Building a Customer Advocacy Program for Enterprise Clients: Survey, Case Studies, and Engagement Tips

Nicole Gardner · 2026-04-23T16:07:12.424Z

Hey y'all! 👋 Fairly new to the customer marketing space but diving in headfirst...I'm currently building out a customer advocacy program at Tavily (https://www.tavily.com/) (we're a lil over a year old so still finding our footing!). My game plan is survey customers to see who's happy → rope in the fans for case studies → and offer 1:1 workshops to anyone who had a not-so-great experience. Enterprise is our focus, so I'm already bracing for the exec survey response rate struggle 😅 Would love any advice on: - Actually getting enterprise execs to fill out a survey - How to ask for a case study without it feeling like a big ask - Where to even start when building this from scratch Any wisdom from people who've done this before is SO appreciated! ❤️

Building a Customer Advocacy Program for Enterprise Clients: Survey, Case Studies, and Engagement Tips | CMAweekly Customer Marketing and Advocacy Slack

11 comments

· Sorted by Oldest

Jaz Cuevas
·
·
Hi Nicole! First of all congratulations - the customer marketing space is so much fun and it's exciting to be building out a new program for a company like Tavily! A few questions for you: What tool are you currently using for surveys? Are you working closely with CS and sales on this survey?
🙌1
Abigail Benson
·
·
Congrats Nicole! ENT is NOTORIOUUUUUS for being unresponsive. I have honestly never had an easy time getting them to opt in. Does it HAVE to be Exec level? Can you get buy in from a different champion internally? Brief feedback here is that a case study is a really big first ask. I'd think of how you're warming them up to be an advocate before throwing that their way!
1
🙌1
Nicole Gardner
·
·
Jaz Cuevas ahh thank you! Excited to get started 🙂 And I've found fellow customer marketers love sharing what works vs. what doesn't 🙏
no tools (yet) - do you think its absolutely necessary to get started?
I put together a google form and we planned to have CS reach out directly to their champions
Abigail Benson appreciate the honesty here 😂 I was thinking of offering to donate to a charity of their choice in exhange for a review. I don't have an advocacy program set in stone yet but I've been doing extensive research lol. If you have a framework for the SaaS space...I'm all ears!!
Jaz Cuevas
·
·
Nicole Gardner UserEvidence is an amazing tool to gather surveys! It’s super easy to use and we've had great success with getting responses through their surveys. Another thing is utilizing CS (like you mentioned) to pull a list of happy customers to go out to for the survey. That way you have a target list to go out to.
❤️1
Sandra Grauschopf
·
·
Does your CS team record their calls? If so, you can ask them to give you a heads up when a customer tells them something that worked really well. You can then take the transcript of the calls and build it into a customer story, then reach out to the customer and ask if they'd mind if you published it. That's a super low lift for them. Depending on your customers, you can also package telling their story in a way that puts them in a good light. For example, you could boost the LinkedIn posts that they make about the customer story, which gives them a lot of brand exposure for no cost and little effort. And you make sure the stories are about them doing something awesome (with you) instead of all about you.
❤️1
Elisabeth Catuogno
·
·
Congrats on the new role! As people have been saying, execs are tough and I would encourage you to have a Plan B and even a Plan C if you don’t get the kind of response rate that would be significant for you. I would suggest doing an internal triage with CS first to see if you can identify your probable satisfied customers in advance, and consider trying to get 1:1 calls with those execs rather than send them a survey. Cozying up to their EAs can be helpful for that. If you can position these calls in a way that resonates to them, I think you’re likely to get better feedback than you would on a survey. Your middle and lower tiers of potentially less satisfied customers are great for surveys because they have the freedom to be more honest than they might be face to face, and of course if they’re less satisfied they’re less likely to get on a call. But again, getting execs to respond in these cases (especially if they’re not your primary users) is challenging. I would discourage requesting reviews until you have a sense who your potential raving fans are though, nothing worse then asking people and then getting surprised by what they say 😬 Good luck!
❤️
Jenni Adair
·
·
I second what Jaz Cuevassays about UserEvidence. I implemented them at my last company and got results as soon as I sent the first survey. They are my go to tool now so check them out if you can. Survey responses can help all teams with customer proof and can be sent throughout the customer lifecycle. It's also a great way to get reviews trickling in and find customers who want to do all kinds of advocacy including case studies. I'd love to share my experience with them and customer advocacy in general if you'd ever like to chat.
❤️1
Claire Grove
·
·
Congratulations on your new role! Definitely have a think about what your value proposition should be in reaching out to anyone to support your customer advocacy efforts. What's your win/win? For example, what are the Exec care-abouts for the roles you're reaching out to? It may be creating materials for public use that they can also use/adapt for internal comms or user adoption. It may be showing their fiscal responsibility in adopting solutions that are driving measurable ROI (if they have shareholders) etc. etc. All helps in positioning the benefit to them if they work with you on case studies and other activities. If you're not getting much of a response from surveys, it's also worth thinking about behavioural signals plus real engagement, so you’re reaching out at the right moment versus sending surveys out 'blind'. This will help you identify moments of value instead of just 'happy customers' (e.g., expansion, big win, renewal, standout usage), which often helps with timing of requests. Always happy to chat through if that's helpful. I've been in customer advocacy for more years than I care to admit, and learned a lot from the mistakes I've made along the way! 🤣
Nicole Gardner
·
·
Sandra Grauschopf love love love the CS transcript idea! So basically write the use case and ask them for approval...brilliant!!
👍1
Nicole Gardner
·
·
All such great feedback, thank you all so so much!! 🤞
Sandra Grauschopf
·
·
Nicole Gardner I'm just starting to work on that tactic for my own company!

