Your review count went up. Sales still cannot find a customer story for the deal due this week.
Customer advocacy KPIs should help you decide what to fix: who gets asked, which requests finish, or whether the resulting content reaches buyers. More activity can leave the original problem untouched.
Choose a few measures tied to that problem. Give each an owner, a target and a decision date. You do not need all 12 on your first dashboard.
| Your immediate problem | Start here | Decision the number should support |
|---|---|---|
| Too few customers get asked | Ask coverage and completion rate | Fix distribution or simplify the request |
| New content misses buyer questions | Usable-content rate and action mix | Change the brief or recruit for the missing use case |
| The same customers get every request | Activation and repeat participation | Broaden participation; check each person's preferences |
| Leadership needs a business case | Influenced opportunities, referral revenue and net ROI | Fund a defined activity with traceable costs and outcomes |
This guide focuses on choosing targets and acting on them. Use the customer advocacy metrics guide for a broader measurement reference. Keep detailed financial assumptions in the customer advocacy ROI guide.
Set targets from your own starting point
Write down the people, period and action before comparing a percentage. An email request and a widget impression have different denominators. A customer invited yesterday has had less time to respond than one invited last month.
If a rate's denominator is zero, report “not applicable” rather than 0%. Zero program cost also makes the ROI formula undefined.
Record a complete starting period, then change one part of the process. Set the next target from available customers, team capacity and the bottleneck you can address. Label it as your operating target, with an owner and review date. Customer count alone does not establish a healthy response rate.
Bain defines NPS through a recommendation survey. Keep that survey result beside actual completed actions; a survey answer is not a published review. For public reviews, apply fair eligibility regardless of the answer: G2 prohibits invitations segmented to solicit only positive reviews.
HighAdvocacy measurement map, October 19, 2026. Each arrow needs a recorded event; the diagram describes a measurement plan, not measured customer results.
The 12 customer advocacy KPIs and when to use them
1. Advocacy ask coverage
Count unique eligible people invited, divided by unique eligible people in the same list and period. Set eligibility before sending, using experience with the product and contact preferences. Deduplicate repeat invitations.
If coverage falls, check delivery, suppression rules and ownership before increasing the list.
2. Request completion rate
Divide unique people completing the requested action by unique people invited. Give every invitation the same response window. Track a published review separately from a submitted draft or a click. If completion falls, inspect the request and the steps customers must finish.
3. Review velocity
Count newly published reviews per platform during a fixed period. Set a volume target using your invitation capacity and observed completion rate. G2's scoring methodology includes review recency, alongside other inputs; a monthly review quota cannot promise a badge. Use the review velocity calculator for planning and the G2 reviews guide for collection steps.
4. Time to first advocacy action
Measure days from a defined customer milestone to the first completed action. Use the same milestone each period. Report the median among completers alongside how many people have not completed.
A shorter time among a handful of responders can hide a growing waiting list.
5. Usable-content rate
For assets you intend to reuse, divide items meeting your written brief and reuse-permission requirements by items checked. Define the checks before review: named use case, relevant detail, current context and permission. Inspect failures to improve the brief. Never use this internal editorial score to suppress an honest public review.
6. Advocate activation rate
Divide enrolled people completing their first action within a fixed window by all people enrolled in that intake group. Include people who were never asked; that exposes onboarding gaps. Use the advocate identification guide to plan recruitment, then measure willingness through actual participation.
7. Advocacy action mix
Count completed actions by type: reviews, quotes, case studies, referrals or speaking. Give every action one primary type to avoid duplicate totals. Choose targets around buyer requests you cannot fulfil. A team missing an industry case study should not chase an arbitrary percentage of video testimonials.
8. Repeat participation rate
Among people completing their first action in a defined intake period, count those completing another within a fixed follow-up window. Use only groups with that full window elapsed.
Pair the result with requests per person and declines. A higher repeat rate can mean a few customers carry too much work.
