the time when you came into this world, when was that, and Liz, when was that for you? Like, yeah, I started,

Deena Zenyk  3:46  
I started working on customer advocacy programs at Smart Technologies in 2006 So we had a whole portfolio of programs at that time. There was the Smart Exemplary Educator program, there's the Smarter Kids Connections program, Smart Research Program, Conference Presenter Program, trade show teacher program. All of these programs sitting in the kind of customer marketing part of the business, but under the advocacy banner. So Smart was led by two husband and wife founder and the wife, Nancy Knowlton. She was just really an early thought leader in the power of harnessing the energy and enthusiasm of educators, that was the core audience, K 12 educators, to really drive the business results and proliferate the story of the Smart Board through school districts, so that's we had these really early programs, and I didn't, I did not come up with the idea for these programs, but I kind of sashayed into a role where I ended up owning the majority of those customer advocacy programs. For the business over the 10 years that I worked there.

Host  5:03  
Wow, and Liz, did you say was that you? No,

Liz Richardson  5:06  
no, no, no. I started, so I guess I was a little good bit after you, Deena. So you definitely had a head start on me. I was working for a technology company called Bomgar, which did remote access tooling, they are now beyond trust, as they have combined with another organization, but we didn't have all those programs that Dina is talking about. In fact, you know, Bomgar started as a hardware solution, so that's where the world was. They were just starting to move into SAS offerings, and we had, of course, beta testing, because it was very product-oriented. What, what is it that we need to change about our product? But you were still living a little in that world of, you bought the product, like, hopefully you'll keep buying the maintenance, but you're not paying these ongoing recurring SAS fees. Now, of course that's the model for everybody, and thankfully we were able to move into still that idea of client love and collaboration, and so I really actually heard about advocacy programs through a partner, which was Dell Case at the time, and thought, oh my gosh, that would be so magical if we just had like a pool of advocates and everything I need to source for, you know, speakers and references and whatnot. We could just have them ready at my fingertips and we could cut down all this back and forth and back and forth, and that's really how I came to customer advocacy. I was already such a fan of collaborating with customers through community and social, and it was kind of the next logical step of where you would get to with your relationship with your customers. So I championed bringing in an advocacy program. It was very novel to our organization, it was very outside the box, but it was such a great success, and it was so exciting for the organization, and I just fell in love with, oh my goodness, I love this concept of building relationships with your customer, helping them succeed, you succeeding, but really that connection level was very addictive to me. I just really loved feeling like I knew my customers at a different level, and then the goal of figuring out how do I do that at scale, how do I make many of our customers feel that way? How do I use technology to create an experience with our brand, and that's how I came into this field, but that was, that was, you know, the platforms were just coming onto the scene, more modern, I'd say. Customer advocacy platforms, customer reference platforms have been around for way longer than me, but I believe that was in the year 2012 or 2013 somewhere around there.

Host  8:01  
Nice, I love how you talk about both of you. You're all both so passionate about customers, customer marketing, how to connect it with the brand, how to create that connection, how to do it at scale. I just wonder, where did your roles inter cross, and how did you superwoman come together and this

Deena Zenyk  8:24  
is kind of this is kind of a funny, this is kind of a funny story. Maria, I was one of influitive early customers, and and I had gone out on a maternity leave, and in fluid, if reached out when I was on my maternity leave, and said, hey, we're going to do this thing called the Bammies, it's going to be an awards thing, and you really should apply, and we know you're on leave, but you know you should think about applying, and I said, oh yeah, sure, okay, so I just kind of hastily threw something together, and got it, got it in for this awards thing, and then when the awards process really started rolling, this name, Liz Richardson, started coming up, and then Liz and I ended up really head to head for this award that was program of the year, because it was based on votes, and so Liz was activating her community, I was trying to activate my community, and that the numbers just kind of kept going up and down, and up and down, and up and down. At the end of the award cycle, Liz kind of swept the awards, and I won nothing, so that was fine. But I got to know this name, and then a few short months later, at an event, I think it was, was it at Billy's event, Liz, that we met, or was it? Yeah, yes, you feel in my

Liz Richardson  9:48  
Deena did text, she tweeted me, she tweeted me a congratulations, very big of her. So it was I. I have a picture of that tweet somewhere, because it was like, oh, that's the first time we actually talked to each other, and then yes, we met at Billy's Customer Engagement Summit, included, actually connected us, so Truman Tang, who used to be their customer marketer, he connected us, and it was like, whoa, who is this person? They're thinking everything I am, and we were already having discussions, I think, and getting excited about topics, and that was like.. and there were not a lot of other people doing what we were doing, so it was really thrilling to meet someone who was just as excited about it as you were, and then Dean and I kept meeting on the side until we both ended up working at Incluitive, but yeah, that's our meet cute.

