Case Study: Staples Business Advantage achieves a customer‑centric transformation and major advocacy growth with Influitive

How Staples Business Advantage Shifted From Product-Centric to Customer-Centric With Influitive

Staples Business Advantage, the $7B B2B arm of Staples, faced a classic product‑centric challenge: sales and marketing were organized by product categories instead of customer needs, so the company lacked real insight into how customers actually made buying decisions and relied too little on word‑of‑mouth. Mary‑Leslie Davis set out to shift the organization to a customer‑centric mindset but had to overcome internal skepticism and the need for a scalable way to listen to and engage customers.

She launched a persona‑driven pilot using Influitive’s AdvocateHub to solicit real customer feedback and encourage advocacy. The program rapidly grew to 5,300+ advocates and generated 120,000+ acts of advocacy — including ~1,100 testimonials, 2,700+ social shares and 27,000+ discussion replies/likes — giving Staples real‑time customer insights, stronger peer‑driven marketing content, and a company‑wide shift toward customer‑centric strategy.

Staples Business Advantage

Mary-Leslie Davis

Director of Customer Engagement and Loyalty