Implementing Voice of Customer Programs

Tactic 2 for influencing stakeholders from Jules Walter: Frame your message from their POV (not yours) It’s more effective to speak their language and demonstrate how your proposal will help them reach their goals, not yours. Stakeholders are focused on their own problems and are more receptive to proposals that address what’s already top of mind for them. A few years ago, when I was leading Monetization at Slack, we began to encounter diminishing returns in our product iterations, and we needed to take a bigger swing to re-ignite revenue growth. To do that, I spearheaded a controversial project to experiment with a new approach to free-to-paid conversion. The CEO, Stewart Butterfield, had strong reservations about the project. I knew from his previous statements that he didn’t want the company to be thinking about ways to extract value from users, but rather ways to create value for them. We had scheduled a review with the CEO and a few of his VPs to discuss the proposal. Since he was intensely user-driven, I framed the entire proposal around the benefits it would have for users (the CEO’s POV) rather than emphasizing the revenue impact of the project (our team’s goal). I started the meeting by anchoring the proposal on user-centric insights that we shared in a deck: - “About 10% of purchases of Slack’s paid version happen from users in their first day on Slack.” - “Paid users find more value and retain better. Yet we make it hard for people to discover that Slack has a paid version that’s more helpful.” - “How do we help new teams experience the full version of Slack from the start?” Once we framed the issue with this user-centric lens, the CEO was more open to our proposal and let us try a couple of experiments in this new direction. This user-centric framing also got the cross-functional team more excited and set an aspirational North Star with clear guardrails, which then enabled various teammates to contribute productively to the project. After we tested two iterations of our monetization experiment, we landed on a version that resulted in a significant increase in revenue for Slack (a 20% increase in teams paying for Slack) and we used what we learned to shift Slack’s monetization strategy into a new, more successful direction. Full set of tactics here: https://lnkd.in/gezP2EDw

If your CX Program simply consists of surveys, it's like trying to understand the whole movie by watching a single frame. You have to integrate data, insights, and actions if you want to understand how the movie ends, and ultimately be able to write the sequel. But integrating multiple customer signals isn't easy. In fact, it can be overwhelming. I know because I successfully did this in the past, and counsel clients on it today. So, here's a 5-step plan on how to ensure that the integration of diverse customer signals remains insightful and not overwhelming: 1. Set Clear Objectives: Define specific goals for what you want to achieve. Having clear objectives helps in filtering relevant data from the noise. While your goals may be as simple as understanding behavior, think about these objectives in an outcome-based way. For example, 'Reduce Call Volume' or some other business metric is important to consider here. 2. Segment Data Thoughtfully: Break down data into manageable categories based on customer demographics, behavior, or interaction type. This helps in analyzing specific aspects of the customer journey without getting lost in the vastness of data. 3. Prioritize Data Based on Relevance: Not all data is equally important. Based on Step 1, prioritize based on what’s most relevant to your business goals. For example, this might involve focusing more on behavioral data vs demographic data, depending on objectives. 4. Use Smart Data Aggregation Tools: Invest in advanced data aggregation platforms that can collect, sort, and analyze data from various sources. These tools use AI and machine learning to identify patterns and key insights, reducing the noise and complexity. 5. Regular Reviews and Adjustments: Continuously monitor and review the data integration process. Be ready to adjust strategies, tools, or objectives as needed to keep the data manageable and insightful. This isn't a "set-it-and-forget-it" strategy! How are you thinking about integrating data and insights in order to drive meaningful change in your business? Hit me up if you want to chat about it. #customerexperience #data #insights #surveys #ceo #coo #ai

