Quick summary: Learn how to build a customer advocacy program using lifecycle moments, readiness signals, and simple metrics that prove impact and avoid fatigue.
Every customer leader knows the value of customer advocacy. Most, however, struggle with three persistent challenges.
First, advocacy asks feel additive, not embedded. It shows up as “one more ask,” rather than a natural extension of the customer journey.
Second, the impact is hard to quantify. Advocacy influences pipeline, retention, and growth, but rarely shows up alongside ARR or health scores.
Finally, the timing is inconsistent. CSMs either ask too early, too late, or without enough relationship equity, leading to fatigue or missed opportunity.
The result is that advocacy happens, but mostly by accident. Meanwhile, customer success rarely gets credit for the value it creates, despite CSMs doing the hard work of generating it. That’s the gap that Liz Richardson, CRO at Captivate Collective, and Bianca Del Vecchio, Managing Consultant at Captivate Collective, aim to address with their Lifecycle Advocacy framework.
Build a streamlined customer advocacy program.
Lifecycle Advocacy reframes advocacy as a journey-based program, not a series of one-off requests.By identifying high-impact moments across the lifecycle, intentionally nurturing customers before making asks, and using signals (including AI-driven ones) to surface the right opportunities at the right time, you can turn advocacy into a repeatable workflow that increases account value and expands your strategic influence.
In our most recent webinar, Liz and Bianca walked us through where advocacy breaks down, what actually works in practice, and how CS teams can operationalize advocacy without adding unnecessary burden. Get to know the Lifecycle Advocacy framework and why it works in our video here—then read on for our top three tips from the session.
1: CS teams already do great advocacy work, but abdicate the credit.
CS teams are creating advocates every day through adoption wins, relationship-building, and milestone moments, says Liz. The missed opportunity is that they’re failing to intentionally design, measure, and showcase it as part of their remit.
Start by inventorying the advocacy actions already happening today: references, reviews, case studies, speaking opportunities, peer support, or roadmap feedback. Then, look at where those actions show up (or don’t) in CS dashboards, QBRs, or performance conversations.
While you should view advocacy as a partnership with your marketing team, it’s essential to track your activities and outcomes so you can quantify and defend your team’s contribution.
It’s also a big team motivator, Bianca points out. When advocacy metrics show up on your performance dashboards, behaviors change. Advocacy stops being a favor and becomes part of the role.
2: Amazing advocacy opportunities hide in plain sight.
Onboarding milestones, first value achieved, expansions, and renewals are natural advocacy moments that often get ignored.
Map your customer journey the way it was shown in the webinar (land, adopt, expand, renew). Then identify one or two moments where customers are already seeing success. Decide whether that moment is best suited for discovery, nurture, or activation, and document it as an “opportune moment” in your CS playbooks.
Renewal is an especially overlooked advocacy window, says Liz. Instead of treating it as an administrative checkpoint, treat it as a relationship milestone. Ask whether your customer would like to share feedback, take a speaking opportunity, or participate in advocacy activities tied to their goals (not yours). Look at your renewals process as a whole to find the moment where goodwill is highest, so you can make this ask repeatably.
3: Use signals, tools and nurture to time your asks, not guesswork.
Liz and Bianca showed us how a CSP like ChurnZero can monitor advocacy signals such as sentiment, adoption spikes, product usage, and engagement data to flag advocacy-ready customers. AI agents like ChurnZero AI’s Herald can also help you surface rising advocates and reference-ready accounts, making timing more intentional and less manual.
While there’s no fixed limit to how often you can ask customers, Liz says, you do need to ensure you’re adding value beforehand and afterward.
“You can’t just start pulling from your customers’ goodwill,” she says. “You have to invest in it.”
After every advocacy action, document how the relationship is replenished. Liz cites specific examples: public recognition, executive thank-you notes, gifts, or even writing to the customer’s manager to highlight their impact. Build this into playbooks so nurture is intentional, not accidental.
Finally, show how advocacy changes the value of accounts.
A small account that takes ten reference calls, influences pipeline, or speaks publicly can be more valuable than a large account that quietly renews. “That account’s value starts to move off the charts, when you look beyond just the ARR,” says Liz.
That’s whyit’s worth pushing your organization to measure account value holistically, factoring in advocacy-related signals: references completed, referrals provided, reviews written, event participation, or roadmap input.