Host  10:44  
I do love the story. I do love the story, like I can see you competing and kind of seeing the points, Liz winning, Dina winning. And then just always fascinates me how different life circumstances can bring two people together, and then since then you have been creating many amazing things, including writing a book, including writing many thought leadership pieces, many running many seminars, consulting, and many companies, and I would like to go back into 2021 when you both introduced the concept of customer was was the advocacy 2.0 Can you do you still remember giving a talk and customer accent? Can you tell us, like, what were the main pillars, and then maybe how was the evolution to lifecycle advocacy like few years later, because it feels like this is where not it didn't start there, but it was formalized, and then it moved, or it keeps on moving, and I remember last year, I think, around the customer X, when you published the blog post like Physical Advocacy, it started being a trending topic ever since, so I think a lot of our listeners want to dive deep on this one, but I would love to go back a little bit and just start with the two point old version, and how the evolution.. how did you come to it? Was it through the conversation with your customers, research.. like

Deena Zenyk  12:17  
I'd say part of it was conversations with customers and research and Maria, we told you off camera when we, when we were just getting started today, Liz did say, like, you know, we get bored pretty easy, and you know, like, we've been doing this for a long time, and with that kind of length of service in the practice comes a lot of wisdom and a lot of observations of kind of what works and what doesn't work, and also allows you to kind of be able to understand the concept of trends and and be able to see what's coming down the tracks a little better, and to Dotto was really a part of that, that the kind of that glory day of customer advocacy was starting to wane, and practitioners, you know, who wanted to continue success and build on their success in the practice, that talk at Customer X was really about thinking bigger than the remit that you have and looking at different ways to engage your customers, we introduced the concept of like decentralized advocacy at that time, whereas advocacy was very centralized, you know, inside a function in a silo in a program, and to Dotto was really about thinking outside of that silo, thinking about how to reach a broader base of your customers, not just those super fans at the top, but really thinking about that broader scope of customers. Liz, anything that you'd add to two dot,

Liz Richardson  13:54  
that's that's a good summary. I mean, it was really thinking about moving beyond just the super fans into what does advocacy mean for your entire customer base, and I think if we were to summarize what Dina said and what I just said, it was really getting to a point of saying, okay, the easy days are over, where everyone is just so happy with the novelty of advocacy and the definite intrinsic value that lives there and the qualitative value that everyone knows lives there, and it was saying, okay, it's time, though. If we're going to become a legitimate part of the organization, we are going to have to figure out how the impact of customer advocacy goes beyond this tiny little bit of our customers and how do we react to what we've learned in the last 10 years, which is only a small percentage of your customer base is ever going to log into a program or say yes, me please, I'm a member, I'm a member, we will have. Get beyond that and figure out how do we keep that engagement going with a broader piece of our base and even with our champions. What is the long-term value, or how do we keep that engagement going? I also think a big piece of it was the realization that Dina said, yes, it was advocacy, not only was it living in a silo, in the sense that it was centralized to this one group, when we know advocacy happens everywhere, which is, of course, one of our taglines, but it was completely unaligned from the customer journey, it was segmented into this, come here and have this experience as part of a member of this program, we are really not highly aware of what's going on with you as a customer, that takes a lot of listening and data and stuff that's a little outside of customer marketing's, or was outside of customer marketing's wheelhouse. Now we need to start thinking about how does advocacy scientifically and strategically aligned to the customer journey, and what's happening with the customer at any given time, and that's actually the natural transition into life cycle advocacy, and where we went from advocacy to auto, eventually to talking about life cycle advocacy.

