Customer Advisory Board

Customer Advisory Boards are designed to gain valuable customer insights to inform product development, services expectations and market understanding. They can be extremely valuable to a SaaS company in developing the right strategic and operational plans to drive company strategic direction.

 The question I get asked the most is

My answer is always yes. However, the timing is crucial as to when you start a CAB and continue to invest annually. I have seen many SaaS companies start a CAB and then not maintain it on a regular cadence. The preparation, structure, data collected and communication back to customers is what makes a CAB more effective. Customers will lose faith in a company’s real commitment to their product’s innovative future roadmap, when a CAB becomes a one and done and not a VOC program that will continue on a regular cadence.

When to Create a CAB

I recommend creating a Voice of the Customer (VOC) program first. This program is where you will establish a committee of folks across the various departments of the company and determine what types of customer feedback you want to collect and the frequency. The CAB then becomes one of the initiatives within this program.

Once you have a well thought out VOC program, it will become clear as to when a company is ready to invest in a CAB initiative.

The requirements for a well executed CAB are much more complex than other customer feedback programs, like surveys and interviews. The following are the key elements to consider before adding the CAB to your VOC program:

1. Is the Product Management team at a critical decision point on how to drive new and expansion customer growth?

2. Is the Product Management team perplexed on how best to stay competitive and become the leader in the GTM target markets?

3. Are you at a decision point as to which target markets and ICPs to focus on that will produce the revenue and customer growth goals?

4. Is the information from the current VOC programs not informative enough or detailed enough to help the product team to know the right direction to take with the current and future product roadmap?

5. Are you ready to formalize a beta program with members of the CAB?

6. Do you have the budget and team to support a regular cadence of a annual or biannual CAB meeting?

These are just some of the questions to consider when deciding when to add a CAB to the VOC program. A proper, well run CAB does take time, budget and resources to organize, conduct and evaluate and analyze the customer information collected. It requires the development and communication of a quarterly roadmap plan that shows the customer feedback is being incorporated into the future product roadmap plan.

Who should be on a CAB?

CABs should be a reflection of the SaaS company’s target markets and ICPs. This may include customers of various sizes, industries and/or focus on specific process areas. Some may recommend that the CAB should have customers who are detractors and not satisfied with the current product. While, you may have a few customers on the CAB that are detractors, it is also important to have customers who are utilizing the solution in a fully operational manner and can share the various unique ways they are using the solution. It’s important to have customers who can share a vision for how the solution can provide more value and ROI and have a real business impact.

It is also important to have the right customer roles represented at the CAB. It is fantastic to have executives, but you also need the folks that know the software well and support the user’s day to day challenges in using the software. You want customer team members who will be the visionaries on how they plan to use your solution to revolutionize their internal processes to lower costs, improve efficiencies and innovations and/or drive revenue streams as well as how to make the solution easy to use for the day to day users.

For example, I served on the CAB for Concur Technologies back in 1997, when they first started with an off the shelf expense package. I purchased the CD and brought it in house as our standard travel expense solution. I then hired a contractor to build an automatic interface from the expense file the Concur software created into our A/P system. My goal was to create a streamlined, automated expense reporting and payment process internally to reduce the accounting staff required to manually audit each expense report and to reimburse employees within a week from submitted an expense report. We incorporated a new exception based policy where we only audited a few expense reports each week at random. It lowered our staff and costs to support this process significantly. When the CEO heard about how I was using the software, he asked me to be on the Advisory board. In the CAB meeting, I did a whiteboard showing them the solution I built and was currently using in production across thousands of employees using their software as the front end. Too bad, I didn’t think to build it myself. Concur used that to drive their future product roadmap and become the company they are today. That is the power of having the right customer and team members on your CAB.

How to Structure a CAB?

There are many approaches to structuring a CAB meeting. I will focus on the most effective CAB structures and agenda topics I have experienced.

I recommend breaking the CAB meetings into different sections. There will be general sessions and then breakout sessions to get into more specific topics. Only a few of these need to be utilized at each CAB meeting. This list isn’t intended to recommend a CAB have all of these topics in every CAB meeting, but to give an idea of the various topics that should be a part of a CAB meeting depending on what the SaaS company’s current product roadmap strategic challenges are.

