Why You Need to Implement a Customer Champion Program!!

00:00 Hello, my customer success friends. We read Egypt's here for CSM practice. Thank you so much for joining me today. And if you're listening to this podcast, probably you have customer success team or want to set up one and one of the things that we do in this podcast is we always bring you the most important
00:17 things that you should be including in your customer success practice. And today I have one framework that you might want to consider if you want to do one, engage your clients or improve the engagement with certain clients, improve your proc roadmap.
00:33 So any bet that you make on the roadmap is actually going to be a big hit and thirdly increase referrals to your sales.
00:40 And so today I invited Andrea Galvez, she received an honorable mention in the customer success excellence award for 2023. And that's a very distinguished nomination because let me tell you there's hundreds of nominees every year.
00:57 And I'm very excited to have her on today's show to share with you how to establish a shampoo program. Why should you think about that?
01:07 How should you establish it? Who should you be inviting? She's going to spill the beans, allow the foundation so that you can set up one for your own.
01:15 Andrea, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you. I'm excited to be here. The reason I Pulled you into the podcast is because actually read your nomination.
01:25 It was absolutely fantastic and I think one of the things that attracted me to bringing in as a guest is the phenomenal results you got in terms of reducing churn for your company.
01:38 So maybe you can start with 20, 30 seconds. Just tell us a little bit about where do you work right now?
01:44 What kind of clients do you help with? Right now, I'm BTA Climate Success at Lion Eye, set AI. We're an all-in-one AI-driven platform for marketers to run their influencer marketing strategies.
01:57 But I'm relatively new at Lion Eye's. I prior to that ran CS at the Financial Health Network, which works with Fortune 500 Financial Institutions and Employers to create financial wealth.
02:08 Can you tell me a little bit about your CSM team? How many team members do you have? We actually are quite large for how early we are.
02:17 We're a nine people team today, and we hope to grow. So we have the SMs and then HRS and Tavice S coordinator, which is directly assigned to their client load, which is kind of unique, but works for us.
02:31 We have a dedicated onboarding strategist. And then we have two kind of cross departmental people want to in customer insights and one in operations.
02:40 That I claim as part of the team and I think they would see. What is those CSM to customer ratio?
02:47 Yeah, right now we're about 25 customers to CSM. So relatively higher touch. Yeah, we're going to talk about the champion program.
02:56 Will you say that those work well for higher touch strategic accounts or all types of businesses, even those that have like a thousands of customers and it's mainly product lead.
03:08 What do you think? So the customer championship program which is for any size company and in fact, I think it might be even more important for product led growth, champion program.
03:18 What kind of problems does it end up solving for anybody that wants to implement it? I would call on business problems, more than just CS team problems, but all the trickles down into the CS responsibilities.
03:33 So this is going to keep engaged customers. It's going to reward your customers who are like the most excited about your platform.
03:42 It's going to improve your product. So if we think about our role in CS of being the voice of the customer, this takes that to like a formalized level, and then it helps sales too.
03:56 If you're doing it right, your championship program is referring new customers, so your sales colleagues are going to love it if it's written correctly.
04:04 So if anybody here wants to increase customer engagement and referrals, this is the program to start you also said improved product to make it more formal Can you maybe like expand just like in seconds like what does that mean yeah a lot of us I feel like where this mantle Of the voice of the customer
04:23 within the organization. So if you are developing strong ties internally with your head of tech or ahead of products but are struggling to quantify or put color around the customer feedback that you're delivering to them.
04:40 A championship program can formalize that. There's a lot of strategies that you can choose to take in a championship program.
04:47 But one way it could look would be more like regular focus groups with your customers, which your product team is going to love if they're not already doing that.
04:55 Who typically in the organization starts a champion program? Is it CS or is it typically CS or marketing? So if you have a chief customer officer, I think this is probably sits there.
05:06 I have seen it shared across teams. I think that the marketing team probably has a set of personas which they maybe have validated.
05:17 They probably have a marketing research function, which they're going out and getting new panels for. But I believe it should be owned by this ES team.
05:26 And this is because we're closest to our customers every day. So we know who should be on it and we also know how to manage that from a relationship basis instead of a transactional basis.
05:39 So that means the results of the program can might be embedded in the organization versus like project basis. I think everybody's curious what are like the three to five or elements of a good solid champion program.
05:54 So you would have set of requirements for what is going to be a good customer to join the program and set of expectations that they understand and sign on.
06:06 So think about this as a customer contract that they're signing. You're gonna have a way to reward them and that is gonna be different depending on what your customers like and what industry you're in.
