Shelly Ryder

#general - January 14, 2025 at 09:49 PM

Hi all! Anyone know of a good source for very general "ROI of customer advocacy" for SaaS company info? Google is giving me a ton of nonsense with questionable sources. We're just looking for some broad data points for a slide deck for our sales team about the value of customer advocacy and references in the tech space.

#cabs - January 14, 2025 at 09:42 PM

We do a one-day meeting (8 to 5 + dinner) and cover 2 nights hotel.

#general - December 12, 2024 at 03:20 PM

@Mason Sokana ^^

#general - December 12, 2024 at 03:19 PM

@Emily Coleman this response is late, but I'm now facing the same challenge. Thinking about adding Laudable or UserEvidence as a Gong integration for customer testimonial hunting, and getting some headwind from Legal. It seems that an upfront notice/consent process with a Gong call recording at all should be step 1 in these workflows. A phrase about marketing use (with express permission if public) could be part of that up front consent.

#general - December 11, 2024 at 07:00 PM

@Maura Frost or learning from each other. We don't have a community for them to do this (yet).

#general - December 11, 2024 at 06:56 PM

For what it's worth, we're still on Influitive -- one year now. We signed on about 2 weeks before the acquisition announcement. Anyway, our customers haven't really been digging the whole gamification thing. They join and do a few things, but then they disappear. Hardly any pickup from our weekly Digest of new challenges. We have only the Advocate Hub, not discussion forums. I probably wouldn't look for another gamification platform.

#discussions - December 09, 2024 at 05:18 PM

Just added you <@U0806J8HHHR> 🙂

#cabs - December 09, 2024 at 05:13 PM

Hi @Briana Chenkin that sounds interesting! How would that work, or can you suggest one or two I should check out?

#discussions - December 06, 2024 at 08:21 PM

We've also done video interviews during our 1x/year in person CAB meetings @Maria Braune! Here's one, and another. We pull each volunteer out of the meeting for 20-30 minutes to do the interviews in a suite or quiet common area at the hotel. Wish they didn't have to miss part of the meeting for doing this, but with only one full-day meeting format, there isn't any choice.

#discussions - December 05, 2024 at 08:37 PM

I got an auto decline because you're OOO

#discussions - December 05, 2024 at 08:36 PM

Sure thing @Sarah Howell I just added you to the calendar invite. Let me know if you don't get it.

#discussions - December 04, 2024 at 11:56 PM

I misspoke when I said Wednesday. Evan said the 10th, so that's actually Tuesday.

#discussions - December 04, 2024 at 11:31 PM

I'll go for Wednesday. December 10 at 3:00 ET. Gathering everyone's email now from Slack and will send. If you're a Gong user, would love to see you demo how you set up a search or Smart Tracker. Realizing that there is a lot of very confidential information in Gong, I won't ask to record the call, and demoers may want to think about safe searches you can show to the rest of us.

#discussions - December 04, 2024 at 08:44 PM

Ha ha! Of course we won't arrive a single date that works for all. Monday we'll miss Cristina. Tuesday or Wednesday would miss either Tim or Amanda. Let's see if @Evan Huck and @Joel Primack weigh in.

#discussions - December 04, 2024 at 08:12 PM

For those who want to join, how is next Monday through Thursday (December 9-12), anytime between 3:00 and 5:00 ET looking for you? Hoping we can get at least a few who are actively using Gong for customer testimonials: @Tim Jahn @Evan Huck @Joel Primack @Amanda Peacock and @Cristina Levenetz -and @Mary Green (Owner CMAweekly)!

#discussions - December 04, 2024 at 07:21 PM

This is really encouraging! Would any of you be open to a call to show off how you're doing this with Gong?

#discussions - December 04, 2024 at 04:57 PM

We're looking into Laudable for Gong, which has a lot more capabilities than Gong by itself -- even Gong's Smart Tracker, although I don't have direct access to be able to create a Smart Tracker myself. @Evan Huck or @Tim Jahn can Smart Tracker detect positive sentiment across all calls around a given keyword? For example, a specific feature of our product that we'd like to get a testimonial quote or mini case study on. As of now, there are over 2000 calls where a customer mentions this feature, but no way to filter the calls based on positive sentiment.

