B2B SaaS buyers trust peers more than vendors, which is why your sales team is overflowing with customer reference requests. However, your list of quality and relevant contacts is small.
So, you keep returning to the same group of references you know and trust. This can be a problem.
Asking your best customers to keep getting on calls with your prospects can produce a counteractive effect. While you try to make the sale and grow your new customer base, you risk burnout in your current customer base. Your advocates can become worn and even irritated by your continuous, time-consuming asks.
One way to overcome this hurdle is to find a home for your customer reference program. A tool that can simplify and streamline the coordination of reference calls and help you generate and build a library of customer references who are happy to speak to your prospects, how and when they choose.
If you’ve already done some research, you know there aren’t many options on the market for customer reference management software. Below is a table of the top 10 providers in this space, along with their ratings on G2 and Capterra.
| Platform | Logo | G2 Rating | Capterra, GetApp & Software Advice Rating * |
|---|---|---|---|
| #1 Influitive | 4.4 (395 reviews) | 4.7 (250 reviews) | |
| #2 ReferenceEdge | 4.4 (21 reviews) | 4.7 (20 reviews) | |
| #3 Base | 4.5 (35 reviews) | N/A | |
| #4 Orca | 5 (6 reviews) | N/A | |
| #5 Upland RO Innovation | 4.1 (19 reviews) | 4.2 (19 reviews) | |
| #6 MGI Verified | N/A | N/A | |
| #7 SlapFive | N/A | N/A | |
| #8 Deeto | N/A | N/A | |
| #9 UserEvidence | 4.9 (40 reviews) | N/A | |
| #10 Reviewflowz |  |
n/a | 4.8 (24 reviews) |
This article gives you a comprehensive review of eight pure customer reference software options and two supporting social proof-generating tools suitable for any B2B SaaS company looking to take advantage of customer-led growth.
#1 Influitive - The leading provider
If you’re looking for a premium customer engagement and advocacy platform that offers all the functionality to drive and manage your customer references program seamlessly, you can’t go wrong with Influitive. They’ve been around for over a decade and are a trusted brand amongst leading enterprise tech providers such as IBM, Cisco, Adobe, and VMware.
What’s great about it?
Influitive claims to be the only vendor that can source, match, manage, and reward referenceable customers via a single platform at scale through its Reference Management App.Two things make the platform a standout amongst its competitors:
- It’s ability to identify customers that are ideal brand ambassadors for customer references so you can build a database of on-demand contacts your sales team can access.
- It uses advanced gamification and reward elements to motivate customers to complete tasks and engage with the brand and its prospects.
Things to keep in mind with this platform
The first thing you need to keep in mind about this software is its robust capabilities, which are reflected by the price tag. More functionality and options also mean your employees and customers may need some time before they get comfortable with using the tool. To overcome this obstacle, Influitive provides a full range of training options, from in-person and live online training to webinars, videos, and supporting documentation.
Types of businesses Influitive suits best
- B2B companies with a customer-centric business growth strategy
- SaaS companies that rely on customer advocacy to drive growth
- Enterprises with a large customer base
#2 ReferenceEdge - The first ever
ReferenceEdge is a Salesforce-native app. Originally built for customer reference management in 2003, it’s evolved to solve the full scope of customer advocacy challenges for B2Bs. Some of its customers include Epicor, Paycor, and Grafana Labs.
What’s great about it?
ReferenceEdge has everything you need to run an efficient and trackable customer reference management program including:
- Reference coordination - Identify and build a database of quality references, search and request call coordination, issue reward points to users and customer advocates, and set limits to prevent reference overuse.
- Measure revenue impact - Quantify your customer reference program impact with standard Salesforce reports, dashboards, or CRM Analytics.
This provider also offers additional customer advocacy services at an extra cost which include:
- Consulting - To power up your broader customer advocacy efforts, ReferenceEdge offers customer advocacy consulting. Through its Customer Reference Program Maturity Model assessment tool, you can evaluate the current state of your advocacy practices and create actionable goals that will positively impact your sales and marketing activities – and revenue.