06:16 And then you're gonna have engagement across the organization. So this is the feeding or the place where your CEO is going to want to pop in and like check hands and talk to customers.
06:27 So high level executives are expected to be involved in this champion program. It sounds a lot like a cab means customer advisory board.
06:35 Is that different? It is different. And here's how I see it as being different. The customer advisory board typically gives you feedback on your product.
06:44 But what is different for a championship program as they're giving you feedback on the entire experience and they are actively going out and telling people about it for you.
06:56 So they become an extension of your team and your organization. This is the part where they could be selling. They could be referring that reward program could be based on how many people they bring in to the company.
07:09 But it might just be based on the feedback they give you. So I think it has more flexibility. What kind of rewards do you give them?
07:16 Is this like high level executives or do you bring like anybody to the champion program? It's on your goals, I don't know, organization.
07:23 They have to have the time to dedicate it to it. So I have not had this B2 per successful with like the C-suite levels, but certainly your VP product level colleagues on the other side.
07:37 This would be great for them. It needs to be a decision maker though because otherwise you're going get feedback from people that won't be able to drive your business.
07:47 So maybe not the C-suite for your customers account, but the level below. So still an decision maker, maybe an engagement lead, or an initiative lead, but not like the admin and the end users.
08:00 These are high-level people still. What kind of rewards are you giving them? And when is it after every meeting? Is it after every referral?
08:09 So some of the things are strongest rewards or incentives for programs like this is visibility. So the way that you're promoting them, you're giving them first look into your products and inviting them on podcasts, inviting them to actually kind of be the voice of your organization to their communities
08:28 . It helps them bring value to their community if you align it correctly. If your company and your product actually matters for what they do or what they're interested in.
08:36 But you want to give them tangible things too. So if you have user conferences, you should give them free tickets to that, you should give them a set of tickets that they can share with their friends.
08:47 You should absolutely consider discounting the products that they are purchasing at a certain level. Especially if there are parts of it that they're actively involved in creating, they're going to feel a lot of ownership over that.
09:01 We have considered equity stakes as a reward, but that gets into more like the advisor board level. I mean, there's lots of overlap.
09:12 You can have both in your organization, but you would also just have one or the other. Okay, so what I'm hearing is is that the rewards are not a t-shirt.
09:20 They're really just like, okay, let me get you access even to the community. So either by attending my events, speaking at my events or promoting you on my social media and like elevating your interpersonal brand or your own brand.
09:37 Yeah, absolutely. People like merch, but they're not going to sign in and give you the amount of time required to be a part of this for a t-shirt.
09:45 Alright, how many people do I need in my champion program? I like to have at least 12 and here's why you want it to be diverse.
09:53 You want a good subset of your customers in the program, especially the segments that you're wanting to grow. You're going to want all kinds of diversity.
10:02 You're going to want geographic diversity. You're going to want persona diversity, if you're selling to multiple personas, you want them all represented, and then you're going to want demographic diversity.
10:13 You do not want a program of just all purple people. So you need at least while to capture all of that, but I mean I've seen them get as large as 30 to 40 people that becomes a little unwieldy.
10:28 So I recommend between 15 and 20 people. So you need the CEOs involvement, you need to think about How do you reward them in a manner that helps their personal brand and connections in the industry?
10:41 Those are two things to include. We talked about how many. What are a few more elements in a very solid mature champion program that you would recommend anybody to consider when they're setting one up?
10:53 The pitfalls of what will make this not be successful, as if you don't put enough time into it. So you're going to need to dedicate the executive who's running it's time, but also every CSM is going to need to know about it, know what's on the agenda, understand what their key contact is contributing
11:14 . So there's coordination internally that you're going to need to do. And then, like I said, executive time is precious. If you're ready to do this, you're going to want to make sure you account for the amount of time you take.
11:25 What kind of timing are we looking at? How often did you end up meeting with a champion program or how many meetings did you set up for them and what did you discuss in them, I guess.
11:34 I usually do these four times a year at a minimum and then those meetings are typically an hour to an hour and a half.
11:44 If you do have user community meetups or conferences depending on how large your organization is, I would co-skudge all these to be in-person those at this and make sure you give them all a ticket to come for free.
11:59 So that one can be a little bit longer and you could create some networking time, which would be another benefit of joining the program.
12:07 And you're going to want to include your executive who's running at your CEO and if you're chief customer officer or chief experience officer isn't running at them, they'll want to be there as well.
12:19 And then you'll invite others across your organization as a genoty topics come up. What's very cool about this is what's on a agenda is up to your company.
12:29 What is important to you? What is the problem? If you are struggling with churn, bring that to this group. If you're thinking about your roadmap and when I get that squared away, and maybe you do have an advisory board, this would be a second set of qualifications for those that you're going to take.
