The Roster Check: Auditing a Draft CAB Against the 5-5-5 Framework

Marketing Academy · Field Work●Product Marketing

All projects·From: Customer Advisory Boards

MiniAudit· 30 minutes

Klaviyo

Objective: Given a draft candidate list of 14 customers, apply the 5-5-5 framework and the at-risk exclusion rule to land on a final 12-member Customer Advisory Board roster.

You're the customer marketing lead at Klaviyo, standing up the company's first Customer Advisory Board ahead of a major pricing-model overhaul. Customer Success just sent over a shortlist of 14 candidates pulled from top accounts, with CRM flags attached.

Tag every candidate by tier, apply the exclusion rule to anyone with an active risk flag, and backfill to a balanced final 12.

Before you start

What you'll need

Free path (everything below is enough to finish)

Google Sheets

FreeImport, tag, and filter the candidate list

Free, handles the whole audit without any account setup

The process

2 steps

Step 01 of 02

Recruiting across the 5-5-5 tiers instead of defaulting to the loudest customers

The lesson's 5-5-5 framework splits a 12-15 member CAB into three roughly equal tiers: Power Users, Strategic Buyers, and Adjacent Thinkers, recruited through Customer Success, not by picking the loudest fans or complainers.

Of the 14 candidates, how many fall into each tier, and does the mix support a balanced board once you cut down to 12?

Google Sheets— Import the candidate list CSV from Customer Success, freeze the header row.

Procedure

Import the 14-row candidate list with columns: name, role, usage frequency, CRM flag
Tag each row Power User, Strategic Buyer, or Adjacent Thinker based on role and usage frequency
Count the tier distribution and note any tier that's over- or under-represented
Flag rows where the tier tag is ambiguous for a second pass

Sample output

Klaviyo CAB Candidates, tier tags (14 rows)

POWER USERS (6 tagged)
  1. R. Fontaine, Sr. Email Marketing Manager, daily login, flag: none
  2. T. Okafor, Marketing Ops Lead, daily login, flag: none
  ...4 more

STRATEGIC BUYERS (4 tagged)
  7. M. Reyes, VP Growth, weekly login, flag: churn-risk 8/10
  ...3 more

ADJACENT THINKERS (4 tagged)
  11. S. Patel, Head of Lifecycle at an agency partner, weekly login, flag: none
  ...3 more

Healthy

A near-even split close to 5-5-5, with only 2 flagged rows needing review.

Unhealthy

9 of 14 candidates tagged Power User because Customer Success defaulted to 'who talks to us most.'

What this means

An uneven tier count means the recruiting source leaned on one relationship, usually CS's own favorites, not the strategic-question requirement from Step 1.

So what do I do about it?

Symptom	Action	Effort
One tier has more than 7 candidates, another has fewer than 3	Go back to Customer Success and ask specifically for names in the under-represented tier	30 min

YouYou can do this yourself, no engineering access required.

Step 02 of 02

Excluding at-risk or mid-dispute accounts from the CAB

The lesson warns against recruiting customers who are mid-contract dispute or in active churn risk. A CAB is not the forum to save an at-risk account, and one such member poisons the dynamic for everyone else.

Two of the 14 candidates carry CRM flags: one has a churn-risk score of 8/10, one is 45 days into an active contract dispute. What happens to them, and who backfills their seats?

Google Sheets— Same candidate sheet, filter the CRM flag column.

Procedure

Filter the CRM flag column for churn-risk and dispute flags
Remove both flagged rows from the roster regardless of how well they fit a tier
Identify the next-best unflagged candidate in the same tier to backfill each removed seat
Log the removal reason next to each name for the recruiting record

Sample output

EXCLUDED (2)
  7. M. Reyes, Strategic Buyer, churn-risk 8/10 -- excluded per CAB policy, not a support forum
  12. D. Kwan, Adjacent Thinker, active contract dispute (day 45) -- excluded, revisit next cycle

BACKFILLED
  Strategic Buyer seat -> 8. L. Chen, VP RevOps, no flags
  Adjacent Thinker seat -> 13. A. Bianchi, no flags

FINAL ROSTER: 12 members, 4 Power Users, 4 Strategic Buyers, 4 Adjacent Thinkers

Healthy

Both flagged accounts removed and backfilled from the same tier, final count still balanced.

Unhealthy

Keeping the churn-risk VP on the roster because 'we need their seniority.'

What this means

A flagged account's usefulness to the board is irrelevant once the flag is active; the lesson treats this as a hard exclusion, not a judgment call.

So what do I do about it?

Symptom	Action	Effort
A flagged account is still on the final roster	Remove it and backfill from the same tier before the kickoff invite goes out	5 min

YouYou can do this yourself, no engineering access required.

Final deliverable

A finalized 12-member CAB roster with tier tags, plus an exclusion log naming who was cut, why, and who backfilled the seat.

See a reference example

Sample output

Adyen, Q3 CAB Roster (excerpt)

POWER USERS (4)
  1. Payments Ops Lead, EU enterprise merchant
  2. Integrations Lead, marketplace platform

STRATEGIC BUYERS (4)
  5. VP Finance, cross-border retailer

ADJACENT THINKERS (4)
  9. Head of Risk, fintech partner (non-customer perspective)

EXCLUDED
  Merchant #14 -- active dispute over chargeback fees, excluded, backfilled from Power User waitlist

Success criteria

You're done when you can:

Correctly tags all 14 candidates into the three 5-5-5 tiers
Flags and removes both accounts that violate the at-risk exclusion rule
Backfills to a balanced final 12 with a documented removal reason for each cut