What We Learned from our Customers at our CAB

When it comes to customer conversations, I subscribe to the 80/20 rule: Get your customers talking 80% of the time because that’s the only way you learn. This strategy was a big part of our recent Customer Advisory Board (CAB), which we hold biannually to get a better understanding of where our customers are headed and what market problems they’re trying to solve. We want to make sure our product vision and strategy are aligned with the needs of our customers and the market. After all, our customers’ success is our success, so we need to know where they’re going to figure out how we can get them there.

We typically start off by asking our customers to show what they’ve built and explain how they use GoodData. In addition to getting our customers comfortable with their peers, it adds valuable context to each session and enables us to really dig in to their needs. And other attendees love seeing what others have built. It creates a strong sense of possibility and excitement.

In addition, we discuss market trends, how those align with their needs and future plans and we also do a few hands on activities. This year we focused on user centric design and evolving data products to meet the changing needs of end users. The results of those discussions not only impact our future roadmap, but help shape our processes to best support our customers.

So what’s next? After CAB, we went off site and focused on breaking down all of the information gathered and turning the objectives into outcomes, and the outcomes into actions. The actions were broken down into three categories: product roadmap, research, and process/organizational changes. CABs have a major impact on our product roadmap, and we are always grateful to have so many customers excited to participate and help drive GoodData forward.