Customer Success Meets CAB Strategy: Lessons from Steve Beck, VP of CSM

In this candid conversation, Irene Yam sits down with Steve Beck, a seasoned executive with 20+ years in customer success, professional services, and support leadership. Steve shares his first-hand experiences participating in and leading Customer Advisory Boards (CABs), reflecting on how they helped shape strategy, product roadmaps, and even executive mindset. From early career lessons in active listening to navigating critical feedback in the boardroom, this episode is a masterclass in how leaders grow through customer connection. Whether you're new to CABs or a veteran practitioner, Steve's blend of humility, humor, and hard-earned wisdom offers practical takeaways and fresh inspiration.

VP CSM Executive Steve Beck Shares His CAB Experiences - Transcript

Irene Yam 0:00

We're here today with Steve Beck, and I am so happy to have him here. I've known him for five years or so. We've run into the same crowds. I've actually asked him for advice a few times, and then I asked him, Hey, you have a lot of knowledge, probably over 25 years of knowledge in service and support and CSM in professional services, you probably have tons of stories for us and some advice for people who haven't had a seat on the customer advisory board as a vendor. So, so glad you're here.

Steve Beck 0:34

I'm so happy to be here. Irene, thank you for inviting me. You

Irene Yam 0:36

didn't just jump into being a VP and running a big organization of CSM. So when you were a manager and then you progressed to being a person of leadership, when did you get access to be a part of the customer advisory board

Steve Beck 0:53

I started, I would say on that journey, probably at the director level. I don't know that there's a level cut off for that? No, no, there's not. Yeah, yeah. If you're good with executives, whether you're an individual contributor or, you know, an executive vice president, I think it's in your your company's best interest to put you in front of customers so that they can learn from you and you can learn from that.

Irene Yam 1:16

I was just talking to Dave kerpen about active listening, and that probably has to be a real super muscle for you and your team. Would you have? Would you agree to that?

Steve Beck 1:28

Absolutely and honestly, I think that is where a lot of people struggle when they're making the transition from being individual contributors to being into leadership. I can't tell you how many times when I was going through that, I wanted to jump in and, you know, and take care of it and fix it. And eventually, over time, that little voice started saying, Hold on, let's, you know, let's see if the team can, can step up and get it done. And also, when you're talking to a customer, the last thing you want to do is be the smart guy in the room, right? All the time, sometimes, yes, that's what they want, but most of the time they you know, they're happy to talk. You should let them. You know, my old boss used to say, basically, you got two of these and one of these. Use them in that proportion.

Irene Yam 2:12

Should make a bumper sticker. Yeah, I think so. Let's go into your first cab experience, being there, listening, probably being a service or a support person, or customer success. Did you get beat up? Or did you have your own session? Or were you in the general sessions? Just walk through what it was like.

Steve Beck 2:33

I had a mix of both. And of course, you're always going to get beat up. A little bit feedback is a gift. And so look at it that way. If the customer is taking the time to tell you what they think of your product, you should give them that time, because they're trying to help you get better. It's now they're not saying it to be nasty. Of course, you're there to represent your team and your product and your company, and you want to talk about what's good about it. But if the customer is unhappy, you owe it to them, and frankly, to your business, to to listen to what they have to say, write it down, socialize it. Take corrective action. You don't have to change everything just because customer didn't like X, Y or Z, but the point is to really absorb what is, what are the key messages here? How is this customer trying to use this product, and what outcome were they going for and they missed? Now it could be that they're intending an outcome that was not intended for this problem, in which case that can be really dicey, right? Because all this money, but there are often things you can do there, sell them more services, or plot some things into a roadmap. But in general, if there's a gap between the value the business value they expected to buy and what they are currently seeing. You know, the customer success job in particular is to is to bridge that gap.

