I was researching the ITSMA archives this week to see what we’ve written about customer councils over the years and discovered some great advice that I pass along here:

• Research what customers would like to see from a council—make a few calls to lead customers before getting started.
• Vet potential members careful to make sure they are all genuine peers.
• Create a set of common objectives as a basis for collaboration, such as:
  • Knowledge creation
  • Market change
  • Policy change
  • Organizational change
• Consider bringing in a partner to coordinate/facilitate the council
• Engage customers with broad themes of common interest.
• Limit the number of members—no more than 25 at each meeting.
• Use the Chatham House rule: “When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed.”
• No selling—ever.
• Do pre-meeting interviews to determine top-of-mind issues.
• Give customers an opportunity to shape your strategy—and be accountable for following through.
• Consider pairing one of your top executives with a top executive from a customer to build relationship and shepherd participation in various customer programs.
• Use the customer council to feed an executive education program/forum whereby the content developed within the customer council is presented to a larger audience.
• Create a reliable content output stream to keep customers engaged and coming back.
• Consider an external company as a co-sponsor to bring fresh perspective (and to share the workload).
• Integrate the council into other activities, such as conferences, social media, and reference programs.
• Offer access to something that customers can get nowhere else.

What would you change on this list? What would you add?