Oyster’s mission is to create a more equal world by enabling companies to hire the best talent anywhere in the world. This means that talented professionals everywhere can gain access to the best opportunities and develop to their fullest potential.
Of course, it’s our customers who provide these opportunities—without our customers, we wouldn’t be able to fulfill our mission. Thanks to the hundreds of companies that have placed their trust in Oyster as their global employment partner, we’ve already employed over 1,000+ people in emerging markets. Our goal is to reach an annual dollar flow of $1B to emerging markets by the end of 2024.
Since we pride ourselves on being a customer-centric company, we want to stay closely attuned to the goals, needs, priorities, and challenges of our customers. After all, global employment is a complex problem to solve, and involves legal, logistical, and HR challenges. By listening carefully to our customers, we can ensure that we’re doing our best to help them succeed as globally distributed companies.
That’s why we’re delighted to announce the launch of a Customer Advisory Board at Oyster. It’s our chance to learn from some of our top customers, and to seek their input and guidance as we continue this journey together. It’s also an opportunity for a select group of customers to influence Oyster’s strategy and roadmap so we can better serve our human-centric mission.
“We work with dozens of vendors, but Oyster stands out as being particularly customer-centric and committed to improving the experience both for our team members and for us.” —Kara Ortbal, People Operations Manager at Quora
What is a Customer Advisory Board?
A Customer Advisory Board (CAB) is a group of key customers, usually representing a variety of market segments, invited to provide feedback and market insight to help guide a company’s strategic direction and product offerings. CAB members are usually senior executives at their companies and are thus well positioned to provide rich insights and advice.
At Oyster, we decided to launch a Customer Advisory Board in order to gain a deep understanding of our customers’ needs, priorities, and challenges, and thus ensure that the solutions we build in the future address those pain points. We also wanted to create a space for thought leaders to discuss trends and challenges, and share best practices related to building global companies.
“Sometimes leadership teams become detached from their customers and all the feedback they receive is secondhand. This initiative from Oyster shows a firm commitment to not allow this to happen, and to actively seek actionable feedback directly from key customers. It’s a great step towards a true culture of continuous improvement based on the experience of customers, and true accountability at the senior levels of the company.” —Andy Turnbull, Head of People Tech at Bolt
Meet the inaugural members of Oyster’s Customer Advisory Board
For our inaugural board, we brought together a core group of customers based on their strong relationship with Oyster, their impressive growth trajectories, and their passion for building globally distributed companies. We invited senior company representatives who also have a strong interest in the future of work, and are thrilled to welcome these talented leaders to Oyster’s Customer Advisory Board:
Lisa Choi, Head of Talent Management at Legion Technologies
Kate Evans, People and Operations Lead at Phaidra
Kara Ortbal, People Operations Manager at Quora
Andy Turnbull, Head of People Tech at Bolt
Merita Ramadani, Head of People Ops at Payhawk
Looking ahead
The Customer Advisory Board will meet once every quarter for a facilitated discussion, and we kicked things off by holding our first session in August. In the inaugural session, our UX Research team led a workshop and Rhys Black, our Head of Workplace Design, moderated a discussion around lessons learned from remote work.
We’re delighted to have such an impressive roster of leaders share our journey as we work together to build a better future of work. We look forward to sharing the insights and learnings that emerge over time. Stay tuned, and be sure to keep an eye on the great work that our CAB members are doing!