I haven’t found a ton of resources on the Internet regarding customer references but here are some sites and resources that can be helpful.
Net Promoter – These guys are pretty much the end all and be all of customer loyalty at this point. They are popping up all over the place from small companies to large Fortune 50 companies. They’re basic concept is that you have to have loyal customers and one way to find that is through the Net Promoter Score. I’ve read their book “The Ultimate Question” and found it pretty useful and it’s much cheaper than attending one of their 3 day seminars! With that said, I’d still love to attend one of their conferences which are held internationally in cities like London, Miami and San Francisco. At the end of the conference you can take a test and be Net Promoter certified.
Boulder Logic – This is an online tool for managing your references but if you don’t have the money or the need for the tool, the company sends out a newsletter every now and then about hot reference topics. A recent one was “Talking With Your Executives”. To sign up for the newsletter, visit this page. Boulder Logic also holds Webinars which are useful for the new customer reference professional.
I haven’t used the online tool but have gone through a few demos with them. I think it’s a great resource and beats the Excel document I use, but no company I have been with has been willing to pay for the tool or was ready to use it.
References Online – Like Boulder Logic, these guys offer an online reference tool. It’s been a few years since I’ve spoken to anyone there but I remember the tool was useful and very similar to the Boulder Logic tool.
Phelon Group – These guys focus on customer reference programs rather than the tools for managing the program. They can help you set up a program from scratch or help you refine your program. I have also found these guys very intelligent and understand the wants and needs of reference programs and what the professional has to do. They have a blog but it hasn’t been updated in quite a while. In fact, nothing on their site has been updated this year so this might be an old resource. Either way, there’s still a lot of good information on the site.
I haven’t done anything with them in about a year but they did sponsor a reference seminar called the “Customer Reference Forum” that lasted a few days and I thought it was great – mostly because at that time I realized that there were other people out there that doing references too.
Customer Reference Forum and Point-of-reference are also another location for research. These sites are much more like the Phelon Group with information and they also hold events.