Irene Yam 3:48

Yeah, yeah, you brought up something I gotta ask you now. So business value, you're often, as an executive, meeting with, you know, these large enterprise accounts, or maybe you're brought in when there's a concern or or a lot more feedback, and they want to elevate that to leadership to you. But then you shift to a cab meeting where you're sitting with 10, 520, maybe CAB members. Well, it just depends on what kind of cab customer, right? But is that an eye opening, because even though you've might have talked and talked to say two of them on the board, but listening to everyone all at once, talking and sharing the customers, that might be really interesting for you, because you're only having often one to one, like one to one accounts, and then now you're getting to listen to All five or 10. Do do these conversations when customers are talking? Do they ever like other these wow moments for you all like, does it help with priorities? Does it help you shape or figure out how many people to hire or keep or retain or

Steve Beck 4:52

Absolutely? I mean, the simplest way to think about it is, if you're having a one on one conversation with each of two. Customers, you're going to get really good feedback from all of them. When you put them together, there will be a synthesis process that happens, right? Not only will you hear probably not about, not everything that each one said to you individually, but you will hear those key themes that are the ones that they care most about. And when they all start resonating with each other, you know, the important stuff will bubble up. Not to mention that while you're on the topic, you'll get additional feedback about things that might not have come up in those one on one conversation. There is no such thing is, you know, non valuable customer input, right? All customer input is

Irene Yam 5:34

valuable. Well, I appreciate that, that you're hitting that that home, because I think that's oftentimes people are a little leery about having a customer advisory board. Probably for you, a customer advisory board is like, woo hoo. This is easy. When I'm

Steve Beck 5:48

hearing a lot of negativity, it's a tough call to say, do I actually want this negative person, negative person, but the way I look at it is, look in the end, one way or the other. You know, the truth will out. That's right, it will come out. And it's probably better to get out ahead of it. And I think the customers appreciate the opportunity to be that person whispering in your ear. And that's an access level that most of the other customers that you have don't get 5000 customers, and you've got 20 in a room, those people have unprecedented access,

Irene Yam 6:24

not the, not the perfect feedback, and but also you want that feedback. You don't want it to be all the time, hunky dory, everything, everyone's smiling. I wouldn't be a cab. No,

Steve Beck 6:34

exactly. And you know, this is about navigating through your blind spots, right? I mean, right. I've definitely walked into cab meetings where we thought we, you know, this is it. We nailed it. We had the story. And you start talking, and the customers start hitting you, peppering you with some questions. Then you suddenly realize, is this whole aspect of business outcome that you had not considered that happened to me? And it was, it was a little bit of a of a jarring moment, but in the end, it was, it was fantastic because we got an early readout on, essentially, something that could have really come back to bite us in the in the

Irene Yam 7:08

marketplace. That's good. So that, did that change the way you led on your teams, or just business wide? It just

Steve Beck 7:15

absolutely, I, you know, I look, nobody likes to be criticized, right? I mean, it's not, it's not a pleasant feeling, but the part of the maturity that that comes with experience and leadership is learning to see it as a benefit, as a gift, basically as something that helps you improve. The way I try to look at it is, again, this person's taking the time to try to help me get better, right? Why would you not want to encourage that we

Irene Yam 7:40

have another question, what is your favorite moment in a cab? Is it like in the meeting? Is it, you know, the network events? What's yours?

Steve Beck 7:49

The way I look at is you can get great discussion in a cabin room with people. You know, the typical flow that I have seen is product manager goes up and presents a roadmap. We're giving we're giving you folks a sneak peek at what's coming down the pipe, and we would like your feedback. And so they give you their feedback, but then what happens is, there's a break, or there's lunch, or there's breakfast, or there's dinner, and you pair off with these little one on one conversations, and you can learn so much more things that people didn't necessarily want to disclose publicly in front of, in some cases, their competitors are in this room. So, you know, they have to be very careful. I haven't actually found that to limit what people are willing to say. There are generally your, you know, your your leaders, your

Irene Yam 8:32

fast adopters. You've had sort of this career, you know, systems, software, security, communications, all sorts. But tell me, is it, is it important to have a cab, even if you're a small company, all the way to an enterprise company? Because I believe today, you're probably in a pretty large enterprise company, but

