As a consultant for customer advisory boards (CABs), I always find it fascinating to learn how other CAB practitioners, who aren’t our clients, run their programs. This highlights that there are many ways to manage a CAB, and each company must tailor their approach to fit their unique customers and markets. While it’s debatable if there’s a definite “right way” to do things, there are best practices that usually lead to better program outcomes. Because of this, it’s hard not to step in and offer help to companies that are making, let’s say, unusual choices—especially when CAB managers acknowledge that their programs aren’t performing well.
I heard several such methods at a recent customer engagement conference I attended. Here are a few, and how they can harm a CAB program:
- “Our CAB has 50 members”: Your CAB program should be a small, focused group of leaders that reflects a range of your customers to discuss common challenges and industry trends. Too many members can undermine the close collaboration needed and limit the relationships that grow from CAB member involvement. In reality, having this many members feels more like an open invitation to anyone interested. Furthermore, having more than 16-18 CAB members in a room often means that most won’t get a chance to speak or engage in the conversation.
- “Our CAB is a mix of executives and product users”: CABs should consist of similar titles, levels or company responsibilities to encourage discussion of shared challenges, and members will always respond well when seeing their colleagues in the same room. Having any type of “mix” leads to a muddled, unfocused discussion, with some potentially talking strategies while others concentrate on tactical product features and functions. In our experience, executives hearing the latter will likely leave the CAB never to return. As such, CAB managers must focus on serving one group or the other, and ensure their meeting content meets the needs of their specific membership.
- “Our CIO picks all our CAB members”: While I’m sure this CIO is a smart professional who can recognize the same in his customer base, is he aware of which of his customers are happy and which ones are unsatisfied? Does he know which customers are expanding operations or have the highest potential for new business? Determining the best members for a CAB requires defining ideal customers – companies and people – obtaining representation from a determined cross-section, and gathering input from myriad departments, including sales and support in addition to the product implementation team. Having one person pick who he likes for his CAB likely misses the mark.
- “Our CAB holds monthly conference calls”: While it’s good to keep your customers informed on your company developments and updated on CAB outcomes, it’s always a balance to not burden your CAB with too many interactions, or they will quickly burn out, lose interest and drop out. Holding well-planned annual face-to-face meetings and interim strategy conference calls usually does the trick, unless there is a specific taskforce created that needs to meet more regularly. The person who told me this said their monthly calls are focused exclusively around their product enhancements, showing that her group is really more technical user group than a true CAB – a constant theme I encountered with many CAB managers I spoke to.
- “Our customers must apply to join our CAB program”: One CAB manager admitted that her CAB included free travel junkets that had her customers clambering to join. As such, her company’s solution was to put membership in the hands of their customers, leading to inevitable disappointment for those not selected to join. Instead, we recommend CAB members be carefully defined, nominated, prioritized and recruited in the proper manner to obtain a balanced, ideal membership for optimal results.
While there are certainly many ways of managing a CAB program, best practices have emerged that lead to the best results for companies that are committed to them. CAB managers who admit their programs are going less than well frequently have made some odd choices – often at the direction of their senior management.