Host  16:14  
I really love how you kind of sum it up, embedding and operate hardwood for me, operate license offer right to customer advocacy into all pages of customer journey. Sorry for my English. Yeah, thank you. And how I really love the idea of meeting customer where they are, like instead of like, hey, we have, we need to talk to them now. Well, they might not be in a position to talking just because they are busy, so it's really about like capturing the key moments as they're going, right, and tapping into those and creating values out of those kind of, like, I don't know, like it's natural, right, like if I'm at this stage of the customer journey, then talk to me this way. Yeah, I imagine. Yeah, you go, Liz. Oh, the joys

Liz Richardson  17:17  
of a virtual meeting. Yes, in the sense that it is also a lot more, it takes a lot more mature of a practice and a methodology, right? It is easy to say, okay, we can source who we believe our champions are based on probably NPS or our customer success team will just tell us who our champions are, or we'll look at who's spending a lot of money with us, and hopefully they're champions with us as well. And then we, we kind of create something and bring them into that and interact with them whenever there's an opportunity. It's a bit ad hoc and opportunistic. It takes a lot more maturity of methodology to say no, we're actually going to look at what's happening with them in their journey, and say, and learn, and test, oh, this part, this milestone in the customer journey, we find is an opportune moment for this type of engagement with this type of profile or seniority or industry or user, and and then we will learn that that drives results that builds relationship when we offer this type of nurture or activation at this point in time for this specific profile, it is definitely more involved and more difficult than just saying, oh yeah, let's build this space, let's have these activities, and let's let them just kind of do whatever it is that they want to do, and if they get bored, they get bored, but that's just kind of the way it is, so it is a big mindset shift, I believe.

Host  19:04  
Yes, it's huge, actually. Yeah, and Dina, what do you think? I really would love to give you..

Deena Zenyk  19:11  
well, you know, just as Liz was talking there, as I was thinking about, you know, advocacy programs, standalone advocacy programs, and that's where Liz and I come from, and you know, card carrying flag waving former program administrators for influent of programs, in particular. If I think about how much time and energy practitioners, you know, run programs of that nature, how much time and energy you put into just re-engaging your audience to come into your space. If you could redirect all of that energy and enthusiasm that you have as an advocacy professional and apply it to thinking outside of that program box, it is very exciting, and that is part of why we are so. Behind the concept of life cycle advocacy, and it's an exciting evolution of the practice, and the practice had to evolve. It hasn't just been around for the last five years. Customer advocacy didn't start in COVID, you know. Customer advocacy has been around for a long time, goes all the way back to, you know, people trying to kind of butter up their customers, so that they could get references from them, so it is time for the practice to evolve, and you know, the end of the reign of advocacy programming is just a piece of that evolution, and advocacy programs play a role in life cycle advocacy, but it's just a piece of the pie now, so it's expanding your remit, expanding the impact that you can bring into the business, which, if you're as into customer advocacy as we are, that's pretty exciting.

Host  20:53  
Yeah, you are. You are so into customer advocacy. I love seeing you both like so passionately coming up and creating this concept, and if you could summarize, like, what are the top three reasons why people should just.. I don't even want to say, like, move from traditional advocacy, because honestly, life cycle advocacy doesn't sound easy, and we will talk about it little later, it's. it feels like it is more complex, robust. It involves everyone. It's not the silo. So, we will dig into that, but, like, why people should go. Why do you think organizations should strive in moving into this direction? Like, what are the benefits? Because they will have to be. There has to be, like, in my opinion, change of the mindset is one of the most difficult ones. It's not easy, like, if we were doing something for years and years and years, just thinking about it differently, making that mind shift, but also then in the real world, all of the changes which need to follow, it does take an effort, and it does take an effort, not just from one person, but across the organization. So, why, if you were selling this, you are like, why, why we should, why we should be excited about life cycle advocacy. Why we should move into this new stage.

