Just a quick recap for those who were not able to attend this excellent event, which is the only event dedicated to Customer Advisory Boards worldwide!
The day started with David Coates of Iron Mountain, an Ignite Advisory Group client who discussed the branding and marketing communications aspects of creating a world class advisory board and shared examples of the actual materials produced with attendees in the room.
Donna Cobb, Director of CAB Programs at AT&T spoke next regarding key considerations in managing a global Customer Advisory Board. It was fascinating to hear how Donna facilitates advisory board discussions with people from different cultures.
Niall Fahy from Oracle shared the techniques he uses to ensure CAB members engage in customer reference activity. It was interesting to learn that CAB members are required to partake in X number of reference calls a year to qualify for membership on the board.
Eyal Danon, founder of Ignite Advisory Group presented on the Top 10 Challenges to creating a world class Customer Advisory Board, sharing new research that plots the evolution of CABs and ranks success based on a magic quadrant.
The afternoon panel featured attendees from Adobe, PNC Bank, HCL and Equifax who started by discussing “if you had an unlimited budget and magic wand for your CAB program, what would you do first…” Answers ranged from starting additional CABs to meet business demands and recruiting more staff to help manage the program.
The roundtable discussion this year enabled attendees to meet with peers form similar industries – namely Technology, Software, Finance, Services and Health. Each table discussed the top topics that their CABs are focused on today and shared lessons learned running CABs that are unique to each industry sector.
The presentations, along with a group photo for all attendees at Harvard, are now available online. A big thanks to the CustomerAdvisoryBoard.org industry association – www.CustomerAdvisoryBoard.org for producing another great conference!