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Customer Advisory Group

February 8, 2007

Quality in a service or product is not what you put into it. It is what the client or customer gets out of it. ~Peter Drucker

In today's business environment, great customer service is not just a luxury that only a select few should possess. On the contrary, if a business wants to retain its customers, stellar service is mandatory, not optional.

We were dealing with a very good firm that was experiencing some significant customer service issues. High employee turnover combined with the lack of a good customer service monitoring system was resulting in inconsistent service quality. A customer service monitoring system is crucial to maintaining quality customer service.

One method of monitoring customer service is a customer satisfaction survey. These are generally very effective, but they often fall short when it comes to collecting negative feedback. In most cases, customers will avoid disclosing bad customer service as they do not want to be the bearer of bad news. Instead, they just leave, and you can only wonder what happened to them.

One way to deal with this shortcoming is to establish a customer advisory board (CAB). This is a great way to get good and honest feedback from your customers. A CAB will give you the information you need to improve your customer service, as well as your products and services.

The ideal CAB should be comprised of 8 to 10 customers and should meet twice a year. Members should be your best customers, normally selected from among the 20% that account for 80% of your sales. You can pay the members a small amount to participate, and many will be happy to help.

While you might think that former customers could offer a valuable point of view, you do not want to include them on a CAB. These individuals can easily poison the entire meeting.

Once you have assembled your CAB, your first step is to acquire a facilitator to run the meetings. Trying to run a customer service board yourself is a recipe for disaster. It is just too hard for entrepreneurs to be objective when asking customers for input. In fact, my recommendation is that the entrepreneur not even be present at a CAB meeting. In order to get honest and true information, you need to provide a safe and unbiased environment for your customers, and the best way to do so is to use a facilitator.

The meeting agenda should focus on issues, not on selling products or services to those present. In fact, most of the information should come from the customers with as little input as possible from the facilitator. I recommend that each meeting agenda consist of three issues to be covered. For example, at one meeting you might ask the CAB to assess the customer service quality, identify ways the business can do better and evaluate how well the company is delivering needed services.

Following a CAB meeting, you must take action on the committee's recommendations. The board will want to know how you have responded to their suggestions. Taking good notes or videotaping the meeting is mandatory in order to ensure that you have a good record of the committee's discussion and recommendations.

Consider setting up a customer advisory board. If you do, I promise your customer service will greatly improve.

You can do this!