Liz Richardson  22:17  
I think there are some clear reasons. So, first of all, this methodology, or this idea that we, yeah, we've been selling, you're right, Mura, are you buying it? Are you buying it? Yeah, yeah, I think it really, it didn't just come from, like, oh my gosh, let's just shake things off, but it really did come from there are some challenges that customer advocacy just keeps facing over and over, and our time working for a customer advocacy technology solution really allowed us to see what those consistent challenges were over and over and over again. So, for instance, Dina did mention one, one is this idea of the need and the resourcing requirements of constantly engaging your audience over and over and over again. We needed to think of a way to get out of this heavy, laborious all my time is going into engaging and entertaining and creating moments with these people, because I can only do that for so many people, even with a platform, I can only scale that so far. I still need all the resourcing time to build that type of engagement in a traditional, we'll call it traditional advocacy program. What can I do to become and scale myself and my impact, so that I'm not spending every time I grow my program, I'm just creating more and more and more effort on top of that. How can we start to look at the practice and create automation and personalization that create some of that value for the customer, but does it require just additional more and more and more resources, so that was part of the questions there. If we could go out, meet them where they are at, engage them when it makes sense to engage them, where they'll be most likely to want to engage, so that we're not constantly fighting for that attention and that engagement, but we can build that into their journey where it makes sense, and there's more likelihood that they will want to engage with us. So that was one, and then a second one was very related to that, which is as customer advocacy, we can't just keep serving this one little.. we know it's hard to prove the impact of advocacy, that's something that we're still solving for as an industry, right, but when we do it, it's delicious, and it's wonderful, and we can share these stories, or even metrics now that sound and look very, very good. We know that they have a lot of impact on the organization. However, if we're only playing with one to 5% of our customer base at any given given time through. These more traditional advocacy programs, we cannot get to the scale of impact that the other departments are going to talk about. Right, sales touches every single customer, customer success touches every single customer. With time for customer advocacy to start thinking bigger than my champions, we need to start thinking about what is my charter for making every customer a potential advocate of this organization, and if I'm going to do that, I'm going to have to think of a different way to approach this than building a program and saying, if we build it, they will come, we'll send them an invitation and they will come. That wasn't working, we were, you know, the industry is still getting only maybe max 10% engagement with your customer base. How do we build light touches for those people who don't want to have a heavy interaction or a heavy collaboration with your organization? How do we scale that, where they can interact with us more easily, and we can touch and collaborate with more of that customer base? That creates a much bigger impact potential for customer advocacy, and we really needed to go that direction, because we were telling wonderful stories, but we were still the scope of our impact was still being very, very confined to a small percentage of the customer base,

Host  26:19  
so what I hear is like to sum it up, it's like going and connecting with five or 10% of your customer base. You basically want to connect with 19 100% correct? Why not?

Liz Richardson  26:35  
I mean, why not, right? If you can create the yes, but they're not going to come to you, they're not going to come to you. Have to think of another way to do it, and that's really where life cycle advocacy methodology, as Dean and I were thinking about it, evolved to. I could see Dina wants to add to this,

Host  26:55  
and I heard just light touches instead of just like thinking of how to engage with the top five 10% of braving fans, let's call them, but like, how to involve with light touches the whole customer base through automation, through methodology, through strategy. Yeah, all

Deena Zenyk  27:13  
that I would add is like a for me, like a little bit of a bugbear over the last, whoops, several years, I mean, at least the last five years is the whole, the whole conversation around internal buy-in, and it occurred to me that the talk track around internal buy-in could be the exact same talk track from 15 years ago. It literally has not changed. It is still about going department to department, talking to the stakeholders, getting them to understand customer advocacy. What's the point of it? What's the value of it? And it just.. I'm like, you know, we can't keep doing the same thing and expect a different result if we have been trying really hard, lots of really smart people in this space trying to get their organizations on board. Few have been really successful in getting that organizational buy-in. If it is just a talk track on repeat, then maybe it's not them, the internal stakeholders, maybe it's us, maybe maybe we're doing something wrong that we're not getting that internal buy-in, and I think the key here is servicing that broader, that broader customer base that's going to get someone's attention. If you have a salesperson who says, "Oh, I only serve, you know, 1% of our customers, and you have a salesperson who services 90% of the customers, person servicing 90% of the customers, is going to be perceived to be bringing a bigger impact into the business.