- Staffing - If you’re short on customer advocacy staff, ReferenceEdge can provide extended members of your team who come with the experience you need to meet your targets.
Things to keep in mind with this platform
Because this platform is a Salesforce app, smooth deployment of the tool means you need to work closely with your Salesforce admin team for any customization and updates.
Types of businesses ReferenceEdge suits best
- SaaS companies mostly, but the product is fit for any industry
- Small, medium & enterprise-size businesses who use the Salesforce CRM
#3 Base - The customer-led growth ecosystem
Formerly known as Crowdvocate, Base is a B2B Customer Marketing & Advocacy automation platform and one of the key competitors of Influitive. With their rebrand in 2022, they vouched to build the first Customer-led-Growth (CLG) ecosystem for companies that depend on their happy customers to drive growth. Some of their key clients include HubSpot, GitLab, Forter, and Nice.
What’s great about it?
If your primary focus is customer reference management, Base is a good platform to turn to. On the website’s dropdown menu, under ‘Solutions,’ Base lists ‘Streamline Reference Management’ as the first option, which indicates that this is the product’s primary use case.Some of the functionalities you’ll like include:
- Impact tracking - The platform lets you see the impact of reference calls and how many transfer to revenue.
- Build a pool of references - The tool can auto-identify quality reference candidates where they can participate on their own terms. It also lets sales reps and CSMs nominate and invite customers to join the reference program.
- Reference Bot - Base’s AI-powered bot offers your site visitors relevant references by industry, country, size, and use case.
Things to keep in mind with this platform
Similar to Influitive, this platform offers a wide range of functionality. As it’s intended for larger organizations, the learning curve might be steep, and your team may need some time to warm up to the tool.
Types of businesses Base suites best
- Mid-market and enterprise businesses with a large and diverse customer base
- B2B companies keen to capitalize on customer advocacy at scale
- SaaS businesses who rely heavily on customer testimonials and referrals for conversions and are looking to streamline their customer reference and advocacy programs
#4 Orca - The simple Salesforce solution
Orca is another native Salesforce customer advocacy app focused on references. It enables marketing, sales and customer success teams with all the tools they need to manage workflows within a centralized platform, company-wide, without additional integrations.
What’s great about it?
One of the best things about Orca is their promise to have the app fully installed and configured in about an hour. This platform might be ideal if you are looking for a no-fuss, simple, and fast solution to managing your customer references.Some other cool features include:
- Automation - Orca includes tools to automate key time-consuming processes like nomination and advocate requests.
- AI recommendations - The platform can help identify a reference in seconds or leverage AI recommendations directly on an opportunity.
- Orca Analytics - The tool lets you run custom reporting so you can measure revenue impact from your customer reference program. You can build your customized reports or dashboards or use one of Orca’s industry-sourced, pre-built reports (over 30 out-of-the-box reports and five dashboards).
Things to keep in mind with this platform
There are two fundamental limitations to Orca. The first is it’s a Saleforce-dependant app. The second is that it’s a relatively new provider with a small team, and training is limited to documentation. Also, there are limited user reviews (the most recent ones can be found on Salesforce App Exchange, along with a demo video). However, reviewers indicate that the team behind Orca has a product that does everything it promises and provides great support despite its small operation.
Types of businesses Orca suits best
- Small to mid-mearket businesses that want to streamline and centralize their customer references program processes
- Businesses that operate within the Salesforce CRM
#5 Upland RO Innovation - The centralized hub
Upland RO Innovation is another customer reference management software provider that enables businesses to have a centralized hub for customer advocacy interactions and activities.
What’s great about it?
Like the other providers in this list, Upland RO Innovation provides all the functions that sales, marketing, and customer success teams need to streamline and enhance their reference-based sales efforts and ensure that nobody is doubling up or overusing references.Highlights of the platform also include:
- Source, monitor, and approve references—This allows you to activate the right customer advocates with the most relevant sales and marketing content at the right time in the buyer’s journey. You can also set and monitor outreach thresholds to prevent burnout and unauthorized outreach.
- Reporting & analytics - Provides increased visibility on what works best to close deals and track the ROI of customer advocacy programs.
