16 best practices for creating customer councils

July 16, 2009 by Chris Koch

I was researching the ITSMA archives this week to see what we’ve written about customer councils over the years and discovered some great advice that I pass along here:

  • Research what customers would like to see from a council—make a few calls to lead customers before getting started.
  • Vet potential members careful to make sure they are all genuine peers.
  • Create a set of common objectives as a basis for collaboration, such as:
    • Knowledge creation
    • Market change
    • Policy change
    • Organizational change
  • Consider bringing in a partner to coordinate/facilitate the council
  • Engage customers with broad themes of common interest.
  • Limit the number of members—no more than 25 at each meeting.
  • Use the Chatham House rule: “When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed.”
  • No selling—ever.
  • Do pre-meeting interviews to determine top-of-mind issues.
  • Give customers an opportunity to shape your strategy—and be accountable for following through.
  • Consider pairing one of your top executives with a top executive from a customer to build relationship and shepherd participation in various customer programs.
  • Use the customer council to feed an executive education program/forum whereby the content developed within the customer council is presented to a larger audience.
  • Create a reliable content output stream to keep customers engaged and coming back.
  • Consider an external company as a co-sponsor to bring fresh perspective (and to share the workload).
  • Integrate the council into other activities, such as conferences, social media, and reference programs.
  • Offer access to something that customers can get nowhere else.

What would you change on this list? What would you add?

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Categories: Customer Relationships, Thought Leadership • Permalink • View Comments

  • Very important addition, Eyal. Thanks.
  • Chris - thanks for coming up with this list. I would add that unless the CEO of the company that is sponsoring the CAB is truly committed over the long run, most companies just spend a lot of time and effort designing and creating an advisory board, just to find that there is no support at the top.

    By that time you have made some promises to your customers and that creates an unhealthy situation.

    So, make sure you have the "C level" green light before designing and running an advisory board!

    Best,

    Eyal
  • Great advice, Rob. Thanks.
  • Hi Chris -- great list here. What always surprises me, though, is the gap between theory and practice. Many of the companies I work with and talk to about councils "know" most of this, but rarely do they actually operate this way.

    Part of the problem is simply time: Doing councils the "right" way generally requires a substantial investment in time from a number of relatively senior folks, both to work with council members in an ongoing way (not just at meetings) and to work the resulting isight back through the organization. This often gets cut short.

    But another problem is conceptual. Getting truly strategic value from councils requires not only "no selling," as you say, but an even more fundamental shift in thinking toward genuine engagement on core market issues. Even when council managers resist the temptation to toot their own horn, they often keep the conversation on relatively tactical issues like current offerings and relationships rather than more forward looking dives into emerging issues and problems.

    Finally, there are still real issues around capturing and articulating the value the councils can bring; absent compelling measures (which do exist!), it's always hard to justify the full investment required to follow through on the best practices you've outlined. Maybe that's a subject for another post!
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