Getting the right feedback will transform your job as a PM. More scalability, better user engagement, and growth. But most PMs don’t know how to do it right. Here’s the Feedback Engine I’ve used to ship highly engaging products at unicorns & large organizations: — Right feedback can literally transform your product and company. At Apollo, we launched a contact enrichment feature. Feedback showed users loved its accuracy, but... They needed bulk processing. We shipped it and had a 40% increase in user engagement. Here’s how to get it right: — 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝟭: 𝗖𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁 𝗙𝗲𝗲𝗱𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸 Most PMs get this wrong. They collect feedback randomly with no system or strategy. But remember: your output is only as good as your input. And if your input is messy, it will only lead you astray. Here’s how to collect feedback strategically: → Diversify your sources: customer interviews, support tickets, sales calls, social media & community forums, etc. → Be systematic: track feedback across channels consistently. → Close the loop: confirm your understanding with users to avoid misinterpretation. — 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝟮: 𝗔𝗻𝗮𝗹𝘆𝘇𝗲 𝗜𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀 Analyzing feedback is like building the foundation of a skyscraper. If it’s shaky, your decisions will crumble. So don’t rush through it. Dive deep to identify patterns that will guide your actions in the right direction. Here’s how: Aggregate feedback → pull data from all sources into one place. Spot themes → look for recurring pain points, feature requests, or frustrations. Quantify impact → how often does an issue occur? Map risks → classify issues by severity and potential business impact. — 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝟯: 𝗔𝗰𝘁 𝗼𝗻 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲𝘀 Now comes the exciting part: turning insights into action. Execution here can make or break everything. Do it right, and you’ll ship features users love. Mess it up, and you’ll waste time, effort, and resources. Here’s how to execute effectively: Prioritize ruthlessly → focus on high-impact, low-effort changes first. Assign ownership → make sure every action has a responsible owner. Set validation loops → build mechanisms to test and validate changes. Stay agile → be ready to pivot if feedback reveals new priorities. — 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝟰: 𝗠𝗲𝗮𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗜𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗰𝘁 What can’t be measured, can’t be improved. If your metrics don’t move, something went wrong. Either the feedback was flawed, or your solution didn’t land. Here’s how to measure: → Set KPIs for success, like user engagement, adoption rates, or risk reduction. → Track metrics post-launch to catch issues early. → Iterate quickly and keep on improving on feedback. — In a nutshell... It creates a cycle that drives growth and reduces risk: → Collect feedback strategically. → Analyze it deeply for actionable insights. → Act on it with precision. → Measure its impact and iterate. — P.S. How do you collect and implement feedback?

🛑 𝗗𝗼𝗻’𝘁 𝗙𝗹𝘆 𝗕𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗱: 𝗨𝘀𝗲 𝗔𝗜 𝘁𝗼 𝗞𝗻𝗼𝘄 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗖𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿𝘀 Having trouble keeping pace with your customers' desires and needs? If you're not leveraging real-time data on customer behavior and preferences, you're essentially flying blind. 💥 This lack of insight can cripple your marketing and sales efforts, leading to ineffective customer engagements and stunted sales growth. Here’s where Voice AI steps in as a powerful ally: ❇️ Real-Time Data Collection: Implement Voice AI to engage with customers directly. This technology collects essential data on preferences, concerns, and feedback as the conversation happens. ❇️ Instant Feedback Loop: Set up your Voice AI to provide real-time feedback to your marketing and sales teams. This means they can pivot and adjust strategies instantly, enhancing the effectiveness of your campaigns on the fly. ❇️ Real-Time Alert System: Integrate a real-time alert system within your Voice AI setup. This can notify team members immediately when it detects key customer triggers, like expressions of dissatisfaction or excitement, prompting swift and appropriate action. By integrating these strategies, you'll not only meet but exceed customer expectations, enhancing engagement and driving sales. How are you leveraging technology to stay on top of customer preferences? Share your strategies below! #innovation #digitalmarketing #technology #bigdata #entrepreneurship #voiceai

👥 Are our customers a name and a logo, or a real person trying to help themselves and their companies win each day? Let’s be honest: CS doesn’t always get this right. I don’t always get this right. When things get tough (aka churn risk, low usage, budget pressure) our instinct is to reach for the metrics. What can we quantify? What can we prove? How do we show we’re “doing our job”? We start building dashboards, framing health scores, chasing outcomes. Not wrong But also not enough. Because often, metrics make us feel better internally. But they don't us understand the people we’re here to serve. This is the tension at the heart of CS. We sit between the customer’s lived reality and the company’s operational pressure. And it’s our job to resolve that tension. Not avoid it. Not outsource it. Own it. So here’s what I’m thinking about today: What can we do to drive a deeper understanding across our orgs of client needs and value? And more importantly: How do we humanize the people at those clients? Here are 5 small moves with outsized impact: 1️⃣ Tell customer stories, not just stats. Share a 30-second anecdote at an All Hands Meeting. Real people. Real outcomes. 2️⃣ Bring a voice into the room. Quote an actual user in a roadmap meeting. Let them shape the build. 3️⃣ Translate feedback into intent. Don’t just say what a client asked for. Explain why it matters. 4️⃣ Invite cross-functional teammates to customer calls. Let them hear the tone, nuance, and urgency directly. 5️⃣ Celebrate wins that start with the customer. When a feature lands or a renewal closes, connect it to the human story behind it. CS isn’t just about adoption or retention. It’s about being the customer people engine inside the business. And that starts with us, every day, choosing to fight for understanding, not just validation. #CustomerSuccess #Leadership #VoiceOfCustomer #CustomerCentricity #CreateTheFuture

