Unleash the Power of Customer Insight
Challenge
When executed properly, Customer Advisory Boards can offer valuable information on customer needs and satisfaction. During these sessions, customers openly express their opinions and executives learn about product performance, leading to problem-solving and a stronger partnership.
However, many companies fail to maximize these meetings due to limited planning, minimal leadership involvement, one-sided information flow, fear of disclosing significant problems to customers, defensive employee responses, overloaded agendas, excessive customer politeness, or a lack of meeting design and specified purpose.
Why Strategic Offsites?
Customer Advisory Board meetings bring companies and their valued customers together, offering a learning and business opportunity beyond marketing and sales. Executives should view these meetings as a collaboration with customers to solve real problems and shape a mutually beneficial future. Our typical approach to Customer Advisory Boards includes:
Engaging key functions to develop focused, achievable objectives for the Customer Advisory Board
Engaging key functions to develop focused, achievable objectives for the Customer Advisory Board
Engaging key functions to develop focused, achievable objectives for the Customer Advisory Board
Engaging key functions to develop focused, achievable objectives for the Customer Advisory Board
Engaging key functions to develop focused, achievable objectives for the Customer Advisory Board
Maximize your Customer Advisory Boards' impact and drive benefits for both your company and customers with our comprehensive approach. Our targeted pre-reads, pre- and post-meeting surveys, cutting-edge in-meeting technology, heat mapping, and expertly guided conversations ensure that each meeting is a powerful tool for gathering crucial customer insights.
Revitalizing the Customer Advisory Board: A Brief Case Study on Improved Communication and Collaboration
The Situation
A major hotel chain running Customer Advisory Boards with corporate clients realized they had become one-sided and unproductive. Clients rarely gave feedback and employees responded defensively, discouraging future feedback. After many unproductive sessions, the hotel chain wanted to put the "advisory" back into its Customer Advisory Boards.
Our Approach
To promote real dialogue, we structured a day for the Customer Advisory Board that encouraged attendees to collaborate and share ideas. We:
- Set objectives and topics for the Customer Advisory Board with hotel executives
- Gathered insights from past Customer Advisory Board meetings
- Established design principles to avoid past problems
- Surveyed Board members for input
- Created a detailed agenda with breakout exercises, structured table conversations, and anonymous polling
- Developed clear and concise presentations and exercises with accountable executives
- Facilitated the meeting to encourage candid feedback
- Aligned on clear next steps and surveyed Board members for feedback
The Results
The Customer Advisory Board was successfully transformed from an “extended commercial” into a constructive workshop, where the hotel chain could better understand the needs of its largest corporate customers.
The revitalized forum allowed for the free flow of ideas - from company to customer, customer to company, and customer to customer. The hotel chain gained valuable insights into what customers truly valued and discovered pain points they were previously unaware of such as the need to significantly restructure their customer loyalty program (specifically internationally) and change their selling approach by providing a much more tailored and consultative experience. As a result, customers felt heard and confident that their concerns would be addressed.