Six ways to measure your Customer Advisory Board success

Customer Advisory Boards get customer marketers face-to-face time with their customers. These boards are a great opportunity to get feedback to improve the customer-facing part of your business.

But how do you measure its success? Your post-CAB survey or a CAB scorecard will show how successful your customer advisory board has been.

You can also include a wide array of metrics:

CAB survey satisfaction scores

This is a more simple point, but no less useful. You should be used to producing CSAT surveys for existing customers. Doing a survey for your CAB then, should be a no-brainer.

CABs are a much smaller group than your total customer base so you’ll be able to analyze the results in a timely manner. They also give access to specific customers so you can get a detailed explanation for their choice of answer.

Number of ideas implemented

Ideas = Interest. CABs consist of customers who are passionate about your product. These customers also have a vested interest in improving your processes.

Monitoring the number of ideas that come out of your CAB meetings is one metric to consider. It determines if your CAB is still engaged and invested in your program.

However, it’s also important to note that this isn’t the most accurate metric to prove success. Creativity and innovation come in ebbs and flows; you'll see changes in the number of ideas over time.

But, if contributions become less with each meeting, your CAB may benefit from a change in structure, timeline, or even members.

Number of changes made to the roadmap

This is a way of seeing the results of your CAB in action. The roadmap for your company as a whole, for your customer marketing team, or other departments as a result of the ideas, pain points, and needs revealed in the CAB, is a very good indication of its success.

This type of metric is best used in the long term, as ideas will often take time to implement, and then proven to be a success. Perhaps use this as a metric in a yearly or six-month review.

Measure customer feedback to determine how a certain customer feels over time. Make sure to collect customer feedback and then use it to align business goals and improve your bottom line.

Remember that a better experience current customers have, the more attractive your company is to potential customers. The cycle continues, and soon more and customers will reach the peak of the customer journey and become brand advocates.

Number of repeat CAB members

Now, while it's certainly important to switch up your CAB members to keep the program fresh, repeat members are also vital to the variety within your CAB.

They’re the ones who’ll be the most well-informed when it comes to your company culture, your brand presentation, your company processes, and more. These are the members that will be able to build on what's come before, understand each success and failure, and then use these to help inform newer members' ideas.

The number of repeat CAB members is also a fantastic indication for your CAB success as they’re direct evidence of your company’s ability to retain customers, turn them into advocates, and improve the overall lifecycle value of your customer base as a whole.

If you have a constantly rotating door of CAB members, it’s also likely that your existing customer base rotates, since those in your CAB are already the most invested customers you have. If they’re not interested in sticking around, your CAB is never going to be useful or successful.

If you see the number of repeat CAB members go down, be sure to do a thorough dissection of why each one left, and how you can improve things on your end to increase that number again. Think about how to improve customer satisfactions and customer advocacy. Make sure to realign your efforts with customer centricity. Use customer satisfactions scores and customer feedback to create a more positive experience for your target audience.

Comparison between CAB members vs other customers

When we talk about making comparisons with your CAB members and your existing customer base, we mean comparing things like retention, renewal, cross-sell, and upsell.

In most cases, the customers that make up your CAB board are already your most valuable customers. These are the ones who have become raving champions of your brand; your biggest of the big customer advocates.

So, if your CAB members represent a portion of your ‘ideal customers’, how does this compare to the rest of your customer base? What’s the rate of retention? What percentage of your customers is renewing at the same rate of your CAB?

If the difference is big, then consider how your CAB can work to make that gap smaller. That is, after all, a common reason why CABs are created in the first place.

If you begin your CAB and the percentage gap gets smaller over time, then you can consider your CAB a success. If the opposite is true, you need to go back to the drawing board.

Perhaps there’s a disparity between the purpose of the CAB and what your customer base actually needs from you. Are you taking in the feedback your CAB is offering, and then implementing it in the best way possible?

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Number of CAB customers that become advocates for your brand

Now, as we said before, it’s common for your CAB members to be the biggest advocates for your brand. After all, these are going to be the type of customers that are invested in your company.

But consider how much conversion takes place due to your CAB board. Is there a loyal customer who is close to becoming an advocate, and for whom a place on the CAB will be a motivating factor to convert to advocacy? Do your past CAB members remain advocates of your brand after they’ve finished their time as a CAB member?

These things will tell you a lot about the integrity of your company outside of your CAB, as well as your ability to retain customers and advocates once this super-engaged relationship changes to something more passive. Does your organization speak for itself when it comes to its value to your advocates?

Listen & learn

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