Steve Beck 8:54

mid size, I think by the time, I think a startup company, you know, look, if you don't, if you haven't even made it to your your MVP yet, your minimum, minimally viable product, you probably don't need a cap. But once you start selling, and you were you are looking a for reference ability from the customers that you have, and be, you know, plotting out a longer term roadmap that's going to be something that you can go use to sort of sell additional customers. Then I think it's time to start thinking about a cab when you're when you've got sort of 100 customers. It probably makes sense. Maybe doesn't even have to be that long. 50 would probably do it. But even if you've only got five, you should absolutely have maybe a mini cab and just talk to customers as often as you can. Group settings are good, as they say, because there's, there's a synthesis process that happens where, right, you know, one of them will have an idea, and another one say, oh, yeah, I hadn't thought of that meant, you know, back and forth. And

Irene Yam 9:53

that's trust, right? That builds trust that builds also, relationships, relations. Chips, and also maybe early design partners or people willing to say, hey, we, we'd really like that too. We'll give that a try.

Steve Beck 10:07

Yeah. This is great, because when you when you're developing something new and you have a beta version, let's say you want to go install it in a sandbox somewhere with a with a friendly customer who's got real data, give you a real feedback. Yeah, this is, this is a great opportunity to cultivate relationships with people who understand what they're getting into. It's a bait. It's made of software. It's not something you should be putting in production. Yes, and so not a lot of customers are, you know, going to be willing to do that, but your, but your early design wins. Well,

Irene Yam 10:35

what about should you have, like, details or suites as customer advisory boards, or is it better to have a mix or, like, say, the Super Admin, who really knows your product? What have you enjoyed? Who have you enjoyed as a customer, on a customer advisory

Steve Beck 10:53

board? You know, I think it very much depends on what, what you're trying to get out of the customer, if it's about sort of building relationships with these early adopters and maybe some fast followers at an executive level, then I think you want to have an E cap. Was what we what we call an executive cap. And then in addition, you have perhaps a more, slightly more technical, more tactical cab, where you really start getting into features and benefits. The E cab is kind of about, you know, big picture direction.

Irene Yam 11:29

We flew over a bunch of Europeans to our conference because we actually had to start cutting our sales and marketing because we were spending more in R and D that year. So instead of having a European Cab, we invited the Europeans to our user event, and we had, you know, a day and a half for them to have a customer advisory board with us here in the Bay Area. And it was great because they taught us all about the EU compliance that we were completely I mean, it wasn't like we were shocked, but we they just spent more time, like, we need this from you. We need that from you. This was a communications company, so they needed much more compliance, and so they were asking that of us, and we learned a great deal from having that one to one conversation, and it was more believable for them to talk to us face to face.

Steve Beck 12:21

Yeah, and you can get a sense from, again, these executives, what are some of the geopolitical, you know, issues that concern them, and, you know, markets that regions they might be trying to get into or not, you know, what's their position on? I don't pick on specific countries, but you know the kind of conversation you can have, and then you can have, you know, the T cab, and more technical cab, where you're actually getting now into the nitty gritty of the product, and then dealing with people somewhere between maybe an engineering manager or a DevOps manager or director level. You can have some VPs in that room if they're particularly technical or at least knowledgeable about the product and the value that

Irene Yam 13:02

it brings. Yeah, I think titles are hard. You have to talk to people. I interview them. I walk them through things so I can get a sense of, you know, are they actually going to enjoy our agenda? And I walk them through the agenda, and I walk them through our goals and our mission, because I don't want either the person we nominated for them to sit in the room going, this really wasn't for me, right? You don't

Steve Beck 13:26

want to waste your time, right? Yeah, number one, and frankly, you don't want to waste your own time. It's right? It's an investment. Yeah? And you know that mutual respect is is important, not to mention it defeats the whole point. If they don't speak up, they don't have anything to contribute. The whole idea is to is to have that dialog. Yeah, I'd love to turn the question you asked me around to you and ask you, what was, you know, you've been doing hundreds, I would guess, of capture. What was, what were, what was one incident that you really most liked, and what was one that you most disliked?

