Takeaway: A strong customer advisory board helps turn customer insight into better product decisions, closer collaboration, and a roadmap that stays grounded in real-world needs.
- Learn why structured customer feedback is still essential to long-term product alignment.
- See how advisory boards help surface shared priorities across customers, teams, and use cases.
- Understand how ongoing customer collaboration can inform roadmap decisions in a faster-moving product environment.
At Modo, the voice of the customer is an essential factor in helping us evolve our Modo platform and the Workplace solution. Listening to their challenges and understanding their goals, constraints, and how their users interact with our solutions guides the product strategy and ensures customer alignment.
This is why we decided to start a new Customer Advisory Board (CAB) for Financial Services. Our inaugural meeting, held in New York City last week, strengthened the collaboration and partnership with our customers. The monthly CAB meetings will provide a forum to present user experience feedback and new ideas, share new trends, review roadmaps, align on common goals and product functionality, and explore customer-driven innovation.
At this first meeting, we learned from McKinsey’s senior expert and associate partner, Phil Kirschner, about new trends underlying the significant shift happening in the workplace with flexible work. For example, the tectonic shift in the expectations of where, how, and when work is done, the importance of flexible schedules and locations, the emergence of workplaces as places to connect with colleagues, and the reshaping of physical spaces to accommodate the new normal.
The CAB meeting conversations revolved around the similarities across all customers – solving challenges related to engaging, retaining, and attracting employees and providing the tools they need to be successful. We discussed the differences resulting from different flexible work policies, geographic footprint, and local regulatory compliance.
Why is a customer advisory board important for product strategy and customer success?
Customer advisory boards continue to matter because product teams are making decisions in a faster-moving environment. As platforms expand to include more connected services, mobile-first experiences, and AI-powered assistance, direct customer input becomes even more valuable in helping teams prioritize what will create the most impact.
A strong advisory board does more than validate ideas. It creates a forum for customers to share where friction exists, which needs are becoming more urgent, and how expectations are changing across their organizations. That kind of conversation helps turn feedback into direction—especially when customers are balancing engagement goals, operational complexity, and evolving workplace strategies.
It also strengthens the relationship itself. When customers can see that their perspective informs roadmap thinking, collaboration becomes more meaningful and more durable over time. That is part of what makes a customer advisory board so valuable: it supports better product strategy while reinforcing the partnership behind long-term success.
Our customers shared feedback from end users and app admins, product functionality suggestions, business outcomes they want to achieve, and their perspectives on how new trends affect them. These conversations will inform our product roadmap and guide the evolution of the Modo Workplace solution.
We all left energized and excited about the future and look forward to the monthly meetings.