#discussions - December 03, 2024 at 07:57 PM

Hi Anna! We don't have them sign anything, but we do have a Charter document they need to read over. We also cover it during our intro call before they officially join the CAB.

#cabs - November 21, 2024 at 04:39 PM

@Katlin Hess It's challenging when we go to breakout tables. I couldn't cover all of the separate topic conversations.

#cabs - November 19, 2024 at 10:16 PM

For in person CAB meetings (which are not recorded), we have the challenge of missing out on everything that was covered at each table, and who said what. Relying on our own employees at each of the tables to take detailed notes is not ideal as we want them to be part of the conversation. So I'm thinking of hiring a couple of local notetakers. Anyone done this?

#general - November 19, 2024 at 07:05 PM

@Emily Coleman it was a somewhat cumbersome process in RefEdge. Also, we had/still have a custom built tool for other types of sales enablement / competitive assets and the reps would have to go to two different places for customer assets vs. those things. So we've moved all of our customer story assets into that tool now and got rid of RefEdge. I am looking into Laudable for Gong as another way to get more customer proof points/testimonials from call recordings.

#general - November 19, 2024 at 04:58 PM

@Emily Coleman I would have thought that SFDC would be the place, with ReferenceEdge serving as our customer story content library within SFDC opportunities. But it wasn't used much at all.

#general - November 18, 2024 at 06:59 PM

That's a tough one <@U0818RCQ1A9> and I have the same challenge. We make sure to create one page summary slides of every long form case study for easy insertion into a pitch deck. Sounds like you have that too. We promote new stories in several of our internal Slack channels including Sales, Customer Success, Marketing. Our industry teams are also informed. The assets will soon be available in our sales enablement tool Mindtickle. Maybe there will be some usage metrics in Mindtickle. Otherwise, I have no way of knowing how often these assets are getting used. We used to have our customer story assets in ReferenceEdge (SFDC app) and sellers could send them to prospects directly from that tool, but it wasn't getting used either.

#jobs - October 25, 2024 at 10:09 PM

Thanks! We're also looking for a field marketing manager. http://app.jobvite.com/m?3FTYinwG

#general - October 18, 2024 at 03:39 PM

Registered, but will have to catch the recording. Thanks @Mary Green (Owner CMAweekly)!

#jobs - October 15, 2024 at 08:23 PM

Thanks to both of you @Amy and @Cheryl Draper!

#jobs - October 15, 2024 at 03:22 PM

I know this isn't a customer marketing or advocacy job, but we're looking for an Event Marketing Manager at Egnyte. Maybe some folks here have the right experience. Check it out at: http://app.jobvite.com/m?3pkRinwK

#general - October 14, 2024 at 06:26 PM

@Kaveri Mekerira ^^^

#general - October 14, 2024 at 06:25 PM

Thanks @Katlin Hess That sounds like something we really need to check out.

#general - October 14, 2024 at 05:05 PM

Oh wow -- thanks @Katlin Hess! (and Mary for the ping) Can you briefly describe how it differs from the built-in capabilities that Gong has?

#cabs - October 11, 2024 at 06:42 PM

We have 3 virtual CABs and 1 in person every year. Those are our C-Level customers. The virtuals have been struggling a bit for attendance and engagement. They're 2.5 hours long and are heavily product focused (what's in the roadmap, maybe a demo of it, and feedback to validate we're heading in the right direction). The last meeting's post-event survey showed a desire for more open discussion time. So our November virtual CAB, we're planning a much more open format with a survey of topics to discuss sent in advance. The in person CAB is one full day, half of which is topical breakouts. They love that.

#general - October 11, 2024 at 04:59 PM

Hi all! Anyone using Laudable to mine Gong calls for customer testimonials, use cases, etc.?