The following are the most common general topic areas:

1. Introductions

2. A few Customer demos on how they uniquely use the solution successfully

3. Overview of the top Customer requests and bugs (80/20 rule) by target market, ICP

4. Planned Product Roadmap for next two years

5. Summary Session at the end to review Findings

6. Interactive Customer Feedback session after a Product Roadmap presentation

7. Additional comments and suggestions

8. Next steps and customer communication plan on updated Strategic Roadmap Plan.

Common Breakout sessions:

1. Brainstorm sessions: Breakout sessions by specific process or product areas. (Conduct simultaneously so the teams can divide and conquer).

2. Storyboard sessions: Breakout sessions by specific process or product areas. (Conduct simultaneously so the teams can divide and conquer).

3. Review of Customer’s top 10 product enhancement requests and bug resolution process improvements.

A breakout session can begin by defining the problem, setting clear rules, and encouraging a free-flowing exchange of ideas, then use a visual tool like a whiteboard (Miro) or digital platform to capture and organize those ideas into a structured storyboard. 

Preparing for a CAB Session

· Define the Problem:

Clearly articulate the problem(s) and challenges the customers have shared to date.  This can be based on your current VOC program data analysis across all areas of the product and summarized into the top priorities and most common requests across customers from the target markets and ICPs.

Focus in on no more than 3 strategic areas (workflow, process flow or new capability) that represent 80/20 rule of your target market and ICPs, ensuring everyone understands the scope of the brainstorming session. 

· Set Ground Rules:

Establish clear rules for the session, such as deferring judgment, encouraging wild ideas, building on others' ideas, and staying focused. 

· Designate a Facilitator:

Designate someone to guide the session, keep it on track, and ensure everyone has a chance to participate. 

· Select a Visual Tool:

If the session is virtual, then a tool like Miro works well for everyone to contribute to a structure for collecting ideas, or a digital platform like Mural, or a similar tool to create the storyboard. 
If the session is in person, then large whiteboards or pads on easels around the room will be needed to collect everyone’s ideas. Prepare sticky notes, markers, or other tools needed for the visual brainstorming process. 

Conducting a CAB Session:

· Categorize & Organize:

As ideas are generated, begin to group and categorize them, looking for patterns and connections. 

· Build on Ideas:

Encourage participants to build upon each other's ideas, fostering a collaborative environment. 

· Time box the Session:

Set a time limit for the brainstorming session to keep it focused and productive.  

Breakout Sessions or Storyboarding:

• Create a Visual Representation: Use the collected ideas to create a storyboard, categorizing the ideas into processes or workflows, which can be a visual representation of the product's features, user flows, or potential solutions.

• Use Storyboarding Techniques: Consider techniques like process or user flows, scenarios, or key features to organize your ideas.

• Iterate and Refine: Review the storyboard with the team and adjust as needed. 

The biggest challenge will be to ensure the focus is on the most common uses of the software to improve the business operations and make the highest impacts. It is sometimes easy in these brainstorming sessions to get caught up in the weeds on non-value topics or focus on the exception to the rule, rather than the rule.

You can divert these conversations by asking more questions;

1. Why is this important that it work or flow a specific way?

2. What is the business impact?

3. How often is this process or capability utilized by the users?

Follow Up CAB session:

Post-Session:

• Document the Ideas: Capture the ideas and the storyboard for future reference.

• Prioritize and Select: Based on the storyboard and the brainstorming session, prioritize the most promising ideas.

• Share and Discuss: Share the storyboard and the prioritized ideas with stakeholders for feedback and further refinement. 

Customers love to see a summary of the results of a CAB. They want to see their thoughts and ideas incorporated into the future product roadmap plans. It makes them feel like their time was well spent and that the company really cares about their customer’s viewpoint is. It shows customers that the software company is passionate about making a difference for businesses in their specific target markets as well as a commitment to making an impact to their business personally.

As always, your comments and suggestions are welcome. If this article was interesting, please share our newsletter with your friends and colleagues. If you would like help with your VOC program, please feel free to reach out at [email protected].