The Future of Customer Advocacy Is Both High-Tech and High-Touch

I absolutely love working in customer advocacy. It’s a corner of the marketing world where you can see the tangible impact of your work every single day, witnessing how authentic stories and strong relationships can directly help grow a business. You learn so much from customers, and it reinforces a fundamental truth: a business isn’t what it says it is, it’s what its customers say it is. Their voice is the ultimate reality. That’s why an experience I had about eight years ago has stuck with me so vividly. I was at a customer advocacy conference in North America, surrounded by my peers. A speaker took the stage, beaming with pride, and announced that they had just implemented a new automated system. The triumphant conclusion of their presentation was that they never needed to speak to a customer again. The room erupted in applause. They were celebrated for this achievement. And I just stood there, completely mystified. My first thought was, is that really a good thing? Have we become so obsessed with efficiency that we’ve forgotten the entire point of what we do?

The Undeniable Pull of Progress

Now, let’s be fair. I’m not naive to the realities of the modern business landscape. When you’re dealing with a large volume of customer advocates, you absolutely need robust systems and technology to manage the scale. The advantages that automation brings to the table in terms of personalization and efficiency are undeniable. For a volume play-engaging thousands of customers with targeted campaigns, tracking participation, and delivering rewards-it’s a no-brainer. Technology has to be part of the solution. It allows us to do more, faster, and with a level of precision that would be impossible for any human team to replicate on its own. It can help identify potential advocates, segment them for relevant opportunities, and ensure that no one falls through the cracks. In this context, the idea of a system that streamlines these processes is not just appealing; it’s necessary for survival and growth.

Technology offers a powerful solution for managing advocacy at scale, a necessary tool in a fast-paced world.

But this focus on scale and efficiency can create a dangerous blind spot. It can lead us to believe that advocacy is merely a transactional process-a series of inputs and outputs that can be perfectly optimized by an algorithm. We risk reducing our customers to data points and our role to simply managing the machine that communicates with them. Is customer advocacy just about creating campaigns, firing off automated emails, and sending out swag based on a points system? Or is it something more? What about the advocacy that’s built on deep, personal relationships? What about the unique ability of a skilled advocacy professional to connect with a company’s most important customers on a human level, building a foundation of trust that technology simply cannot replicate? This is where the celebrated speaker’s vision fell short for me. It optimized for the ‘what’ but completely ignored the ‘why’.

The Heart of True Advocacy

A business exists to create customers that, in turn, create other customers. This is the virtuous cycle that drives sustainable growth. The role of a customer advocacy professional is to be the catalyst for that cycle. While technology can manage the process, a human being must build the relationship. I’ve been incredibly lucky to work with some truly amazing advocacy professionals over the years, people who understand this distinction in their bones. They see their role not as a campaign manager, but as a relationship architect. I think of one colleague who insists on being present at every single customer video shoot. She isn’t there just to supervise; she’s there to be a source of comfort and support for the customer. She’s there to build rapport, to make sure they feel valued, and to ensure their story is told with the authenticity and respect it deserves. That personal touch transforms a marketing activity into a collaborative partnership.

A genuine advocate is forged in the fires of trust and mutual respect, not programmed by an algorithm.

Then there’s another advocacy leader I know who has built such incredible relationships with her portfolio of strategic customers that she has become their ultimate safety net. If a service fails or a solution goes wrong, these executives don’t call their sales rep or vent their frustration to ten other CEOs at their next industry event. They phone her. It doesn’t matter where she is in the world or what time it is; she picks up the phone and becomes their personal point of escalation. She navigates the internal bureaucracy and makes sure the problem gets solved. The level of trust she has built is immense. Now, are these actions infinitely scalable? Of course not. You can’t be on every video shoot or be the personal fixer for thousands of customers. But that’s not the point.

The Strategic Value of the Human Touch

We often see the Pareto principle play out in business: 80 or even 90 percent of your revenue comes from just 10 or 20 percent of your clients. This is why a successful advocacy strategy requires two distinct motions running in parallel. You need the ‘volume play,’ driven by technology, to engage the broad base of your customer community. But you also desperately need the ‘value play,’ a high-touch, relationship-driven approach for that critical segment of top-tier clients. This is where interpersonal skills, empathy, and genuine connection become your most valuable assets. When you have these deep relationships in place, the entire dynamic of the business relationship changes. You’re no longer just a vendor; you’re a trusted partner. You can bypass the grueling procurement rounds that are designed to commoditize your offering and squeeze you on price. The decision has already been made based on the strength of the relationship. Your customer advocates for you internally, ensuring you’re selected because they trust you to deliver.

When a customer has a direct line to a person they trust, problems become opportunities to deepen the relationship.

Furthermore, this reservoir of goodwill provides a crucial buffer when things inevitably go wrong. An implementation might hit a snag, or a new feature might not work as expected. Without a strong relationship, these issues can quickly spiral into a crisis of confidence. But when an advocate trusts you-the person, not just the company-they are far more likely to be patient and forgiving. They’ll work with you to find a solution rather than looking for the exit. The future, therefore, isn’t about choosing between technology and people. It’s about intelligently blending them. We need the efficiency of AI and automation, but we also need real, empathetic humans who can connect with other humans. That personal connection is not a legacy practice to be optimized away; it is, and will always be, the essential, beating heart of any great business.