This provider stands out in the results it has helped one of its customers achieve in their advocacy initiatives. Their Informatica customer success story is nothing short of impressive. According to the case study, the computer software company saw:
- 16% increase in the number of customer advocates in the first year of using the platform
- 60% increase in the number of success stories generated year-on-year
- 95% fulfillment rate of reference requests since it implemented the software
Things to keep in mind with this platform
While platform users seem relatively happy with their experience with the tool, some claim enhancements can take a significant time to deliver.
Types of businesses RO Innovation suits best
- Small to mid-market SaaS companies wanting to scale their customer reference programs
- Businesses using Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, or other CRM
#6 MGI Verified - The video reference option
Launched in 2020, MGI Verified is a newcomer with a twist in the customer reference software space. The platform digitizes the customer reference management process by replacing in-person reference calls with recorded 30-minute video interviews.
What’s great about it?
Until now, most platforms have primarily focused on simplifying and speeding up the process of generating a pool of quality references and matching and coordinating the calls between customers and prospects. This platform removes the entire coordination process. Instead, it creates single video interview recordings with customers providing references, which are stored in a library for immediate access.This platform is the perfect solution if you want your team to have instant access to a library of video-recorded customer references. All customers providing references are interviewed by a Verified expert, which adds an extra layer of trust for prospects knowing a third party runs the show.Some of the key benefits of the platform include:
- Single source library for sellers - Instantly access, choose, and share any customer reference in your library.
- No wait time for prospects - Your prospects get immediate access to video references via Verified’s links.
- No repeat requests and burnout - You avoid hassling your top brand and customer advocates for time-consuming reference calls.
Things to keep in mind with this platform
There are a couple of things to keep in mind with this platform:
- You need to provide a list of customer reference candidates - Verified doesn’t recruit or sign up references. It simply engages with the list of reference customers you supply and conducts comprehensive 30-minute interviews that are added to your reference library.
- It doesn’t replace reference calls - While the Verified app allows prospects to watch the interview without speaking with the reference, it doesn’t initiate a call between the two parties. If your prospects still want to have the call, your team would need to organize this outside the app.
Types of businesses RO Innovation suits best
- Enterprise businesses with 50+ salespeople
- B2B companies that depend heavily on customer references for their prospective buyers and investors
#7 SlapFive - The live or recorded reference
SlapFive is a relatively smaller provider of customer marketing and advocacy software. However, its platform does provide a single solution for Customer-Led Growth activities, including customer content, advocacy, references, and campaigns.
What’s great about it?
A great perk of this tool is its ability to give your sales reps 24/7 access to recorded reference calls within Salesforce, Highspot, Seismic, or any other sales portals.When it comes to customer reference management, three of SlapFive’s key features will come in handy:
- Customer program - This will help you recruit and manage the preferences of customers who are happy to provide reference calls and track their activities.
- Customer campaigns - This allows your team to create and manage campaigns and workflows where you can target specific customers and automate engagement.
- Revenue impact - The tool gives you complete visibility into all customer engagement activities and their influence on revenue.
A nice extra of the platform is the Customer Content feature, which lets you capture Voice of Customer (VoC) in multiple formats, including audio, video, and text in the customer’s own voice. You can manage and organize this content any way you like by tagging and categorizing it, making it easy to search and retrieve.Another interesting fact is that in April 2024, Higher Logic, the industry-leading community engagement company, announced its integration of the Higher Logic Vanilla platform with SlapFive, giving users access to SlapFive’s suite of pre-built, automated advocacy programs.
Things to keep in mind with this platform
This tool is not a Saleforce-native app, and some users find this integration tricky.
Types of businesses RO Innovation suits best
- B2B companies strategically focused on authentic customer engagement
- SaaS enterprises looking to integrate customer voice content across platforms
#8 Deeto - The interactive, engaging platform
Another newcomer worth mentioning is Deeto. Launched in 2022, it is an AI-driven customer activation platform that offers a unique end-to-end reference prospect capability. While it lacks online reviews on leading SaaS review sites, the broad scope of functionality it provides makes it worth trying out.
What’s great about it?