Liz Richardson  28:51  
Amen to that. And I think another piece of this puzzle, where we, we brought this idea forward in 2021 like you said, Maria, and we've been evolving it from there, which is good. It needs needed evolving, but think about that. That came right after the pandemic, so there was a big emphasis on engaging customers during the pandemic. Everyone in software started buying into launching programs and connecting with your customers and giving them value with nothing in return, because literally we just want them to stay with us. And then all of a sudden you have 2022 and you have 2023 and everyone's saying, "What in the world? Why are software companies cutting their customer marketing spend? Why don't they believe in us, they just don't get it. So, that's been a lot of the top track of, oh, well, leaders just don't get it, which that may be true. Leaders may not just get it, but then you have to ask yourself, why don't they get it? Why is it not clear to them? And that's a hard question to ask of your. Self, whose job is it for the leadership to get it to some extent? Yes, I mean they need to do their learning and evolving, but they look at results in a different way, they look at measuring and making decisions around budgets and whatnot, in using different maybe ideas and terms and language than we do as customer marketers, are we not using the right language? Are we have we not been able to show the breadth of impact? Why are they not more excited? How do we get them to be more excited, and that's our job to evolve this practice to the point where it's an, it makes sense to every leader that, of course, we have to have these programs, and that we understand the impact of these programs, and we can estimate the issue if we take these programs away. How is that going to impact the organization as well? That is not clear yet, with customer advocacy, and sometimes even customer marketing. It's hard work, right? It's such hard work. We have to push ourselves to do the hard work. Customer lifecycle, like you hinted at, Maria. It's, it is hard work. It is hard work. We're not even masking that it's hard work, but Who is going to pioneer? I think Alina are always shouting out from the side, like, Who is going to pioneer this? Hopefully, it's some of our customers pioneering this, right? But somebody has to do the hard work, and honestly, I feel like the technology follows some of the methodology, so when the technology hears enough about, like, oh, yes, this is the way things are going right now. We're in a time where it feels like the technology is following and catching up and saying, like, oh, yes, we see it, we see it. There'll be times when the technology vendors will lead, they'll come up with something brilliant and new that we've never seen, and then maybe you'll have a technology vendor leading the way, but I think you know, sometimes there won't be a technology who's 10 steps ahead of you, so you can just follow and be like, oh yeah, I need to do this. Sometimes the people have to just figure out how to do it, and then the technology will follow.

Host  32:15  
Amen. Like, I love this, and I cannot agree more, like having the conversations over again, over and over about the value and proving our value in the organization, and we, and in my case, like at Wings, like we decided now to talk to organization, or they have customer boxes someplace already installed, like having a conversation to a completely new customer, and introducing the concept, it's even harder. So, so, like, but now we are looking more to the future. It's more like, okay, we now, we here, we at the table, we're having the conversation, we still proving our value, but like, how can we shift the concept much more, like, much more in advance, so it's not even a question whether it's a good idea or not, like, because we are touching all the customers through different engagements. It's just part of it. Technology enables it. We all connect it, automated. It's part of it. So, I like that. I like that vision. I like that vision. I like you. I like you like this, that you are the pioneers, the track blazers, you know, always the visioning the snow, and people needs to do the first footprint, so other cans follow, and my, yeah, go ahead,

Deena Zenyk  33:34  
I just going to chirp up there and say, I think that that, that, that comes from really being so embedded and passionate, and wanting to see our, our peers succeed in this space, seeing budgets get cut, seeing that big upswing that Liz mentioned in COVID, of, you know, companies who, I mean, can I say they were opportunistic, I mean, they kind of were. They didn't really care that much about their customers prior to Covid. They didn't have these customer engagement programs. They spun them up in the hopes that their customers would stay with them, and as soon as they kind of felt maybe things were a little more stable, it was like, a see you later, alligator. Like that was great. Like, it's really.. it has been hard to see a lot of our, our peers, and this, this community go through that, that cycle, but it is about taking the reins for yourself a bit here, and, as, as you know, in this part of our conversation, it's not easy, but you know, the best, the best things aren't always easy, it doesn't mean it's impossible. It's just hard.