#cabs - August 26, 2024 at 08:49 PM

Thanks Lauren! We definitely had a good discussion at our CAB last week around AI, where we sent out a survey in advance and discussed survey results at the meeting. At our in person CAB earlier this year, we did a topics voting survey and AI and Technology Adoption (not only with our product) were the two most popular topics they wanted to talk about. Technology Adoption was also a favorite topic at our 2023 in person CAB, followed by Innovation & Process Improvement. We had customers volunteer to lead roundtables on those topics (we called it "Table Topics") and it was a fantastic discussion. They worked at their tables for 30 minutes, then every table did a 30 minute readout/discussion with the entire room to get everyone involved. Definitely a hit and several CAB members said it was the best CAB they ever attended. But how to replicate that in virtual CABs? There's got to be more than AI that is of interest to C-Level IT leaders.

#general - August 23, 2024 at 09:26 PM

Hi all -- happy Friday! For those of you running CABs or similar-named customer advisory boards, what kinds of topics do you cover with C-level customers? We are a very product-driven organization and sometimes struggle to keep the agendas appealing to C-level, without going too deep with product roadmap demos & feedback sessions. Our attendance has been poor lately -- except for this week where we had near perfect attendance for an AI roundtable discussion. We do have a relatively new Technical Advisory Board (TAB) with lower level/functional job titles and can certainly move some of the product heavy CAB topics to the TAB. But to fill the gap, I'd love to hear some example topics you have on your C-level advisory boards.

We do 4 CAB and TAB meetings per year (8 total). One of the CAB meetings is in person, and all the rest are virtual, about 2 hours long.

#general - August 23, 2024 at 01:00 PM

Hi @Rita Caruso -- can we all be on the same call vs. you and me on one call on Tuesday, and I'd miss the call with Kristin & Madeline?

#general - August 22, 2024 at 03:53 PM

@Rita Caruso , can we all get on one call?

#general - August 22, 2024 at 12:31 PM

Speaking of awards, what do you all do for gifts for the winners? We currently give a trophy, but would love to see us do something more -- like a gift for their team.

#general - August 22, 2024 at 12:30 PM

Sure thing Rita! Anyone else want to join? We can pick it up via email. I'm sryder@egnyte.com|sryder@egnyte.com

#general - August 19, 2024 at 02:22 PM

Oh that's right -- we also did a trophy.

#general - August 19, 2024 at 02:02 PM

Wow! We're not offering a prize. Just recognition at our virtual Global Summit in December. Whose budget covers the trip?

#general - August 19, 2024 at 01:36 PM

@Maura Frost we can certainly incentivize customer submissions via an Influitive challenge. Did you get any video submissions?

#general - August 19, 2024 at 01:34 PM

@Rachel Ward love the idea of incentivizing the CSM (and AE, or there will be fights 😆) whose customer wins.

#general - August 05, 2024 at 01:45 PM

Surprised that I'm the only one voting for Influitive. 😒

#influitive - July 29, 2024 at 10:25 PM

I'm submitting a support ticket now through Atlas (argh). Their status page shows no issues

#influitive - July 29, 2024 at 09:04 PM

I haven't been able to view my Advocate info, and the top header hasn't been loading

#influitive - July 29, 2024 at 09:03 PM

Me me me!

#general - July 17, 2024 at 05:50 PM

Hi @Rebecca Grossman It's a well known brand in the biotech industry, where it's hard to get ANY customers to do a public story. The contact is the IT Director and is (for better or worse) the main POC that even our executive sponsor is focused on. The person is just too busy and won't make time for an interview. Our exec sponsor "introduced" me via email recently (even though I had been chasing him since last fall, including an intro call, so he already knows who I am ) and said that I can "make it worth his while", mentioning the fast cars and bourbon topics.

#general - July 15, 2024 at 06:19 PM

Any words of advice for getting a super-busy customer to schedule time with us for a case study interview? I'm thinking of sending him a gift via Reachdesk to win him over. I've been chasing this guy for over a year. We know that he likes fast cars and bourbon, that's about it.

#general - July 15, 2024 at 06:16 PM

On the flip side of rejecting all AI-generated reviews are customers who use it to ASSIST them in writing a review. I invited a known customer champion to write us a review on G2 and it was rejected because he used ChatGPT to help. I'm on the fence about this, as this was an actual customer using a tool to help him. He still had to write his own prompt summarizing his experience -- it wasn't complete BS from a fake person or bot.

#discussions - July 12, 2024 at 12:51 PM

Great stuff here. Thanks everyone! Now to move mountains and make some of this happen. 😆