I'd like to discuss using Customer Feedback for more focused product iteration. One of the most direct ways to understand customers needs and desires is through feedback. Leveraging tools like surveys, user testing, and even social media can offer invaluable insights. But don't underestimate the power of simple direct communication – be it through emails, chats, or interviews. However, while gathering feedback is essential, ensuring its quality is even more crucial. Start by setting clear feedback objectives and favor open-ended questions that allow for comprehensive answers. It's also pivotal to ensure a diversity in your feedback sources to avoid any inherent biases. But here's a caveat – not all feedback will be relevant to every customer. That's why it's essential to segment the feedback, identify common themes, and use statistical methods to validate its wider applicability. Once you've sorted and prioritised the feedback, the next step is actioning it. This involves cross-functional collaboration, translating feedback into product requirements, and setting milestones for implementation. Lastly, once changes are implemented, the cycle doesn't end. Use methods like A/B testing to gauge the direct impact of the changes. And always, always return to your customers for follow-up feedback to ensure you're on the right track. In the bustling world of tech startups, startups that listen, iterate, and refine based on customer feedback truly thrive. #startups #entrepreneurship #customer #pmf #product

#CustomerExperience leaders need to split their strategies into deliberate bottom-up and top-down approaches. Many get the bottom-up right, but they struggle with the top-down. Bottom-up strategies focus on improving customer-centric employee behaviors at scale. These approaches include #CX or empathy training for front-line workers, using Voice of Customer feedback to set touchpoint expectations based on customer feedback, and building customer-centric KPIs into individual performance appraisals. But where many CX leaders struggle is often with engaging senior leaders to influence their customer-centric behaviors. It's difficult to influence C-suite behavior, but if you're expected to improve customer-centric culture in the organization, then you cannot avoid this. Top-down strategies start with showing senior leaders how customer satisfaction impacts growth, retention, margin, and lifetime value. It also includes improving CX and VoC reporting to provide more recommendations and actions, not just findings and data. Having discussions with leaders about the importance of financial and non-financial rewards for customer-centric behaviors is another tool in the top-down toolkit. And using personas and journey maps is a vital way to convert customer and touchpoint data into a compelling story of necessary change. Don't rely on dashboards and reports to do the job of top-down CX engagement. Don't count on a couple of positive customer-centric comments from leaders as a sign of meaningful, irreversible support. And do not assume that the fact your CX job exists is evidence of senior leaders' commitment to customer experience. Part of the job for a successful CX leader is to constantly prove the value of customer-centric strategies, influence senior leader priorities, and arm decision-makers with the insight they need to make customer-centric decisions. Don't just empower your frontline workers and assume the job is done. If you aren't building a consistent dialog with executives, you're not only missing an opportunity to make the most significant customer impact but also seeding future problems that can lead to declining support, budget, and resources for customer experience initiatives. Take a comment today to identify or define your top-down and bottom-up CX strategies for 2024. If there's an imbalance, solving that now can lead to better outcomes by the end of this year.