Host  34:46  
And thank you for sharing this perspective. I didn't look at it like that. I thought after COVID, like finally people have realized the value of customer advocacy, and you know, like customer reference manager or market customer manager. There was like the number one search for role in the LinkedIn, like moment of pride, where the community kind of felt elevated. I mean, me personally, I was like, finally, finally, like it's trending, it's hot, it's like this is it, but you are right, like after the financial, I think hardship, which we have lived through the last couple of years, like how mercy Leslie, like the most important roles were cut, not, yeah, it was just like not the, you know, like that just didn't fit, so maybe opportunistic. We felt

Deena Zenyk  35:42  
it too. We were like, yay, customer advocacy people are on board, but then you know you could see coming down the kind of the other side of Covid that, oh, you know, this was a play, and if for some of those businesses, if that play, if that customer advocacy play during Covid were to have shown strong results for the business, then it, you know, it would have still be there, not in all cases. I can't make blanket statements. I haven't talked to all of these businesses, but you know, the assumption is that if you're, if you are really showing value that's aligned to the value that the business is looking for, then those those functions would still be there in some way, shape, or form. So it just, it, you know, it was a bit of a bandwagon there. And bandwagons come, and I think we

Deena Zenyk  36:31  
should stop, though, and acknowledge that we have made progress. So we've, we're ahead of the days where it was me, for sure. Hey, I want to try this brand new thing with someone. Let me take a chance. Right, I think it is considered mainstream in the sense of yes, everyone, every leader does believe there should be some customer programs. I think it's the amount of investment and emphasis and spotlight and resourcing that we're still seeing it's more of a check we have those but we are we are not seeing as many leaders say this is a very strategic part of how we go to business right we are starting to see some of those leaders as they grow up maybe from being practitioners like we have been into those leadership roles, that's going to take time, so we will see some of that in the future. I'm positive, but I think part of it is just still going back to we haven't fully defined the impact of customer advocacy, we haven't fully figured out how to measure it, and our scope was very narrow, and it's time to expand that scope.

Host  37:43  
And now, Liz and Dean, are you talking about the future? It's very exciting, and I love the vision. Have you seen, and maybe not, like, can you give me, can you give us examples or organizations where you saw it already being adopted, implemented, or maybe parts of it? Right? Like, because I don't, I mean, I've seen in your vocals you have bits here, bits there, like you mentioned some of the companies, like Gong, like there are you. I didn't see a company which, which kind of is fulfilling your vision entirely, but there are bits and pieces. So, can you talk to us a little bit about that, and what's the exciting part about it?

Liz Richardson  38:22  
Yeah, if you are that company listening on this call, and you are doing all of this, please contact me. That's what I always say. Please contact me. I want to see examples of how you are doing this. It is so challenging. We are very excited to see some people in that, or in the business, some forward-thinking individuals, some of who are our clients, which were so excited about saying, "Yes, I get it, let's go forward and do this piece by piece by piece, because it's extremely hard. For instance, instead of part of the beauty of having a siloed program was I spit it up, I design it, I spit it up, I launch it, I bring my customers into it, I own it, I control it, and I can kind of do with it what I want. So I have autonomy with that program. When you think about building what we call customer engagement workflow, so lifecycle advocacy across the entire customer journey. Hey, you customer advocacy professional, you don't own the customer journey. That's one thing we know for sure. You don't own that very vague, maybe. Who owns it? Maybe CS owns it, but there's a piece probably everybody owns. And so now, instead of being able to spin up something very quickly that you have autonomy over, you're actually having to do the work of extreme internal buy-in, where you have to collaborate with all these other internal stakeholders who might own those pieces of the journey or those pieces of milestones, and then we won't even get started on the technology that the customer journey touches as they interact. With all these different platforms that we now have up and running, so while we do see some people going forward and saying, I am bought into this concept, I love this idea, I see the value, and then we do have a couple customers who are putting us stakes in the sand and saying, okay, one by one by one, let's figure out how we can automate advocacy across the customer journey, whether that's nurture or activation. We don't have any grand examples of, okay, this is the company who's leading the way with lifecycle advocacy. I think we had some of that eventually with advocacy programming, where you got these really big advocacy program brands like Cisco Insiders or like Marketo Nation, those were really exciting to see. Now we're waiting for that organization who has that beautiful infographic that shows across the customer journey all the advocacy touch points, and I think it's complicated because you know you're not the only one who owns even advocacy, and that that where it gets really interesting, right? CS might have targets around customer advocacy, they might have some nurture plays already in place, or they might be using tooling that you might be needing to look at to play in their area, so it's, it's, it's a lot to figure out. You have to start small, and we'll get there. Are a couple companies we can, you know, give a shout out. They're doing some work around that. We know, like you mentioned, Gong Gong has continued to do work around life cycle advocacy. So Jane Mu over there has a vision for that and is fully bought into that idea, and we have Heather from Out Systems. She's also looking at life cycle advocacy, and just in general, we do hear people saying, I get it, it makes sense, but I'm not really sure how to go about this, or how to start. I'm going to meet so many blockers along the way.

