Who Owns the Customer Advisory Board?

One question I’m asked regularly is, “Who owns the Customer Advisory Board?” As with most things in business, the answer is, “It depends.”

To start, it helps to understand that the “owner” doesn’t necessarily mean the person who’s organising every aspect of board meetings. Think of the owner as the chairperson who drives the focus, strategy, agenda, and follow-up actions.

A different person can take the role similar to a company secretary who supports the effectiveness of the CAB by coordinating and facilitating the meetings and ensuring governance policies and procedures are followed.

It may even be that the company needs more than one CAB to focus on specific business lines, product lines, industries, or regions so different owners may be appropriate for each CAB.

The first step is to define what the company wants out of running CABs and then determine the level of resources available to support them — not just the meetings but driving appropriate teams to act on the advice and insight gained. From there you can identify the most appropriate owner for each CAB.

For example, if a CAB’s purpose is to develop, test, and improve:

• Strategy across the business, an executive who sits across business lines, e.g., CEO, COO, or Chief Customer Officer, is best placed
• Product roadmaps and features, then it may be the Chief Product Officer or product team leader
• Customer experience or service/support, then the Chief Customer Officer, Head of Customer Success, or Head of CX may take the lead
• GTM strategy, value propositions and demand gen programs, then the CRO, Chief Commercial Officer, Head of Sales, or CMO is in a good position
• Specific industry or regional strategy, then the industry or regional leader is best placed.

It can also depend on the size of the company and its customer list. An SMB may have the resources to support only one CAB so needs to make sure its purpose, structure and members can cover a wide range of topics and it has an owner with a similar cross-business view.

If you’d like to discuss what benefits you can gain from setting up a CAB, or how you can ‘tune up’ your existing CAB to get better outcomes, reach out for a chat.?

Written by?Jennifer Arnold