Irene Yam 14:01

Wow. Okay, well, got me there. Okay, I'll go with a dislike first. And there's a lot of buzz and excitement because our R D had created this new product, and we're doing the demo, and we're like, oh, you know, we were very proud moment. And so we asked for feedback, and one person, and I remember she was a woman in it, she was very gutsy, and said, I'm not going to buy that. And everyone was like, so she broke the ice about that the other way after why? And they said, it's not secure, but we said, we're already in your data center. So she explained, you know, we I can't go into live details, right? Because a lot of these cabs are confidential, like how you can't really, but anyways, she said that. Then everyone said, Yes, that's why. And they explained their use case. After that, the executive sat down, they talked, they made a big decision to not put that launch that product at really, I think I. Saved us, saved our shirt, because we were known and we were really were creeping up. We were beating the the global companies like at the time, Cisco and juniper at their game. So if we came out with something and it was bad, we would have taken our our progression, and it would have gone down because of that. So we're very grateful for cabs, for that, they basically

Steve Beck 15:22

helped you save your reputation, didn't they avoid reputation damage? That's that's one of the worst things. Yeah, that's great.

Irene Yam 15:29

Yeah, my favorite cab is actually when we were a bigger company and we we acquired a small company, but the CEO said, we're not thinking of them as acquires. We're all merging together. So he first said that, and I had a budget. I was like, Oh, this is great. Finally, we're going to get to do something big. And Napa, wow, just like, like the big boys, like, you know, we were like, a frugal little startup, and then like, oh, well, we merged with this company. So now we're going to try to have two cabs in one. And I was like, two cabs in one, but they're two different people, two different buyers. How are we going to do this? And, you know, like, more of an infrastructure and then more of a networking person. How are we going to put them together in the room? And so I had this product person who just, actually, he drove me pretty Batty, but to this day, we're very good friends, probably because of that. And I decided to say, Okay, we're going to just pick the local courtyard that's brand new up the street. We're going to do it at our headquarters. All the food is going to be delicious. We're we're going to ask the facilities people if we can block out rooms and make this like come to our house. We're hosting it. We're going to have fabulous food. And I invited engineers, support people, people who have been talking to these accounts. So every break there was interaction. We actually did the roadmap in the in the beginning, the more in the morning, usually I like to do in the afternoon, but in the beginning for them to at least get their updates, and then in the afternoon, we talked about business, or what are trends? What's going on in different countries? Do you need support? Say, in Brazil? What are we doing there? Right? So that was a lot of fun, and I was actually really surprised that it turned out to be really great, and people wanted another day, but we just couldn't afford it, because we had to meld two, two cup, two cabs into one that day,

Steve Beck 17:25

right? I should definitely build, make a plug here, because I have this, oh, right, right by my desk.

Irene Yam 17:34

I appreciate that. Yep,

Steve Beck 17:36

and I've learned already have quite a few little insights from this book.

Irene Yam 17:41

Well, I can't wait to hear about your next cab adventure. Thanks, Steve.

Steve Beck 17:48

My pleasure is really great. Enjoyed this, this interaction, and look forward to continuing

Irene Yam 17:54

the dialog. Great. Thanks for all your time. My pleasure. Okay, bye. You.

FAQ 

When should customer success leaders get involved in CABs?

Steve shares that he first participated in CABs at the director level, but role title isn’t the qualifier—executive presence and the ability to listen actively are. If you're customer-facing and thoughtful, your voice belongs at the table.

What skills are most important for CAB participants and leaders?

Active listening is foundational. Steve notes that shifting from “fixing problems” to “hearing feedback” is crucial as you rise in leadership. CABs require humility and restraint—listening more than talking—and a willingness to be challenged in service of growth.

How do CABs help prioritize product and business decisions?

Steve emphasizes the synthesis effect: one-on-one conversations are valuable, but group discussions surface key themes. He’s seen CABs uncover blind spots and prevent costly go-to-market missteps thanks to timely, unfiltered customer input.

Should you invite critical voices to your Customer Advisory Board?

Absolutely. Steve believes constructive criticism is a gift. Even negative feedback, if delivered with intent to improve, offers early signals that allow teams to adjust before issues escalate. The key is fostering mutual respect and action-oriented follow-up.

What types of CABs are most effective—executive, technical, or mixed?

It depends on your goals. Steve advocates for both executive CABs (strategic direction) and more technical CABs (tactical feedback). He also shares how to thoughtfully mix personas by aligning agenda and expectations, ensuring value for everyone involved.