If you look at the customer testimonials of the product on Deeto’s website, the first thing you’ll notice in the feedback is how easy the platform is to use for both vendors and their customers.Apart from the gamified nature of the tool and the colorful, simple, and inviting user interface, which makes it more likely for users to interact with it, your sales, success, and marketing teams will be able to do six key activities through the platform effortlessly:
- Recruit references
- Match suitable candidates
- Create pre- and post-call reports
- Automatically manage reference burnout
- Schedule track direct reference and prospect calls
- Track impact on revenue opportunity
Things to keep in mind with this platform
You can integrate the platform with your existing CRM or use it as a standalone tool.
Types of businesses Deeto suits best
- SaaS B2B companies looking for a top-notch user experience on a customer engagement and reference management platform
#9 UserEvidence - The automated social proof generator
Although it’s not a customer reference management tool, UserEvidence is a customer voice platform that automates social proof. Integrating your reference management software with UserEvidence allows you to populate a database of quality customer advocates (and relevant content) to accelerate your direct customer reference activities.
What’s great about it?
UserEvidence integrates with four reference management platforms included in this list: Upland RO Innovation, SlapFive, ReferenceEdge, and Orca.One of the biggest challenges for B2B SaaS companies is generating a rich and broad database of quality customer references. Without it, your sales team is restricted to making requests to the same candidates. Combining two tools, one to gather advocates quickly and the other to manage the reference call coordination can minimize reference fatigue while continuously building out your contact list.Some of the ways you can use this tool to boost your customer reference program efforts include:
- Targeted surveys - Send surveys to customers focusing on insights and feedback your prospects request. Netscope saw a complete cultural shift in its customer advocacy efforts after combining SlapFive with UserEvdidence. They achieved a 58% increase in customer advocate sign-ups as a result of surveys.
- API integration - You can feed UserEvidence data directly into your reference management tool. That way, you can search customer profiles in your reference management tool against indicators from UserEvidence surveys. You can see what those customers have to say about you and the advocacy activities they have participated in all in one place.
Things to keep in mind with this platform
One thing to keep in mind when adding UserEvidence to your tool stack is the additional price tag because you’ll be signing up for two tools to manage your customer reference program efficiently.
Types of businesses UserEvidence suits best
- SaaS B2B businesses
- Small and large sales and marketing teams looking to drive Customer-led Growth
#10 Reviewflowz - The tool that identifies your reviewers
Another tool that can help support your customer reference program is Reviewflowz. It’s an easy-to-use review monitoring software tool that helps you understand who your online reviewers are so you can tap into your customer base with advocate and brand ambassador potential.
What’s great about it?
Two things make Reviewflowz a great supporting tool for companies wanting to use their top online reviewers as an advocate-generating machine.
- Nurturing quality relationships - One thing Reviewflowz does that no other review or testimonial software does is help vendors identify their online reviewers. Most review platforms will hide the reviewer details to some extent, leaving vendors to painful guesswork in order to identify reviewers — when it's possible. The thing is, if you don’t know who is reviewing you and who your most content users are, you won’t know where to look for your potential customer reference candidates. By identifying your reviewers, you can reach out to them to build authentic relationships and, in that way, nurture them to the customer advocate level. Reviewflowz will provide a linkedin profile URL for up to 80% of your reviewers, automatically.
- Complete social proof solution - Reviewflowz aggregates and helps you manage testimonials and reviews from all review platforms. It’s a good starting point for building a library of the most referenced and readily available social proof by prospects: reviews and testimonials.
Things to keep in mind
While Reviewflowz can’t replace customer reference management software, it can be used alongside one of the apps mentioned above. Reviewflowz also supports major software review platforms like Capterra G2 and marketplaces like WordPress, Hubspot, Shopify, Salesforce, and many more.It integrates with Slack, MS Teams, Zapier, and email. You can book a private demo here to find out more about reviewer identification. You'll need a Pro plan to access software review platforms, starting from $129 / month.
Types of businesses Reviewflowz suits best
- B2B SaaS companies of all sizes with a focus on online review generation and monitoring and reviewer identification
- Marketing agencies managing multiple online review client profiles
