Running a Customer Advisory Board

Professionals dressed causally around a white board in a meeting

6 minute read

What is a customer advisory board and how can you create one? This article talks about it and includes a customer advisory board agenda to help you get started.

 

Companies leverage customer advisory boards, sometimes referred to as CABs, as a form of market and customer research. A customer advisory board is simply a group of customers that provide regular feedback which your company can then use to make strategic decisions. Forming a CAB can yield substantial benefits for your company, but following established best practices is crucial to ensure the time and effort invested deliver optimal returns.

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What is a Customer Advisory Board?

A Customer Advisory Board (CAB) is a representative group of customers that meets periodically to offer advice on product and company direction. You may also see these groups referred to as customer councils or customer advisory councils. These meetings are a great way to validate that your product direction is in sync with your customers’ technology, needs, and business plans. Key customers can look at your plans and provide valuable feedback about your strategy.

Customer advisory boards are usually held twice a year, although some companies run them more frequently. Some companies have two separate advisory customer groups that attend alternate meetings.

Customer Advisory Board Best Practices and Logistics

Ideally the customer advisory board should be held either at your company facility or at a nearby hotel so that as many employees can attend as is appropriate. Sometimes, however, CABs meet in field offices for maximum regional participation. This is also an ideal forum for holding smaller advisory councils since your key customers are already there.

Who Should Attend a Customer Advisory Board?

Typically, three or four vendor employees, led by product management, facilitate the meeting. Development leads and product architects are also involved and often find it enlightening to see how real people perceive the products. Salespeople usually want to be on-hand if their customers are invited.

You should invite six to eight customer representatives to participate in your customer advisory board. Many organizations will want to send two people, which are typically a technology advisor and a business representative. Customers should be selected to participate in the CAB based on their ability to represent a specific market segment. It’s often best to avoid the loud-but-big customers, these are usually the ones suggested by salespeople. However, large customers are always important to your company and may be invited purely to improve customer relations.

Ideally, each customer should be a bellwether for the industry they represent. Avoid inviting competing customers within the same segment so that competitors are not in the same council meeting. Competitors may be leery of discussing their challenges in front of one another.

Customer Advisory Board Invitations and Expenses

Invitations to attend the customer advisory board should be sent out well in advance to allow participants plenty of time to work it into their schedule. If possible, send them out two to three months prior to the event.

Ideally, advisory participants will pay their own expenses to attend the CAB. They know that steering the future of a product will result in a better solution for them in the long run. You don’t have to motivate them with expensive gifts either; building a better product is all the incentive they need. However, a standard giveaway, such as some promotional items with your company logo, are always appreciated. You should plan on supplying meals for your customers during their stay and having an event or dinner with the group.

Customer Advisory Board Benefits

The benefits of customer advisory boards go both ways, which is why customers are often surprisingly eager to attend them. If they use your product often, they want to be taken seriously and they want their product suggestions to be heard.

For your company, a CAB is a great way to:

  • Validate ideas for new products and features
  • Find major flaws in your current product design
  • Discover how customers are actually using your product
  • Determine the killer features of your current product
  • Uncover additional competitive information. After all, your customers evaluated your product next to someone else’s.
  • Learn about future technologies your customers are evaluating and how this will impact your product’s future

During the CAB, listen for differences between what you hear from potential buyers on a sales call and what you hear from your customers. As customers, they have already bought and are indoctrinated into your way of thinking. They will be telling you about product usage, which is information that is critical to development but often not relevant to sales or marketing communications. Be sure to note the distinction in the information you take away from the event.

Customer Advisory Board Agenda

You have a limited amount of time with the participants of your CAB, so you’ll want to use it wisely. You also want to be careful about making commitments in a customer advisory meeting. This is an input session, not a decision-making body. And you most likely don’t want to continue to hold additional meetings if you have not delivered on the designs revealed in past meetings. So, when setting the agenda for your meeting, this basic research rule applies: Don’t research something that you’re not willing to change.

The following customer advisory board agenda provides a starting point for planning your event:

A short visit by the company president or general manager is a great way to kick off the meeting.

1.Introductions
Start with introductions of company personnel and customers. Ask that the customers not only introduce themselves but that they tell a little bit about how they are using your product.

2. Presentations
Presentations of each advisor’s strategic technology plan are next. Ask each to present three or four slides about where their company is headed strategically, perhaps as it relates to your product. This should include planned shifts in technology, projected changes in employee headcount, and any new business initiatives that may have an effect.

3. Discuss current challenges
Before you start talking about your strategy, take the time to listen! What challenges are your customers facing when dealing with your product and company? A Force Field Analysis is a good technique to get people talking about both the positive and negative aspects of your products and services.

4. Overview of product line
You will sometimes be surprised that many of your customers don’t know your current product line. This is a great opportunity to solve this by providing a brief overview of the features and benefits of your current products. Customers may learn that you have existing solutions to their problems.

5. Show your product roadmap
The objective is to get your customers’ feedback on your upcoming product plans. Ideally you want to give as much information as possible and include a demonstration of a prototype. This will maximize the feedback you will get. Discuss how new features and capabilities will affect their future business plans and the impact it will have on their operations and employees.

6. Open Discussion
A good facilitator can make an open discussion very productive, but without a facilitator, this often turns into a complaining session. Have a list of items for discussion, such as feature ideas, new products suggestions, and new technologies that your customers are using in conjunction with your products. Don’t forget to ask about professional services, phone support, and web-based support. Ask how your customers get information on new products.

7. Breakout sessions
It is sometimes easier and more productive to have discussions and get feedback from smaller groups. There may also be certain discussion areas that are more interesting to some groups than to others. By facilitating smaller, more focused sessions you can often get more detailed feedback.

8. Review
During the review you just touch on the main points discussed and discovered throughout the day. Be sure to ask what they liked and disliked about the session. You should also solicit suggestions for improvement so that you can continually improve how you handle customer advisory boards.

 

Utilizing a customer advisory board provides a direct channel to customer insights, crucial for refining and validating product strategies with real-world feedback. This approach not only tests assumptions but also uncovers what customers truly value in your offerings, ensuring they meet market needs and solve actual problems effectively.

Incorporating the information uncovered during a CAB helps maintain focus on customer requirements and market trends, shaping a product development process that’s responsive and aligned with user expectations. This strategic engagement is key to developing relevant, competitive products that drive growth and enhance customer satisfaction.

Customer advisory board resources:

8 Essential Elements of Your Customer Advisory Board Meeting Agenda

Transforming Business Goals with Customer Experience Insights: An Interview with Erin Knobler

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  • Pragmatic Editorial Team

    The Pragmatic Editorial Team comprises a diverse team of writers, researchers, and subject matter experts. We are trained to share Pragmatic Institute’s insights and useful information to guide product, data, and design professionals on their career development journeys. Pragmatic Institute is the global leader in Product, Data, and Design training and certification programs for working professionals. Since 1993, we’ve issued over 250,000 product management and product marketing certifications to professionals at companies around the globe. For questions or inquiries, please contact [email protected].

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