9. Review-influenced opportunities
Record opportunities where a buyer says reviews informed their decision, or a documented review interaction meets your stated attribution rule. Report both the count and their combined pipeline amount, deduplicated by opportunity ID. Keep unknown influence visible. These deals touched reviews; the record alone does not prove reviews caused the sale.
10. Referral-sourced revenue
Sum closed-won revenue with a recorded customer introduction and an agreed source rule. Choose one basis, such as first-year contract revenue, and use it consistently. Check source disputes with Sales Ops. Avoid adding the same deal again under review influence when calculating a combined return.
11. Review-count share
Divide your review count by the combined count for a named comparison set, including you, on the same platform and date. Keep the set fixed between checks. This is review-count share, not overall share of voice or ranking. The G2 review goal calculator helps plan counts; it does not predict placement.
12. Advocacy program net ROI
Calculate (agreed attributable gross profit minus program cost) / program cost × 100. Include labor, software, production and rewards. Have Finance approve the attribution and time period.
Break-even is 0% net ROI, equivalent to 1× gross return on cost. Report uncertain attribution as an estimate, with assumptions attached.
What HighAdvocacy records, and what your scorecard still needs
HighAdvocacy collects reviews, testimonials and social posts through campaigns, then stores approved assets in the Proof Library. Its campaign analytics help you locate collection drop-offs. Those records are useful inputs to a scorecard; CRM and finance records supply the business outcome layer.
How we checked this: on October 19, 2026, we opened five public guides: Analytics, Widget analytics, Proof metadata and statuses, Reward Activity and Showcase analytics. For each of the 12 measures, we looked for the numerator, denominator, date window and required joins. The table records our manual assessment of those documents. We did not test an account, run an integration or analyze customer performance. We rechecked the current linked campaign-results and Library guides on October 26, 2026, and corrected the definitions below. The screenshot still shows the older interface.
“Additional record” means the full calculation requires data or work beyond what those guides describe. Absence from a guide is not proof that a capability cannot exist; confirm it in your account before building a workflow around it.
| Measure checked | What the guides actually describe | Additional record or calculation needed |
|---|---|---|
| Ask coverage | Campaign analytics records impressions and unique visitors. A render can repeat, and a visitor count describes people who saw the surface. Neither tells you how many eligible customers could have been invited. | Keep the eligible list and invitation log in your sending tool. Match unique people across both before calculating coverage. |
| Request completion | Platform analytics separates platform selections, submissions, verified items and rejected items. These are different steps. The current guide defines verified rate as verified submissions divided by all submissions on that platform. | Join invitations to completed actions using a stable person ID. Set the response window yourself. Do not relabel verification rate as invitation completion. |
| Review velocity | Library cards show the original proof date when known, otherwise the submission date. The drawer's Added field records when the item reached your workspace. Neither substitutes for checking the external platform's publication record. | Confirm publication dates on the destination platform. Count newly published reviews there, with one platform and period per row. |
| Time to first action | The campaign funnel reports average time to submit. The guide does not define a clock starting at your customer's go-live date or product milestone. | Bring the milestone date from your customer records. Join the first completed action and retain a count of people still waiting. |
| Usable-content rate | Library filters and proof details identify type, campaign and submitter. The drawer shows Consent as OK to feature or Internal only. Check approval events in Inbox history, separately from the proof date and Added date. | Record your editorial checks and reuse permissions. Campaign approval alone does not document every permission or prove an asset answers a specific buyer question. |
| Advocate activation | Campaigns and library items identify submissions and submitters. The reviewed guides do not define an enrolled-advocate intake group or a deadline for that group's first completed action. | Maintain the enrollment list and start date. Join first completions after the full activation window has elapsed, including people with no submission. |
| Action mix | Library type badges distinguish reviews, social posts, written testimonials and video testimonials. Those categories let you inspect what collection produced. They do not cover every action your wider advocacy program might run. | Add referrals, speaking and case-study records from the people managing those activities. Map each completed action to one category before combining totals. |
