Product-Focused Customer Advisory Boards (CABs)
What's the purpose of your Customer Advisory Board?
As a product guy, I want my most reflective and thoughtful clients that are aligned to our product vision to participate in the Customer Advisory Board (CAB).
However, most CABs are picked out by the sales, marketing and customer success teams looking to provide visibility and kudos to clients that we need to renew.
Is the purpose of your CAB to make clients feel special and be heard?
Or is it to improve the product (which also makes clients feel heard)?
It's important for Product people to know going into it why your company has setup a CAB.
The Sales/Marketing/Cust. Success oriented CAB (more typical) is usually a dog and pony show for the Product folks where you are on your heels most of the time justifying a long and detailed roadmap.
In the Product oriented CAB, you are there to seek input for a Now, Next, Later type roadmap that promises to work on themes and hit success metrics. The CAB helps you define which themes are most important to your client base and it helps you know what THEIR success metrics are wrt your technology.
In a Product-focused CAB, I tend to lightly interview LOTS of clients and invite ONLY the ones I think will be productive into my Product CAB. This can sometimes include very small clients if they are especially insightful.
My Product-focused CAB had a few "requirements" such as members of the CAB would commit to doing at least one pilot program a year where they would get early access to some feature and then provide us with detailed feedback on the impact of that product/feature. A true Product CAB requires the participants to give something to YOU.
Many Product folks try to avoid using the term CAB and prefer something like Product Advisory Council, Customer Development Partner, Design Partner, Pilot Program, Product Advisory Board, etc.
Jim coaches Product Management organizations in startups, growth stage companies and Fortune 100s.
He's a Silicon Valley founder with over two decades of experience including an IPO ($450 million) and a buyout ($168 million). These days, he coaches Product leaders and teams to find product-market fit and accelerate growth across a variety of industries and business models.
Jim graduated from Stanford University with a BS in Computer Science and currently lectures at University of California, Berkeley in Product Management.