Host  41:59  
Yeah, I mean, it has been like people have been talking within the community about livestock advocacy a lot since, since last year. It is a whole trendy topic. I think everybody is trying to figure it out. So, thank you for putting it out there, and thank you for like making people just start looking into the direction, and even seeing, like, hey, that's our north star. What if that's our north star. Let's try to figure out how to get there, and if you have ideas, please share with us. If you know of a company who's doing bits and pieces, let's connect and let's learn. Let's share. This was this is what I love about the community, and Dina, you had something to say to this as well, right?

Liz Richardson  42:38  
No, I'm just enjoying the conversation, I do think it's exciting, though. Like, you know, sometimes we get like, "Oh, it's so difficult, or "not getting the bind. I think, guys, we should be super excited, because it used to be like, "Here's my one slide on advocacy with my one user program, and, "Oh, it was so cool because I was using maybe inflated. Oh, my gosh, so cool. This is really neat. And then it was the evolution we saw with Advocacy 2.0 that we talked about. So we started, we call it at Captivate Advocacy Portfolios, right? Because now you have all these programs, we, we have identified that we have to have personalization in the types of programs we have to deliver the correct value to your target audience and to get their correct outcomes for your organization, so now we have portfolios, so then we got the slide right with all the different programs who they serve, and that was exciting, and now you can see like that slide is changing, and now you have all these programs, and underneath all of that, you've got lifecycle advocacy, this brand new thing, and who knows where it'll go, but you can see the methodology and the scope of customer advocacy is evolving and growing, and that's a really good thing, and it should be exciting for us to see, just challenging. How

Host  44:04  
excited are you about the PowerPoint presentation? Like this CEO involved all of the customer base touch. I love it. And you also mentioned that, okay, like we are practitioners, like, we should be owning that conversation, and maybe it's also our, like, it's like we should not be blaming, like, why we don't have a seat at the table, why we cannot communicate the value well yet, but, like, kind of move and shift the conversation and the mindset towards a much larger conversation, you know, which, which really like build the C suite we listen to readily and happily. I'm thinking about, like, what do you think are the like key criterias, or like what do we have to learn in order to be able in order. To be equipped to play the game, like to, you know, think bigger and play a bigger game, and I heard collaboration probably is one, like being able to have a strong internal buy-in, but what, what else do you think is there between us, which we have to have in order to evolve into lifecycle boxing I

Deena Zenyk  45:22  
think a big part of it, Liz, I'm sure you will agree, is that customer advocacy professionals have to get more savvy with tooling. Just being an administrator of a customer advocacy platform, I mean, for me that was a big lift to move into that kind of tooling, but now it's not just understanding the tools and the capabilities of your Advo stack, all of the tools that are available, but how do these tools connect and what tools are available to help you connect those tools? There are some great tools that are available to help you connect those tools, so that you're not going kind of one by one by one, but it is getting more well versed in the advo stack, becoming more technical in your role, without becoming, you know, you know, there's no, there's no expectation for customer advocacy people at this point to become, you know, engineer level savvy with tools, but you do need to understand what tools are available, what do those tools do? What are their capabilities? How do they connect? In every organization, there are tools that can be a part of an advo stack, but maybe just aren't being used in that way yet. And understanding that would be a great exercise for anyone listening. If you're thinking that this sounds like something that you may want to investigate. Start by just understanding what tools are available inside your organization, and where does the data live in your work?

Liz Richardson  46:52  
I was waiting for the magic word "data" which

Deena Zenyk  46:55  
is the D word.