| Repeat participation | Library metadata includes submitter identity and campaign context, so it helps investigate repeat contributions. The documentation does not establish a ready-made repeat-participation calculation with equal observation windows across enrollment groups. | Resolve aliases and duplicate people, define qualifying actions, then compare groups with the same follow-up window. Keep requests and declines beside completions. |
| Review-influenced opportunities | Campaign reporting measures collection. Showcase analytics separately records output views, impressions, visitors and referrers. A visitor or direct referrer does not identify which sales opportunity was affected or which role the content played. | Store the buyer's account, opportunity ID, evidence and attribution rule in your CRM. Connect those records deliberately rather than treating views as pipeline. |
| Referral revenue | None of the five guides describes a referral-to-opportunity revenue attribution report. A submitted customer review and an approved testimonial are collection records, even when the customer later makes an introduction. | Record the actual introduction, source decision and closed-won amount in the CRM. Use the same revenue basis for every deal. |
| Review-count share | Campaign metrics describe your campaigns; library items describe your collected assets. The reviewed analytics guides do not describe a competitor review-count feed or a saved comparison set across platforms. | Capture your and competitors' public counts on the same date. Preserve the comparison set and category so later changes can be interpreted. |
| Net ROI | Reward Activity logs sends, manual fulfillment, failures and payload details. A delivered webhook or a manually completed row records an operational status. The guide explicitly says Activity has no cost-over-time charts or CSV export. | Reconcile actual payouts, labor and software costs with Finance, then join attributed gross profit. A reward status is not a complete cost ledger or a return calculation. |
The existing campaign analytics screenshot shows where to start checking selections, submissions and verification. In the current campaign Overview, choose the same date range and switch Channel between Widget and Webpage to compare their totals.
Existing screenshot from HighAdvocacy's Widget analytics guide, reviewed October 19, 2026. It shows the older interface; use the current controls described above. Displayed values are not a program benchmark.
A worked example without invented benchmarks
Synthetic example, prepared October 19, 2026: imagine a fixed list of 200 eligible people. You invite 80 unique people. Within the same 30-day response window, 16 complete the requested action. Later reminders to those people do not create extra invitees.
Ask coverage is 80 / 200 = 40%. Completion is 16 / 80 = 20%. These are teaching inputs, not expected results. If the next target is more completed actions, first check whether you can reach more eligible people without increasing pressure on existing participants.
For a separate financial illustration, assume $12,000 in first-year revenue assigned to the program, with no deal counted twice. Finance accepts a 70% gross margin and $6,000 in matching program costs. The assumed gross profit is $8,400; net return is $2,400. Net ROI is 2,400 / 6,000 = 40%, while gross return on cost is 8,400 / 6,000 = 1.4×.
Synthetic arithmetic example, October 19, 2026. No customer results or forecast. Revenue attribution and gross margin are assumptions; open pipeline is excluded.
A pipeline amount is already money. Multiplying it by average deal size again produces the wrong units. You may model an expected value using a stated win-rate assumption, but keep that forecast separate from realized return.
Copy the 12-KPI planning worksheet
Paste this tab-separated worksheet into a spreadsheet. Fill only the measures that support a current decision. Keep a raw-count column beside rates, and write “not measured” where instrumentation is missing.
KPI Owner Period and eligible group Baseline with raw counts Next target Source and missing data Decision if missed Review date
Ask coverage [review date]
Request completion rate [review date]
Review velocity by platform [review date]
Time to first action plus waiting count [review date]
Usable-content rate [review date]
Advocate activation rate [review date]
Action mix by type [review date]
Repeat participation rate [review date]
Review-influenced opportunities and amount [review date]
Referral-sourced closed-won revenue [review date]
Review-count share of a fixed comparison set [review date]
Net ROI with approved attribution assumptions [review date]
Use the advocacy maturity quiz to discuss process gaps with your team, rather than treating its result as a financial benchmark. Review collection bottlenecks weekly; review revenue measures when the relevant deals have had time to close.
Choose your first request, write its eligibility rule and record the starting counts. Start a HighAdvocacy collection campaign to gather and review the assets, then connect those records to the scorecard your team owns.
