SaaStr Scale: The playbook to building a customer reference program with Gillian Heltai

After spending most of the week on the east coast attending HITRUST events in New York and Philadelphia, I attended SaaStr Scale last Thursday in San Francisco. Following Aaron Ross' presentation, Gillian Heltai from Talkdesk shared her playbook for building a Customer Reference Program.

SaaStr Scale: The Playbook to Building a Customer Reference Program with Gillian Heltai - My Takeaways

Here are my takeaways from Gillian Heltai’s presentation, the Playbook to Building a Customer Reference Program:

• Should you do customer references? Probably.
• Customers can become advocates by: Loving your product; an improvement of experience vs a previous provider; a personal relationship with the account team; a great support experience; and overcoming a challenge together
• Use CSAT, NPS, QBRs, and attendees of your local events as ways of finding customer advocates
• Think about vertically-based webinars to get beyond a 1:1 ratio for customer references
• Online reviews are a huge area of focus for the Talkdesk customer marketing team. NPS and CSAT are great sources to identify online review candidates
• Customer Marketing became a thing at Talkdesk when they reach about 500 employees