HR.com Teams With Seventh Echo To Aid HR Vendors’ Customer Advocacy Efforts

HR.com and customer advocacy firm Seventh Echo will partner to help HR solutions companies build and measure customer advocacy programs. The companies said the announcement is the first in a series that will unveil a “comprehensive set” of marketing products and services for the HR industry.

HR.com CEO Debbie McGrath said the partnership will help vendors highlight customer success stories even as they continually improve. “Customer advocacy is a challenge for nearly every HR solutions company that conducts a webcast or research project with HR.com,” she observed. At the same time, research has repeatedly found that companies that develop customer advocates significantly outperform their competitors.

Customer Advocacy Above Buzz

But industry marketers must work extra hard nowadays to compete with an ever-rising buzz of advanced-technology and service-delivery claims. “The industry is flooded with vendors and it’s hard for buyers to differentiate between solutions or know who to trust,” said Brad Sutton, HR.com’s vice president of global sales and customer success.

Together, HR.com and Seventh Echo plan to provide a scalable, three-phase methodology and measurement capability for HR companies:

• Phase 1: Internal Alignment and Messaging includes articulating the story companies want customers to share and organize internal teams to enable customer advocacy efforts.

• Phase 2: Advocate Identification and Activation includes identifying advocates and detractors, developing a continuous flow of content, identifying unhappy customers and providing feedback for roadmap, go-to-market, business strategy, business operations and other areas.

• Phase 3: Revenue Growth includes development and execution of customer experiences with an eye toward building customer relationships. Areas include customer onboarding, customer feedback, communications and other efforts, and also developing a “customer footprint expansion plan” that includes upselling, cross-selling and referrals. Also, the work here encompasses creating a customer community.

Tailored Approach

Depending on an individual company’s needs, Seventh Echo will provide strategy, planning, execution and measurement, or develop an effort that can be handed off for internal management.

“While many companies have some elements of advocacy in place, most do not have the time, resources or expertise to develop a customer advocacy program that is sustainable, scalable and focused on revenue growth,” said Seventh Echo CEO Patrick Rooney. “That’s what this partnership will do for HR solutions companies.”

Seventh Echo also announced its Customer Advocacy Index, which it said quantifies customer advocacy’s business impact. In addition to using a company’s Net Promoter Score, the proprietary index tracks 16 metrics related to revenue including new revenue from customer referrals, margins on referral revenue, cost of new customer acquisition and current customer revenue growth. The idea, said Rooney, is to allow “HR solutions providers to draw a direct line between advocacy and business success.”

Sign up for our newsletter here.

Image: iStock