5 Steps to a WOW Customer Advisory Board – even on a Tight Budget.
There are so many ways to gather customer feedback these days. You can survey. You can ask your inbound customer service agents for insights. You can listen to calls or read transcripts. You can do the deep dive on your stats. And, if you’re looking for some verbatim responses to some very specific questions, you can run focus groups. All of these are smart, valuable approaches. But they all have their limitations, too.
If your brand is at a stage where you need more strategic feedback and guidance on what’s working, what’s not working – and what your customers really want – a customer advisory board might be the smartest next step.
What is a Customer Advisory Board (CAB)?
“Customer service shouldn’t just be a department, it should be the entire company.”
– Tony Hsieh
A growing number of organizations – from startups to established, respected brands – invite a small group of carefully selected customers to a meeting (or an ongoing series of meetings). During the sessions, attendees are asked to give frank, in-depth feedback on every aspect of their customer experience with your brand.
Why Use a CAB?
When set up well and used effectively, these sessions can result in priceless insights and guidance that you can use to make course corrections, fix problems at virtually any stage of the customer experience, develop new services or products, adjust pricing, redefine target markets or explore new markets.
Here are 5 Steps to Get Started
1. Invite the Right Customers
Customer feedback is most useful and fruitful when it’s actually from those customers who part of your target market. If you’re rich with customer demographics, psychographics, buying habits and profitability, it’s easier to get started. Ideally, you’ll have a list that includes your most profitable customers as well as your customers who are buying less than they once did (because you want to know what changed). Enlist the help of your sales team to get the right names. But once you’ve created a list of “good on paper” candidates, be sure you invest some time in interacting with them. If the person isn’t a strong, clear communicator who is willing to open up, you’re just wasting everyone’s time asking them to participate.
If you’re a small or emerging company, don’t let that stop you from asking customers to participate. Most customers will appreciate being recognized as valuable.
2. Set Goals that Benefit Both Parties and are S.M.A.R.T.
Be sure you’re clear – with yourself, your team, and the customers themselves, about what you’re hoping to learn. And don’t leave it at pie-in-the-sky language. You’re not hosting a tea party because wouldn’t that be fun… You’re asking your treasured customers to give you’re their time and opinions so you can serve them better at every point in their experience with you. So be sure you’re able to articulate what your customer will get out of participating. And be sure you clearly understand exactly what kinds of information you’re aiming to glean. Your goals for the sessions need to be Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, and Time-Bound.
3. Make Your Agenda Welcoming, Appreciative, and In-Sync With Your Goals
Fortune 100 companies routinely run CAB’s that run across several days. That doesn’t mean you need to. You do need to create sessions that clearly review subjects which you’ll be discussing and make it easy for your participants to share their honest opinions. Include products, services, ease of transaction, quality of customer care, pricing, and who your customers perceive as your competition. And be sure your agenda includes multiple, varied ways for you to convey your appreciation and thanks.
4. Show That You’re Serious By Acting On Input
A quick way to undo all your effort is to fail to follow up with the people who showed up to your meeting. Post-meeting communications are critical to keeping the lines of communication open and building on the goodwill and momentum your event sets in motion. That starts with an immediate, brief email or text after the event. But more importantly, you need to send a summary of what you heard, how you’re planning to use the feedback, and inviting participants to write back with clarifications or even new insights.
5. Stay in Touch
Once you’ve asked for this level of input, you’re in a committed relationship. Truth is, you may have very few substantive updates to share within the first few months after your first meeting. That’s fine. Just be sure you’re treating these special customers like they are, indeed, special. Send regular emails. Share a direct email address they can use to reach out to you. And, whenever practical, invited these same individuals back next time. Remember, we live in an age of instant online opinion sharing. You want these customers singing your praises.
At Skybridge Americas, we specialize in delivering superior customers experiences. If you’d like to know more about how we can help you reach your CX goals, please reach out. We would love to talk!
-Bobby Matthews
Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing
Skybridge Americas
bmatthews@skybridgeamericas.com
Find out how Skybridge Americas can help you delight your customers and grow your business.
We seamlessly integrate our superior customer care skills with your brand messaging. For more information, contact us at 763-299-4570 or submit our contact form.