12:47 Or if you're just like going, you're ready. Like your engine is going, and what you need is more customers or more users, taking that to this committee and asking them to help you solve that.
12:58 So they are basically my external group to brainstorm on whatever is the priority for me in fixing things in my company or opportunities that I want to seize.
13:09 For the company and I just want to validate ideas or get some more ideas that maybe I'm not even considering.
13:15 Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so then I'll gather them up for an hour and a half and it's on site. I can do even a half a day with multiple stakeholders from my own company presenting things from their vernacular.
13:26 It does sound a lot like a client advisory board. I will say, except for maybe the stakeholders are just a little bit different.
13:33 Yes. Yeah. The way that I think about it or the difference here is the publicness of it and the way that they're going out and championing your organization.
13:44 So how are you encouraging that facilitating that? I think advisory boards often will like put it on their logo. And when you tell them like, hey, go share, look at the logo on their LinkedIn.
13:57 Or if you like are directive, like go share. But if you're doing your championship program, right? Like these people are an extension of your team.
14:05 And they feel invested in it as well. So at the end of every meeting, And do you actually ask them proactively reminding them to refer your company to other executives that they might know in the industry?
14:19 Do you remind them of that? That's one. And I guess because you said it improves sales referrals, what do you do proactively with this group to help and integrate referrals?
14:32 You can do it two ways. Why don't you make it just a kind of norm that people are expected to do this?
14:39 Just a practice that you reinforce, and you can send them referral forms, and you could ask them regularly, like, hey, who was in your radar that you think would be good to test this new feature, etc.
14:52 Or you could write it explicitly in the beginning of the contract that you build with them and the expectations for participation.
15:00 So, you could say, hey, if you're a part of this championship program, our expectation is that you refer to customer support.
15:08 Social media wise, you said they would put on LinkedIn, they would put their part of your a champion program or advisory board.
15:15 And then you said it's way more public. So is that the aspect that's public about it or do you also send them like social media post examples to actually promote things?
15:25 100% you should be doing this. So if you have a release, you should be feeding them with Twitter to be the LinkedIn copy for them to just copy in pace, you should absolutely be promoting any webinars, events like use them as an additional marketing channel for your organization, anything that you would
15:46 think, oh, I would put this on my social, you should be also sending it out to your advisory group, for example, like a social media post or something else.
15:57 Yeah, like a social media post or you should be inviting into your webinars that you're a part of and promoting them that way, if I were to set up a champion program, how do I pick the right people to participate like what's the wrong person to invite?
16:13 Some people will say, you want to get people who are like super engaged and maybe are like happy, but I would say this is the perfect place for your problem children, your problem clients who just won't stop complaining.
16:28 For whatever reason they don't turn, This is the place for them. They have some reason committed to your product and you want to turn that into a Productive relationship, so this is a great place for them.
16:40 You also don't want everybody to just be in agreement So you'll want to get a lot of different diversity, but outspoken.
16:48 Yes, it's super important So basically peak vocal opinionated people regardless whether they're happy with you or not Exactly. Yeah, you want opinions otherwise why aren't you even inviting them right?
16:58 And then if you just invited people who like you, it would probably be a big waste of everybody's time. And you wouldn't be making the right choices.
17:05 I think another big difference in my mind, from an advisory board and a championship program, is that they'll also weigh in on things like your overall customer experience, not just your product roadmap.
17:17 So they might give Drunk Bee back and I've had this happen before on your service level in terms of your CS team, Hey, I want more hair.
17:26 I want less. I'm not getting the expertise I need. And then you could bring them in to train like as a closet training.
17:32 That would be another interesting way to engage in a championship program or her an advisory for the family you want to call it and how you want to approach it.
17:40 Are there any tools that you're using to communicate with them? Do you set up a Slack channel for all of them?
17:45 Or do you just email them one by one when you want to invite them to the next call? I'm actually recreating this with my new organization.
17:53 My old organization, we had a user interface so they could talk to each other. They are me who talks to them that way.
18:00 We already have that built into your products, like a login or a way to have group form chatting. I think that would be perfect.
18:08 If not, I mean, Slack is a great substitute for that. Slack linked in group, but you do have some sort of a group channel.
18:16 Yeah, you want to encourage them to keep in contact in between the meetings, because since the community, yeah, absolutely. All right, everyone, if you watch this video, you learn something new, you got inspired, give this video a like, and with that Andrea, thank you so much.
18:35 Thank you so much. It was super fun. Yeah, like guys, and I'll see you at the next episode.