Liz Richardson  46:56  
Yeah, we're not very data savvy in customer marketing, we're growing, as you know, but we, because you have to, so in order to build personalized journeys across the customer milestones and interactions, it's, it's very data oriented, so you're going to have to start understanding where is that data coming from, what are the data points, and then you're going to have to start getting a little more comfortable with architecting how would I combine these data points in order to create a personalized interaction at a key point in time, and you have to be right now, since you still own advocacy programs, you're also going to have to remain a people person and a relational person, this creates a very difficult mindset. We don't typically see those two sides of the house living together in one person, which may mean that the advocacy practice just evolves, and you will have multiple roles. Maybe the life cycle advocacy role is a little bit more technical and data-oriented. Maybe someone who runs your cab remains a very, very advanced, creative, interactive, relational person. However, in some organizations, you're a one-person show, and you may have to try to be both for a time, and that can be very overwhelming. I think when we think of data points and listening and using tools that are bringing all those data points together. You're going to need help, and you're going to need internal people who are willing to coach you a little bit, teach you a little bit, and you'll have to do some of the teaching on your own, self, self-taught. But then also look for people in this space who are looking at different trends, such as let's say AI, since everyone's talking about AI and they're figuring out how AI impacts customer advocacy, right? Like, I think Lauren Turner, she's like really crazy about AI, and then how do I put that and make it useful? I think Shannon Howard did some stuff about it too, so find the people where there's certain aspects of how just the world is going and they're trying to become experts in that field, and then hone it down to, okay, and then how does it impact my role, and let them do some of the work for you, so you're not going to be an expert in all these different things, know your strengths, and then find people who their strength is elsewhere and learn from them.

Host  49:24  
I think it's important to have a vision, have really good understanding about it, but also surround themselves with people who can help, right? Whether it's agency or internal, like somebody who's really techie or specialized, or has done many customer journeys and doesn't have to learn from the scratch. Okay, great ladies. Thank you so much. It was so exciting. I really want to just finish with a huge, huge thank you. I love your passion, I love your vision. It's all very exciting. Thank you for coming up with these thought leadership theses, and I just have one. Ask question, like, if you had, and I know you run a store, so, so, if you had a mug or a T-shirt, and you kind of advertise lifecycle advocacy, what it would say, like, what's the tagline?

Liz Richardson  50:17  
Yeah, I think Deena, Deena will probably come up with a better one than me, and, and, yeah, we do have a store, which is hilarious. So, we do put things on shirts. We haven't put anything around lifecycle advocacy on a shirt or a mug yet. But I'll give mine, and I think Deena's will be a bit better. But, like, if I were just to go with the top of my head, it would probably say evolve or die, which is a common phrase we hear, right, of all her die, but it kind of feels like that right now about customer advocacy. We're either going to come out really strong and keep that creative, amazing energy and spirit, or we're just going to kind of go into the shadows, maybe become part of another function, and it won't go away, but we won't, we won't be the exciting industry that we have been for the last 10 years. So, I'd say evolve or die, but

Deena Zenyk  51:09  
yeah, I mean, I had a couple I was going to say, like, quick question, are your customers bored? But really, I think if I were to put something on a mug today related to this topic, it would be that advocacy happens everywhere. It really does. Your customers, whether they're at a high happy point in their journey, they're at a low point in their journey, whether they're in onboarding or at their 10th renewal, everyone has a bit of advocate in them, and your role as the advocacy practitioner is to identify that piece inside your customers and nurture it through to activation, so advocacy happens everywhere.

Liz Richardson  51:49  
I love that we should actually probably get both of those on a shirt, because we've said those phrases, but actually don't think we put them on a shirt yet.

Deena Zenyk  51:56  
Yeah, yeah, we should Yeah.

Host  52:03  
Amazing. Thank you so much. 

Deena Zenyk  52:05  
Thank you, Maria. 

Host  52:06  
We respect your time, but I really appreciated the conversation. As always, 

Deena Zenyk  52:11  
thanks for having us. We love chatting with you and the lovely team at Wings. And hopefully thanks for buying into it, Maria. Hopefully everyone else will buy into it as well.

Liz Richardson  52:21  
Thank you for always bringing the positivity, Maria, to the community. It's always noticed and always appreciated.

Host  52:29  
Thank you. Yeah, yeah, we would love to support it if it's a trending topic. You have a vision, like let's just put more. I think you, you, you started the fire, so let's just put more votes, so it can just go. Thank you.

Host  52:46  
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