The final Advocacy Phase is where you have a chance to ask the customer to give back to you. You’ve helped the customer adopt their product, access all the value your brand offers, and maximize their purchase further. Now you can ask for their review, feedback, or referral.
There’s nothing more important than a great referral. Every satisfied customer has a tribe of friends and family with like-minded interests that can be influenced your way. However, if you ask for a product review or referral before you’ve gone through the first three post-purchase phases, you’ll waste your request and won’t get another opportunity.
I would say a majority of brands ask for a review or try to upsell a customer before they even have a chance to get the product delivered or onboarded! And ever noticed how, after checkout, you get a pop-up that says refer a friend? Why would anyone refer a friend before they know how the purchase experience goes? Quite a presumptuous, ridiculous, and ill-timed request.
Most brands assume that the entire Advocacy Phase revolves around leaving a product review, but it clearly goes deeper than that. For every product review you actually receive, there are 10x more people behind the scenes who will talk to friends and family about your brand and products.
The key is to not ask for it too quickly. The Advocacy Phase is the last phase in the Post-Purchase Hourglass because it is the culmination of a great customer experience. If you’ve excelled in the first three phases, then you can feel confident that the Adoption Phase will yield personalized and rewarding reviews!
Some examples of the advocacy requests we had in the Adoption Phase included:
- Product Review
- Google & Facebook Review
- Questions & Answers requests
- Hashtags with pictures of the product in use
- Net Promoter Score survey
A customer advocate is the highest level of customer satisfaction. Don’t squander it by asking too early.