Customer Advocacy Board or Customer Advisory Board?

Julie Schifter

Dear network  

I would like to hear your opinion on a semantic question regarding what to name a customer board. 
Do you have any thoughts, reflections, opinions about whether a customer board should be called a Customer Advocacy Board or a Customer Advisory Board. 

A reflection from my side is that a Customer Advisory Board is a part of a Customer Advocacy Programme and so it has a cascading effect. However, I am not sure about this. 

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Best 

Julie

Robert Kaloustian

Hi Julie,

What are you trying to accomplish with the board?   Are you are looking for guidance on corporate strategies, input on products and services, and new ideas on how to solve industry/verticle challenges?  If so, then I would say Customer Advisory Board.  I like Customer Advisory Board because of the root word "Advise".   You want to make sure it is clear that the group is there to give feedback and input, but not there be another way for customers to get commitment from product management to do their particular enhancement request (which may not make sense for the broader company, for example).  Advocacy, to me, sounds like more focus on current customer's specific needs/requests, versus get insights into what may be coming to keep your company competitive and the broad customer base happy.   

So, I am not a fan of Advocacy boards as the advocacy things should happen without being on the board thru the CSM or through digital means.   A byproduct of the Advisory board would, for sure, be an advocacy dimension.

my 2 cents.

Rob

BenB

Hi Julie, 

At my last employer we used Customer Advisory Board .  I'm not sure how much the name played into it, but we had a lot of success with the group.  We were a ERP /CRM style software specficially for the IT, Managed Service space- so we had a group of about 10 customers.   They commited to 2 meet ups a year and we'd prsesent company direction, platform enhancements.  Their feedback was critical especially becuase we were playing in a specific market and the community aspect was critical. 

short version - Customer Advisory Board sounds good to me  

Jeff Heckler

As @Robert Kaloustian states, this depends on your goal.

Advocacy and Advisory have different intentions with different goals.

I have built different versions of both and would be very happy to discuss.

- Jeff