Jaz Cuevas
·
·
Hi Nicole! First of all congratulations - the customer marketing space is so much fun and it's exciting to be building out a new program for a company like Tavily! A few questions for you: What tool are you currently using for surveys? Are you working closely with CS and sales on this survey?
🙌1
Abigail Benson
·
·
Congrats Nicole! ENT is NOTORIOUUUUUS for being unresponsive. I have honestly never had an easy time getting them to opt in. Does it HAVE to be Exec level? Can you get buy in from a different champion internally? Brief feedback here is that a case study is a really big first ask. I'd think of how you're warming them up to be an advocate before throwing that their way!
1
🙌1
Nicole Gardner
·
·
Jaz Cuevas ahh thank you! Excited to get started 🙂 And I've found fellow customer marketers love sharing what works vs. what doesn't 🙏
no tools (yet) - do you think its absolutely necessary to get started?
I put together a google form and we planned to have CS reach out directly to their champions
Abigail Benson appreciate the honesty here 😂 I was thinking of offering to donate to a charity of their choice in exhange for a review. I don't have an advocacy program set in stone yet but I've been doing extensive research lol. If you have a framework for the SaaS space...I'm all ears!!
Jaz Cuevas
·
·
Nicole Gardner UserEvidence is an amazing tool to gather surveys! It’s super easy to use and we've had great success with getting responses through their surveys. Another thing is utilizing CS (like you mentioned) to pull a list of happy customers to go out to for the survey. That way you have a target list to go out to.
❤️1
Sandra Grauschopf
·
·
Does your CS team record their calls? If so, you can ask them to give you a heads up when a customer tells them something that worked really well. You can then take the transcript of the calls and build it into a customer story, then reach out to the customer and ask if they'd mind if you published it. That's a super low lift for them. Depending on your customers, you can also package telling their story in a way that puts them in a good light. For example, you could boost the LinkedIn posts that they make about the customer story, which gives them a lot of brand exposure for no cost and little effort. And you make sure the stories are about them doing something awesome (with you) instead of all about you.
❤️1
Elisabeth Catuogno
·
·
Congrats on the new role! As people have been saying, execs are tough and I would encourage you to have a Plan B and even a Plan C if you don’t get the kind of response rate that would be significant for you. I would suggest doing an internal triage with CS first to see if you can identify your probable satisfied customers in advance, and consider trying to get 1:1 calls with those execs rather than send them a survey. Cozying up to their EAs can be helpful for that. If you can position these calls in a way that resonates to them, I think you’re likely to get better feedback than you would on a survey. Your middle and lower tiers of potentially less satisfied customers are great for surveys because they have the freedom to be more honest than they might be face to face, and of course if they’re less satisfied they’re less likely to get on a call. But again, getting execs to respond in these cases (especially if they’re not your primary users) is challenging. I would discourage requesting reviews until you have a sense who your potential raving fans are though, nothing worse then asking people and then getting surprised by what they say 😬 Good luck!
❤️
Jenni Adair
·
·
I second what Jaz Cuevassays about UserEvidence. I implemented them at my last company and got results as soon as I sent the first survey. They are my go to tool now so check them out if you can. Survey responses can help all teams with customer proof and can be sent throughout the customer lifecycle. It's also a great way to get reviews trickling in and find customers who want to do all kinds of advocacy including case studies. I'd love to share my experience with them and customer advocacy in general if you'd ever like to chat.
❤️1
Claire Grove
·
·
Congratulations on your new role! Definitely have a think about what your value proposition should be in reaching out to anyone to support your customer advocacy efforts. What's your win/win? For example, what are the Exec care-abouts for the roles you're reaching out to? It may be creating materials for public use that they can also use/adapt for internal comms or user adoption. It may be showing their fiscal responsibility in adopting solutions that are driving measurable ROI (if they have shareholders) etc. etc. All helps in positioning the benefit to them if they work with you on case studies and other activities. If you're not getting much of a response from surveys, it's also worth thinking about behavioural signals plus real engagement, so you’re reaching out at the right moment versus sending surveys out 'blind'. This will help you identify moments of value instead of just 'happy customers' (e.g., expansion, big win, renewal, standout usage), which often helps with timing of requests. Always happy to chat through if that's helpful. I've been in customer advocacy for more years than I care to admit, and learned a lot from the mistakes I've made along the way! 🤣
Nicole Gardner
·
·
Sandra Grauschopf love love love the CS transcript idea! So basically write the use case and ask them for approval...brilliant!!
👍1
Nicole Gardner
·
·
All such great feedback, thank you all so so much!! 🤞
Sandra Grauschopf
·
·
Nicole Gardner I'm just starting to work on that tactic for my own company!