PFL Helps Paycor Build a Better Customer Advocacy Program

Advocacy Program Hampered by Poor Customer Experience

Paycor’s Human Capital Management (HCM) platform enables leaders to drive results in every aspect of people management. More than 30,000 companies trust Paycor to help them solve problems and achieve their goals through payroll software; workforce and talent management; benefits administration; and more.

The customer advocacy (CA) team and other departments at Paycor take advantage of PFL’s capabilities. One of the key players on that team is Alyssa Vorhees, Customer Advocacy Marketing Manager, who facilitates all of Paycor’s CA programs. In addition to running a virtual community of loyal customers, Vorhees is responsible for facilitating the company’s Ambassador Program.

Paycor customers are given an e-gift card any time they opt in to be an advocate and provide a reference. But without automations in place, Vorhees had to pull the list of advocates each month and manually send approximately fifty cards.

This process took up valuable time and, more important, it created a negative customer experience. “I typically pulled the list on the first Friday of every month. So, there would be a gap between the time the reference was provided and when they actually got the gift card,” Vorhees explained.

Several times a month, customers who didn’t receive their gift cards promptly would contact the customer advocacy or sales team wondering if there was a problem. As she worked to attract new members to the Ambassador Program, Vorhees worried about negative word-of-mouth inhibiting its growth.

“Taking care of our customers is one of Paycor's guiding principles. When we have customers going out of their way to advocate for and refer Paycor,  we want to be sure we are providing them a little something to say thank you in a professional  and well-presented way.” said Vorhees.

A Cohesive, Creative Digital Solution

As long-term partners, PFL and Paycor are always looking for new avenues to improve customer connections. At first, Vorhees assumed PFL was only applicable to direct mail campaigns, but when she described her challenges with the manual-referral process, the PFL team recognized an opportunity.

“They proactively said, ‘What do you do? What are your struggles? How can we help?’ And they were willing to try something new and work through it with me to figure out a solution,” said Vorhees.

PFL’s system had no existing integrations that could pass information from Paycor’s advocacy program to Salesforce, their CRM. The PFL team worked with Vorhees to create triggers that share this data, then automatically send gift cards through their marketing automation platform. During the implementation process, Vorhees and her team were kept well informed and felt confident that everything would be just right when the program went live.

Now, the moment a customer is chosen to be a reference for a potential customer, they immediately receive a thank-you message along with their gift card.

“It’s a great user experience,” Vorhees observed. “They get a heads-up right away that they’ve been approved as a reference and they already have their gift card in hand. It’s just much, much better.”

Program Running on its Own, Freed Up Team’s Time

Since launching the new automated process, the Ambassador Program has been seamless for Vorhees and her team. “We haven’t had a single issue. I almost forgot about the automated gift card fulfillment because it's just been running on its own without any pushback,” she explained.

The customer marketing team no longer receives calls or messages from advocates that didn’t receive a gift card—and the sales team has noticed an increase in customers’ willingness to join
the program. “We can tell prospects that not only do they get gift cards, they also receive a gift the moment they’re approved as a reference. Describing that experience has had more impact than ever before,” she said.

And the superior customer experience doesn’t stop there. The majority of Paycor’s advocacy programs emphasize building community between ambassadors. By creating a safe space
to collaborate and share feedback, Paycor’s most loyal customers always feel supported.

The automated process has also freed up the internal team. Rather than spending time each month pulling lists and sending gift cards, Vorhees can focus on her many other tasks: “You should be able to focus on being strategic about your program, identifying gaps in references, identifying customers, and building advocacy. The last thing you should be worrying about is gifting them.
So the more you can automate that, the better.”

Automated Outreach Helps Expand Advocacy Programs

Paycor plans to expand its advocacy programs as the customer base grows. They hope to use PFL’s automated outreach and powerful analytics to enable cross-generation for each of their advocacy programs and provide a variety of systems that match each customer’s individual preferences. For example, a customer might be willing to have a one-on-one conversation but not be the subject of a case study–or vice versa.

“I want to make sure all of our advocates are aware of the different options we offer and take advantage of one that meets their style,” concluded Vorhees. “As we scale the programs, we want to be sure everyone is involved.”