I used to believe Customer Success should drive the product roadmap. Here’s what I know now. The roadmap should be a collaborative design, built by Sales, CS, Support, Product, Marketing, and Leadership together. No one team sees the full picture. ▶️ Marketing sees market shifts. ▶️ Sales hears why deals are lost. ▶️ Leadership ties it all to strategy. ▶️ Product builds scalable solutions. ▶️ Support sees recurring pain points. ▶️ CS sees where customers struggle. When we isolate roadmap ownership, we build for one team. When we collaborate, we build for the entire business. Want true collaboration? Set it up intentionally: 1️⃣ Monthly cross-functional planning meetings: Bring leaders together to align on customer feedback, market signals, and business priorities. 2️⃣ Voice of Customer (VoC) programs: Collect real user feedback consistently — surveys, interviews, success metrics. 3️⃣ Closed-lost analysis with Sales: Review why deals are lost and what patterns could inform the roadmap. 4️⃣ Support ticket and escalation reviews: Identify top friction points that need attention. 5️⃣ Market research and trend studies: Analyze competitor moves and emerging trends quarterly. 6️⃣ Executive alignment sessions: Validate that roadmap priorities map directly to company strategy. The roadmap shouldn’t be a surprise. It should be a shared vision. One that every team feels connected to — and proud of. How does your company approach roadmap collaboration today? Because if you're only building with one team's input, you're only solving one piece of the puzzle. ____________________ 📣 If you liked my post, you’ll love my newsletter. Every week I share learnings, advice and strategies from my experience going from CSM to CCO. Join 12k+ subscribers of The Journey and turn insights into action. Sign up on my profile.

As CX programs are being cut, it’s becoming clear that those focused solely on survey scores are at risk. To truly drive value, B2B CX programs must tie their efforts to financial outcomes—a critical connection many programs miss. One simple but powerful metric to consider is order velocity—the frequency of customer orders, regardless of size or type. By combining the order data with good survey questions, you can track how improved customer experiences lead to faster order velocity. While it’s not the final financial metric, it gives you an early indication of CX impact. Order velocity works especially well in industries with less frequent transactions, like B2B insurance. For example, if brokers typically average six policies yearly, an improved experience should lead to more orders the following year. If not, it could signal that your surveys aren’t targeting the right issues or that other factors, like pricing, are having a larger impact. Remember, there’s often a delay between shifts in customer attitudes and changes in behavior. In industries like health insurance, a boost in CX scores during mid-year could drive more orders by Q4. In manufacturing, the timeline might vary—tactical orders may rise quickly, while long-term sales like turbines could take years to reflect the change. For a more holistic view, pair order velocity with client-specific metrics like margin per client or number of categories ordered. Order velocity is relatively easy to track and is a great entry point for deeper insights. Reporting on this invites questions from leadership—and when the right questions are asked, it paves the way for gathering more valuable data. #CX #CXROI #Customerexperience

I can't begin to tell you how often I get a call during which the person I'm speaking with says something to the extent of, "I've been running our Voice of the Customer surveys for years and nothing's getting better in those customer relationships." This, of course always results in me asking how they've worked toward changing their people, process and technologies to meet their customers at or above their expectations based on what they learned in that feedback? Surprisingly, the answer is almost always the same, "what do you mean?" Too many CX teams have been lead down the primrose path of overcommitting technology solutions as the magic silver bullet cure-all for all issues with their customers and do not put anywhere enough emphasis on the need to adapt and change, and to meet their customers, where they are, in their respective journeys at those defining moments of service. Indeed, I tell them that an overreliance on tech as that silver bullet is very much the same as an overweight person blaming their bathroom scale for their unhealthy condition. It's not the scale's fault they may overeat and perhaps get too little exercise, and until this changes, the scale won't report anything more optimistic. The moral of this short story is obvious. CX improvement may be powered by the customer's voice, but it is always a change management function. If we do not prepare to change our ways and continue to evolve our organization and how we do what it is we do, we risk not meeting our customers when and where they are looking for us and will indeed continue to disappoint. Ignoring the most basic need for adaptive change is akin to the famous Albert Einstein quote about his definition of insanity: doing the same things the same ways you always have but looking for a different (and presumably better) outcome. The odds, my friends, are against. We need to be willing to change, and in many ways, burn the boats from our past and free ourselves to find new and innovative ways to serve our customers when, where and how it matters to them. Until we do this and fully commit to transformative changes to practically every aspect of our business, we are truly only paying lip service to our customer focus and the experiences we create. It's a gigantic, missed opportunity for so many. Knowing how to change and using state of the art technology as a change enabler will prove to be key in this process. Having the right priorities, focus areas, and direction will have a positive, orchestrative effect and conversely the lack of the right analytics to guide this decision process will leave you sub-optimized or worse, functionally crippled. If I leave you with nothing more here, please consider customer experience as a change management job more so than simply a measurement one. We all need data to make our decisions, true point, but don't assume that just because you have invested in a state of the art NPS program, that this alone will be enough to make an impact.