A big challenge Customer Advisory Board Program Managers face is how to create an engaging and compelling Customer Advisory Board or Customer Advisory Council meeting agenda. A key element that many B2B companies don’t have in place is to conduct personal interviews with Customer Advisory Board (CAB) members prior to finalizing the meeting agenda.
Here is a process and some best practices that work for conducting personal interviews with Customer Advisory Board members.
- Determine top of mind topics. Find out from your executive team and internal subject matter experts what are the most important topics and burning issues for your company to get strategic feedback from CAB members. Thinking from the customer perspective, what are their most burning concerns and issues?
- Create a discussion guide. Include at the most 6 key topic areas with a few discussion points per topic to frame the personal interview conversation. Include the purpose or theme of the Customer Advisory Board.
- Conduct interviews. Schedule 30-minute phone meetings with CAB members at least 2 to 3 months in advance of the face-to-face meeting and send the discussion guide prior to the interview. Find out the CAB member’s top preferred topics.
- Summarize interviews. Provide the key highlights and comments including the highest 3 priority topics for the CAB member.
- Create executive report with key insights. Summarize the top topics and highlights from all CAB member interviews to enable your executive team to see the key points.
- Create agenda. Incorporate the most important topics into the agenda sessions.
Although the personal interview process can be time consuming, you will have an agenda that is based on what the CAB members want and what will benefit your company the most. Customer Advisory Board members will appreciate the planning of the agenda and will be more engaged during the meeting.
