Often times, companies create a Customer Advisory Board without thinking through the overall design of the board, including the theme, purpose and reason for the advisory board.
One way to provide clarity in the design of your Customer Advisory Board is to identify what type of board you currently have or would like to create. We categorize Customer Advisory Boards into three stages or levels: level 1 – customer satisfaction, level 2 – product roadmap and level 3 – strategic.
Customer Advisory Board confusion arises because of the way companies think about advisory boards and how they mix and match different levels of advisory boards.
If you have a level 1 customer satisfaction Customer Advisory Board, you can’t expect a member of that board to provide strategic insights or strategic feedback to your company. If you want a level 3 strategic Customer Advisory Board, you need strategic executives and influencers as members to give you strategic input.
Some focuses of a strategic Customer Advisory Board include: M&A, new pricing models, and new direction for the company.
Watch the video below to learn more about the Customer Advisory Board levels. Let us know in the comments: what level of Customer Advisory Board do you have? Do you have a blend of more than one level?
Check out the other videos in the series on Why Customer Advisory Boards fail: