How Reference Programs Drive Customer-Driven Cultures

One benefit of customer reference programs I've seen over the years is that often when you get the right person managing your reference programs it typically will drive a customer-driven culture. One of the ways this happens is that a company that is willing to invest in a customer reference program is usually one that cares about their customers. One a reference program gets started typically it will either drive more customer programs, influence employees to be more customer friendly or both! Here are some ways I've seen reference programs drive a customer reference culture:

• Communication - For many companies, sadly the only time they actually communicate with a customer is when the sales rep asks for a renewal. I worked at one company when a customer said I was the first person to reach out to him in eight months. When I hear stories like this I am astounded. Have we become such a digital world that we think we need to only communicate with customers over email and find out their feedback only through online surveys? Customer Reference Programs give you the opportunity to talk to a customer and to build a relationship with them!
• Feedback - This is another area where I think most companies fall short. It's estimated that less than 20% of companies do customer surveys and probably half or less of those follow-up on the results! Even more important, I wonder how many of them include the Net Promoter questions which to me are the most important questions to include! When you have a reference program, customers provide positive and negative feedback through their conversations with the reference manager and hopefully it gets forwarded to the right person for follow-up! I love Oracle's customer organization which has the customer reference program and feedback team in the same organization! That's brilliant!
• Customer Satisfaction - One of the goals of a reference program is to find happy customers therefore a reference manager is very driven to want more happy customers. Through their hunting for happy reference customers, they will often come across processes that are broken and opporunities to deepend relationships with customers. Often this will spread across the organization when the reference manager is passionate about creating more happy customers!
• Customer Focus - According to one of my favorite books, Discipline of Market Leaders, companies need to focus on "one value discipline--customer intimacy, product leadership, or operational excellence." When you have a reference manager who drives customer focus for their reference program often this will permeate throughout the organization.