Building Towards Customer Advisory Board

One of my long-term goals for our CS team is to launch a Customer Advisory Board, but it isn't the immediate priority. To kick things off, I'd like to host some sessions with our clients by vertical.

Has anyone hosted smaller sessions with a group of customers to allow them to meet each other, discuss best practices, ideate and collect product feedback? What made them successful?
What steps have you taken to launch/formalize a Customer Advisory Board?

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Eileen Bonney

@Laura Lakhwara Do you happen to have an updated link of the above recording? I'm interested in learning more from David's experience.

Laura Lakhwara

@David L Ellin Thank you for the great overview on launching a CAB for B2B Customers at eBay. It's clear the structure, c-suite engagement, commitment from clients and outcome-driven planning helped drive its success.

For all those interested in listening, here is a recording of today's call.

https://softbankrobotics.zoom.us/rec/share/zMZeJerX1kNOaaPVxlGDe6Q6J767X6a813BIqKINyk1ejpbvDdxq-mKj_4vTtKk3 Password: 3Q*54214

David Ellin

Thanks, @Anita Toth. The key is building sessions that create connection, interaction, and participation as opposed to presentations.

Anita Toth

Thank you so much @David L Ellin ! The session was very helpful. I'm going to remember the 9 dot product roadmap exercise for future use.

Mike Gospe

Hi Laura,

I've been following the thread on Customer Advisory Boards. As a professional CAB facilitator for 20 years, I'm sharing my treasure chest of best practices, models (for in person and virtual meetings), everything! This is a 4 part live-online course that begins on July 21. Tons of content and opportunities to dialog with others on CAB best practices. http://tinyurl.com/cabmasterclass

Also, I've posted a ton of best practices on my CAB Resource Center.

Laura Lakhwara

@Andreas Knoefel

What tool did you use to manage community or was this built into your product?
Can you share numbers: # of CAB members and customer base?

This is helpful insight. Thank you!

David Ellin

I’ll also put some slides together that can be shared and posted.

Andreas Knoefel

I'll take notes

David Ellin

Go for it. As long as someone captures notes feel free to post.

[Deleted User]

And... do you mind if we promote this call?

[Deleted User]

@David L Ellin would you guys mind posting notes from this discussion afterward? This may be a really cool topic for the Operator Excellence Series.

Andreas Knoefel

I have implemented both:

A user community physical and remote mostly for endusers, where product Marketing and CS collaborated on the day-to-day topics on issues with our offerings,and

a Customer Advisory Board with Sr. Executives. In order to get on this board, you had to exceptional, or a Champion (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/leverage-your-champions-andreas-knoefel/). As part of me running CS, I establish a baseline for my average customer. Those who move above and beyond are doing something better, and we focus on harnessing them and their excellence: Speakers at conferences & webinars, whitepapers, and being invited to the CAB by our Exec Sponsor to theirs. 2x year they met and discussed how to align our strategic initiatives with theirs. Great success.

Will Pagden

will@webeo.com thank you!

Will Pagden

It should and could have been very successful, they key to all things relating to feedback is that you allow yourself to take the feedback on board. The founders created the product and thus became very protective when it came to constructive criticism.

Laura Lakhwara

Feel free to drop your email to get the invite. Thank you again, @David L Ellin .

Wednesday, July 15 at 7am PST/10am EST

Join Zoom Meeting
https://softbankrobotics.zoom.us/j/99872792025?pwd=akFQZVVBNCsyQzYrMVlPblgzQ1o1dz09

Meeting ID: 998 7279 2025
Password: 471247
One tap mobile
+16699006833,,99872792025#,,,,0#,,471247# US (San Jose)
+13462487799,,99872792025#,,,,0#,,471247# US (Houston)

Laura Lakhwara

@Will Pagden this is interesting to have this separated out. I appreciate your candidacy on whether it was successful.

Laura Lakhwara

Yes, on my end. Thank you!

Will Pagden

I can move some stuff to make it work! If it works for everyone else.

David Ellin

Does next Wednesday at 10 am ET work?

Will Pagden

Definitely interested in joining David.

Will Pagden

Hi @Nathan J. R. Petersen we actually had a Customer Experience team whose whole focus was on running user groups and customer events. About 14 people in the team and they rolled up through the COO. It doesnt make any sense and was purely a political thing in the company but it they took responsibility for those things.

Laura Lakhwara

Yes, that would be fantastic, @David L Ellin .

Anita Toth

What a great offer @David L Ellin. I'd love to participate on that call.

David Ellin

I started a Customer Advisory Board from scratch in my role as Vice President of Customer Success for a large B2B division of eBay. I'd be happy to host a Zoom call for anyone exploring CABs and share my experience. I can talk about customer selection/vetting, prep structure, meeting structure, follow up, etc.

Let me know if you're interested in hopping on a Zoom to discuss. If not, I can post more detail in this string.

Brian Hartley

Hey @Nathan J. R. Petersen good question, should have clarified. That was out of 70 clients.

Nathan Petersen

I'm in the same boat Laura,

thanks for asking such a good question, @Will Pagden when you say "customer experience team", are you referencing like Customer Care/ Customer Success team, or a whole other entity? if so what umbrella did that team fall underneath?

@Brian Hartley can you give me some scaled perspective, you had 10-14 customers on this 'advisory board' out of 10,000? or out of 50 clients?

Laura Lakhwara

Very valuable. Thank you for sharing!

Laura Lakhwara

This is a great example. Thank you!

Brian Hartley

Hi @Laura Lakhwara I have had a mixed bag of results.

At my old job our intent was to have a true advisory board with high-level stakeholders giving us incredible feedback....the reality was more of a super, power user session discussing how they use the tool and what needed to be added to the roadmap. Once we embraced that model, the "advisory" board was a big hit and we did it twice a year.
We stated our purpose up front of what the purpose of the board was and what we expected of the members. Sort of a terms and conditions if you will. From there we worked with our directors to source good candidates and began working with them to make it happen. We were also fortunate to cover the cost of the hotel rooms when they came into town, that was helpful in driving attendance. On average we had 10-14 customers.

Will Pagden

Good topic and one I am looking at currently.

I am in a start-up so slightly different approach but I am looking to introduce a Customer Advisory Board.

In answer to the above:

At previous companies we did "Interest Groups" which was industry specific and run by a customer experience team.
We invited our best customers, set monthly meetings and made sure we fedback the minutes to the entire organisaiton, this worked well!