Sponsored by:
Produced by:
Janet Jaiswal
Advisor and Former VP Global Marketing
Unlocking Customer Value: The Role of Relationships and Advocacy in a World of Changing Consumer Behaviour and Generative AI
About Janet Jaiswal
Janet Jaiswal is an accomplished B2B marketing leader with over 20 years of experience advising startups to global enterprises in the technology and SaaS industries. She has held senior roles encompassing marketing strategy, positioning, messaging, campaigns and sales enablement at eBay, PayPal, IBM, Infosys and other leading brands. Most recently, Janet led global marketing for SaaS provider CloudBeds. She currently advises multiple companies, applying expertise gained from marketing to SMBs through large enterprises.
How are you evolving your marketing strategies to resonate with today's increasingly connected consumers?
The pervasive use of mobile devices and rise of social media have fundamentally shifted consumer expectations. People now require highly personalized, on-demand engagement on their own terms through technology. We often see customers initiate an application online, get a mobile alert to complete it, then come into a physical store to finish the process in-person. They expect to seamlessly pick up where they left off across channels and touchpoints. To meet these omnichannel expectations for instant convenience, we have invested substantially in advanced analytics, personalization engines, integrated systems and other capabilities. For example, we apply analytics to websites, apps and emails to deliver tailored content and offers to each customer. Our integrated CRM enables in-store employees to immediately access a shopper's full cross-channel history and preferences, allowing them to provide customized assistance. We also offer 24/7 social media support and AI-powered chatbots to be responsive anywhere, anytime.
What techniques have you found most effective for actively eliciting customer feedback?
Rather than waiting passively for feedback, we proactively nurture an online community where customers can engage with peers, share insights, and provide suggestions or concerns. We also carefully curate annual Customer Advisory Boards, strategically selecting key accounts to preview new initiatives, solicit reactions, and gather honest input before any major launch. This helps ensure changes will be well-received by the broader customer base. Maintaining an open, ongoing dialogue fosters trust, transparency and true advocacy. And given the high cost of acquiring new customers versus retaining existing ones, investing in understanding and engaging customers ultimately provides measurable ROI. For instance, our research indicates engaged community members show 3x higher renewal rates and make 39% more repeat purchases than non-active customers. Allowing customer voices to directly inform planning is invaluable.
How do you leverage tiered customer categories to focus resources on your most valuable accounts?
With finite resources and budgets, we utilize tiered categories to appropriately align service levels and relationship management with each customer's strategic importance and loyalty. Key factors like annual contract value, product usage and engagement, deal size, community influence and longevity help determine tiers. Our top-tier accounts receive white-glove concierge service, guaranteed faster response times and personalized rewards or gifts for their enduring loyalty. Mid-tier customers benefit from high-touch onboarding, regular surveys, executive check-ins and proactive account reviews. Lower-tier accounts initially rely more on efficient self-service resources and automated nurturing until they demonstrate greater potential value. This stratified approach enables us to concentrate limited resources where they will have the greatest revenue and relationship impact.
What unique challenges exist in cultivating brand advocacy among B2B customers?
Building genuine B2B customer advocacy requires much more time earning trust, and restraint before ever asking for endorsements, compared to typical B2C scenarios. For major enterprise accounts, it realistically takes 6-9 months of consistent delivery and collaboration to prove our own trustworthiness and establish a true partnership mindset. Until then, we remain focused on fully understanding those accounts' goals, pain points and defining success. Even once loyal, engaged advocates emerge, they may face tight corporate policies limiting their ability to provide public endorsements or serve as references. In those cases, we pursue anonymized testimonials and include proper disclaimers to comply with any restrictions. But a strong public endorsement from a widely recognized B2B brand really cuts through the promotional noise, so while rare and challenging, B2B advocacy carries great influence when done right. We don't take shortcuts or rush the process - authentic advocacy is earned slowly over time through intentional, cultivated relationships.
How do you quantify the success and impact of your customer advocacy programs?
We utilize a combination of program-specific metrics and downstream business impact measures. For instance, we closely monitor community platform engagement, customer reference signups, Net Promoter Scores and third-party review ratings for products and services. But we also track indicators tied to financial performance, like customer renewal and retention rates, share of wallet gains from increased spend, and growth in average order values. At the relationship level, we analyze longitudinal customer satisfaction and NPS trends over time. The key is establishing clear baselines before implementing any advocacy-building efforts, then comparing post-implementation results to quantify the lift and impact. While not every positive outcome is directly attributable to advocacy alone, the correlation is quite evident. Having an agreed framework to connect advocacy efforts with business performance is critical.
What role can AI innovations like chatbots play in the future of customer engagement?
AI holds tremendous promise for transforming customer experiences, but also risks if not thoughtfully implemented with human oversight. Chatbots now allow us to offer 24/7 assistance for common inquiries at much greater scale than previously feasible. However, they clearly lack human judgment - we always have a live person reviewing bot interactions before any sensitive actions are taken. AI will never fully replace the need for authentic human relationships, but rather should aim to augment them. As the technology matures, AI agents will likely handle increasingly complex customer engagements. This will better enable human staff to focus on building rapport, trust and loyalty with our most strategic accounts. With diligent governance and care, I believe AI can pave the way for strengthened advocacy across all customer tiers. The future is certainly bright, but also one we must guide carefully.
