A customer referral is when an existing, happy customer points you toward a peer who could benefit from your product, often offering to make the introduction. Because the connector has firsthand experience with what you do, it is one of the highest-trust warm paths in sales.
The buyer is not hearing a pitch, they are hearing from a peer who has already used the product and chose to vouch for it. That makes the connector unusually credible, and it is why a customer referral usually outperforms any other warm path on conversion.
A referral is one source of warm paths, but it depends on a customer thinking to make it. Your team's wider network holds many more routes that no one has acted on yet. See customer referrals vs. warm paths for how they compare.
Via surfaces referral-strength paths beyond the ones customers happen to offer. It finds where your customers, teammates, and investors already know people at your target accounts, so you are not waiting for a referral to come to you.