Customer Trust in the Age of AI: How Advisory Boards Can Help Leaders Pace Technology Investment
In today's ever-evolving technology landscape, business leaders face a critical balancing act. According to the 2025 CEO Study by the IBM Institute for Business Value:
64% of CEOs say that the risk of falling behind drives them to invest in technologies before they fully understand their value.
65% of CEOs acknowledge that establishing and maintaining customer trust will have a greater impact on their organization's success than any specific product or service features.
Only 37% of CEOs believe it's better to be fast and wrong than right and slow in technology adoption.
Most leaders intuitively understand that speed without careful reflection can destroy value rather than create it—especially when customer trust is at stake.
Advisory boards provide a structured solution: they create space for reflection without unnecessarily slowing implementation. And, by bringing customer perspectives into your decision process early, you can often avoid time-consuming corrections later.
“Right now, [AI for] productivity doesn’t warrant investment. Yet, there is still a degree of, ‘We can’t fall behind too far, so we need to invest.’”
Advisory Boards as Trust Bridges
When organizations implement potentially revolutionary technology, particularly with the scope of AI’s hypothetical disruption, they're asking for an extraordinary level of trust—often before they themselves fully understand the implications.
This can create a confidence gap—the space between what companies need customers to trust them with and what they can definitively promise about outcomes.
(And, down the road, if those promises fail to materialize, it can easily damage credibility and feed cynicism.)
A strategic advisory board serves as a bridge in three critical ways:
Creating transparency around technological uncertainty
Involving customers in shaping implementation, risk, and regulatory approaches
Establishing feedback mechanisms to catch unintended consequences early
Unlike traditional market research or customer feedback, advisory boards create ongoing dialogue that acknowledges the uncertainty inherent in technological transformation while building shared investment in successful outcomes.
Advisory Boards as Reality Checks
Rather than racing ahead with implementation, many organizations use their advisory boards to cut through the hype—both for themselves and board members. In recent discussions we've facilitated, executives are finding relief in being able to voice real concerns about AI that may get suppressed in vendor presentations or internal strategy sessions.
“I hear about GenAI rollout hype. It’s the same as with any technology—don’t just do it for the sake of doing it. Do it where there is business value and a use case.””
Advisory boards create permission for honest conversations about technological uncertainty. When executives at our meetings have shared, “People are jaded from all the promises of digital innovation,” or joked about playing “No-BS Bingo” or demanding “CIO-certifiable value,” they're not being obstructionist—they're being responsible stewards of their organizations and partnerships.
The most productive board discussions we've observed recently counterbalanced the fervor behind AI to ground participants with fundamental business questions.
"Is it really going to add top line? Can we track that?"
"What is the competitive differentiator? If we don't have any right now, AI will not solve that for us.”
In these conversations, customers and vendor organizations align on realistic expectations, outline success metrics, and share the factors that will inevitably gate results—from adoption rates to regulatory pushback.
Build Trust and the Technology Roadmap Simultaneously
Many of the organizations we work with use their advisory boards to develop technology roadmaps—so that they can explicitly consider the potential impact on not just customer operations, but perceptions and relationships.
This approach involves:
Sharing technological vision and constraints openly with board members
Soliciting guidance on customer concerns and priorities around specific innovations
Co-creating guardrails and governance principles for technology implementation
Establishing clear metrics for measuring both technological progress and trust impact
Creating feedback mechanisms to rapidly identify and address unintended consequences
By involving customers in this process, not as an afterthought, you not only gain valuable insight, but you also create shared ownership of the approach—turning potential critics into invested collaborators.
Structuring Effective Technology Discussions
Not all advisory board conversations about technology are equally productive. Effective discussions:
Move beyond features to explore impact on customer experiences and operations
Remain open to internal blindspots and wishful thinking
Acknowledge uncertainties and limitations rather than presenting perfect solutions
Explore ethical implications and unintended consequences
Identify specific concerns that might impact customer trust
Focus on mutual value rather than vendor advantage
These conversations require skilled facilitation and careful preparation, but when done well, they yield insights that are hard to obtain through other channels.
Using advisory boards to navigate technological change builds relationship capital that can be drawn upon during inevitable periods of uncertainty or disruption. This trust becomes a competitive advantage in its own right, allowing you to move more rapidly when opportunities arise.