My First Year at Five9: A Year-Long Thanksgiving Feast
November 21, 2017
“Congratulations on your anniversary!” I saw a flood of these messages come in last week from my LinkedIn contacts. As the notifications came in, I started reflecting on my first year at Five9 and what I’ve accomplished over the past twelve months.
In the spirit of the holidays, I thought I’d write this blog post in a Thanksgiving menu style. As the Director of Customer Advocacy, my vision is to empower the engaged customer to help them move through the Five9 customer journey to influence bookings, create brand lift and make our customers heroes.
- Appetizers: First up at Five9, I focused my work on customer reviews. The top priority was Trustpilot and by mid December 2016 we hit our target goal which enables us to have our review stars included in our Google SEM ads.
- Mashed potatoes/gravy: Next portion, I bit into the sales reference program, evaluating what program and references Five9 currently had and identified gaps where I needed to focus. I’ve built and managed reference programs for 11 years and my goal was to build a world-class reference program for Five9. Not only have I met this goal but I’ve built some great relationships with our amazing sales team!
- Rolls: Delicious content is important for every company and for me, great customer content is king! In early 2017 I started writing customer blog posts shooting for two a month. I also started producing customer case studies. Check out our blog posts, and our Customer Success Showcase. So far, I’ve written 20 blog posts and produced five case studies.
- Fruit Salad/Salad: One thing a lot of people like to experiment with at Thanksgiving is the salads. In 2017 we experimented with Five9 Day. Every May 9th we celebrate Five9 Day but this year we included customers, analysts and parters in our celebration and it was a great success.
- Turkey: The most robust part of the Five9 customer advocacy program is the sales reference program. So far I’ve handled 237 reference requests (221% increase in requests over 2016) and helped influence more than $9 Million in closed revenue.
- Pumpkin Pie: A real treat for me at Five9 has been working with Gabrielle Targosz on our employee advocacy tool. A few years ago, I rolled out Influitive AdvocateHub where I had 2,500 customer, employee and partner advocates. Advocate marketing is so powerful and I love the combination of advocacy marketing and social media.
What a big feast the past 12 months have been and while I’m ready for a big nap, there’s no time! Five9 is busier than ever and with all the happy customers we have, I’ll have plenty to feast on for the next 12 and longer!
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