What nearly a decade of running an ECAB taught me

I had a great conversation this week with a VP leader who truly understands what it means to be customer obsessed. It validated a lot of what I learned leading an Executive Customer Advisory Board (ECAB) for nearly a decade and growing it from one board to four district boards.

An ECAB bridges the gap between a company and its executive customers. It keeps your strategy, products and services aligned with what the market and your customers expect, and that improves the whole customer experience.

The feedback goes well beyond product. The boards I led weighed in on:

• Industry direction: market trends, friction points, tech maturity
• CX strategy: onboarding, adoption, support
• Product strategy: development, prioritization, M&A
• GTM strategy: value props, positioning, pricing
• Customer strategy: The most important area is this. What do they care about? What are their growth plans and workflows? Where do they need help, and what are their biggest business problems?

It paid off. Customers who took part in the ECAB I led had 14% higher gross revenue retention and 45% higher net expansion revenue than similar sized accounts who did not participate.

Those results are the outcome of deep conversations and strong relationships with your top customers. The relationship comes first, and the business impact follows.

What the conversation with this customer-obsessed VP reinforced:

• Do right by customers first. If you haven’t delivered a great experience, you have no right to ask them for anything.
• Executive sponsorship matters. With the C-suite behind it, you aren’t pushing against the current.
• Insights without action are useless. Customers already tell you what’s broken, so the board has to change something.