We’re looking to develop a customer advisory council to elicit responses from our clients and improve our service. Any suggestions on how to get this off the ground and sustaining momentum?
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You have 2 issues: internal and external motivation.
Internally, why are you creating the council? Is this a request from “on high”? Will the council have the ability to do anything more than report? Will the council threaten anyone politically?
Externally, why would someone report to your council? Presumably, you have a customer service department that fields problems.
The key to getting input is giving the council the power to resolve the issues. Otherwise, the only thing that will happen is the council will write up a report which will sit on someone’s desk.
The key to getting buy-in is getting the organization customer-centric. It’s more than lip-service and simply having fewer complaints. It’s about converting complainers ABOUT your company into fanatics FOR your company.
I’ve helped dozens of companies launch customer advisory councils/boards and work with a firm that does this for a living (Geehan Advisory Boards). I recommend getting started with your executive team – alignment across functional areas or business units is important toward the definition and objectives of the council, and will help to avoid stops and starts later. Clearly define the customers/companies/roles for the advisory council, and recruit high and hard. Develop meaningful objectives, agendas, and prepare well for the meeting itself (invest the 100’s of hours up front to make the 8 hrs of meeting worthwhile to customers and executives). Use an outside facilitator to control meeting dialogue and drive idea generation and issue resolution (i’ve seen way too many companies try to do this on their own and have a lot of discussion with no actions identified). Continually engage members in between meetings, so they are a part of the strategy process and solve issues. Best of luck to you.