Episode 3: Enabling your Customer Facing Teams
CSQA Program - Train them early. Train them often!
Hello to all my new subscribers! This week I’m going to cover how to…
Train your customer facing teams to share customer wins and send advocates over to Customer Marketing.
By the end of this post, you will be able to fully roll out a CSQA (Customer Success Qualified Advocate) program.
What is it?
CSQA Program is a process to train your Customer Success Managers, Account Managers, Account Executives, or any other customer facing department, on how to easily share customer wins and get spiffed for doing so.
Why is it important?
Have you ever been a CSM? It’s a tough job! They are insanely busy and most times have a lot of tough conversations. When they hear a win they are just so excited to not be hearing complaining that they often skip the celebration. Rolling out a formal process and tying it to a SPIFF, trains them to take action.
Basically, you want to train them so when they hear a customer win, their eyes light up with dollar signs, company recognition, bragging rights, whatever you can get approval for.
Where to start?
I’ve said this in my last post but if you are building a program for another department, you need to include them in the build and not assume your way is right for them.
I’d contact your CSM team lead and propose the following: (copy/paste into a doc) 👇
This program is for Customer Success Managers to nominate potential customer advocates to get inside the advocate program OR secure the case study. (Whatever CTA you want) CSMs must nominate a minimum of 3 advocates a month. We can either tie it to metrics or create a SPIFF.
Qualification Criteria (this varies):
Customers should be:
Happy Customer
Out of Onboarding
Seeing value
Innovative
Insert Usage Metric from Pendo or Amplitude
Insert Risk score or Customer Temperature
OR
Wants to be involved in some sort of *Advocacy Act
Define what an Advocacy act is 👇
*Advocacy Act = Sales reference, refer someone, interested in a Case Study, shoutout on Social Media, etc.
Process:
Identify Advocate based on criteria above.
Check SFDC to see if they are already an Advocate. (tell them where to find the field) If no then go to Step 3. If yes, proceed to Step 4
Enter them in Slack Channel called #[insert slack channel name] for tracking purposes OR click the check box field in SFDC [then you create an alert when checked.]
Send over templated email with the CTA to join the advocate program and cc [your name]
If the customer fill out the form on the webpage, then they are accepted.
Customer Marketing will then SPIFF you for the Advocacy Act they participate in.
There are tools like Catalyst and Gainsight as well. Build this process in whatever system your CSMs are in the most. The less friction the better. The process above works if you are a scrappy start up with no tools.
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Next up is the SPIFF doc! Jump on the CSMs weekly meeting or an all-hands to get them pumped up about sharing customer stories and securing the case study. Check it out below. Feel free to make a copy!
My only other tip is this IS NOT a one and done preso to the CSMs. This takes work to maintain excitement. When someone gets SPIFF’ed and follows the process, shout em out and create FOMO for the other CSMs who aren’t cashing in on free money. You got this!
If you have any questions or liked this post, hit the like or comment button 👆. If you want to share this newsletter with your friends, you can send them this link. I'd also shout 'boom-shak-laka' if you shared on LinkedIn. See you next week!