How a Product Advisory Board (PAB) Keeps ActivTrak on Track

Throughout my career as a product manager, and to the present day as Chief Product Officer at ActivTrak, I’ve consistently prioritized and advocated for the Voice of the Customer as a key contributing input to the evolution of a technology platform.

Whether they’re called CABs (Customer Advisory Boards), CPACs (Customer Product Advisory Councils) — or in ActivTrak’s case, PAB (Product Advisory Board) — the engagement and direct feedback from customers heavily influences the addition of new features and validates market-leading innovations for roadmap consideration.

While in-person PAB meetings across the globe were once the norm, today’s circumstances have made remote meetings a necessity. Since ActivTrak’s workforce analytics is a key enabler for hybrid and remote work for our 9,000+ customers, it’s more than appropriate that all of our PAB meetings to-date have been held virtually.

The ActivTrak PAB launched on Feb. 1, 2022, comprising a select group of inaugural customers. The board has grown, and ended up engaging in 16 sessions throughout the year, during which attendees discussed a wide range of topics that shaped the product roadmap and led to new features such as Azure AD integration, Location Insights Dashboard, Executive Summary Dashboard, Google Workspace Add-on and many more.

PAB members are given exclusive access to the PAB Portal which contains a full calendar of the recorded sessions and future events. It also gives them opportunities to vote on proposed product ideas and ways to submit feedback via surveys and product feature requests. To be clear, every ActivTrak customer, not just PAB members, has a voice and can submit feedback and feature requests. PAB sessions allow for a deeper dive, and cross-customer discussion and collaboration on key topics that allow us to tailor and refine product functionality to directly meet business objectives.

Companies and individuals who invest their valuable time participating in PAB sessions are the most passionate, insightful and dedicated users of our product. In turn, our team gets the opportunity to not only understand the context of customer feature requests, but also engage at a deep level to understand how ActivTrak plays an essential and trusted role in their business operations.

While PAB feedback has influenced our product’s development, it also simultaneously has had a profound impact on our customers’ experiences. For example, by collecting customer input, ActivTrak decided to introduce new support offerings that make ActivTrak even easier to use from both a technical and business insights perspective.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that every member of the ActivTrak product team, myself included, has enjoyed getting to know our customers on both a professional and personal level. We share a mutual passion for ActivTrak’s technology, and we are invested in each others’ success. We consider the PAB to be a family, and I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all of our PAB customer members for their engagement and support.

We are excited to continue to partner in 2023 when we will expand the PAB through a new online community. This will provide more opportunities for members to interact with each other to share knowledge, best practices and experiences.

Here’s to working wiser!