What’s your Customer Advisory Board Meeting THEME?

Having a theme for a meeting or the entire CAB program, is a great best practice. Why? A theme quickly communicates what the purpose, mission and objective of the CAB is succinctly in just a single 4-5 word phrase. For example, a large technology company was transitioning its customers from on-premise to cloud computing. They were looking for ways to accelerate their client base through this transition, while their clients were equally eager to migrate faster to the cloud. They selected the CAB theme of “Accelerating Cloud Migration” which lasted for over 2 years before they adapted the them to a new industry challenge. The theme focused the board and internal employee stakeholders on the key objective of the CAB, namely finding ways to help their clients through this transition and speed their deployments. Members attending the board immediately knew what the focus of converstaions would be, what ideas to bring to the table and what information to reserahc to prepare in advance. They were well prepared. It was not a generic “CAB” meeting which could cover existing products, new products, go-to-marketing, account management, multiple industry challenges, new industry trends, innovation, product roadmaps, customer success, client experience… the list is endless! You can’t expect a Customer Advisory Board agenda to encompass EVERYTHING you want to discuss with your clients. So it really helps to have a single theme. Other examples of CAB themes that companies have used include “Transitioning to virtual working” or “Enabling remote employee experiences” “Staying Ahead of Security Threats” “Building the Next Generation of Telco Infrastructure” “Defining Electrical Vehicle Industry Standards” etc etc. Each company that creates a Customer Advisory Board for their clients have their own unique differentiators and are solving problems uniquely in the industry they operate in. This should be the focu of the advisory board, i.e. its theme. Ideally the Customer Advisory Council is the only forum in the world where similar customers can sit down with their peers and discuss industry trends and opportunities and the theme dictates the scope and focus of these conversations. Also, once you have a THEME for your CAB it becomes very onvious who should be invited to particpate as CAB members. You can ask “Who in the customer base is most qualified to advise our company on the THEME?” it may be long term clients, new clients, clients using your product in unique ways, it all depends on the THEME of teh advisory board as to WHO is should be invited as not all clients can advise you on your unique CAB theme. Let us know if you have any questions regarding Customer Advisory Board themes?
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