How do you develop a voice of customer (VOC) program when there is only an ad-hoc feedback process in place?

A strong VOC program has the potential to illuminate customer priorities before they become challenges, so consistency and accessibility are key. A few suggestions: Dedicate a certain amount of your team’s time to this program, even if it’s as simple as committing to 1 customer interview or call a week. Provide opportunities for stakeholders to hear from customers directly, whether that means listening in on support calls, monitoring chats, participating in interviews and focus groups, or joinin ...Read More

VOC is so powerful and it's a great place for PMM to help build that connection between product and GTM. If there's already an ad-hoc process in place, essentially what you're looking to do is add guardrails and formalize a process. Here's three things I'd focus on developing: What information will you collect (deal/opp size, use case, industry, competitor, etc) and where will it live (this can be as simple as a google sheet to start, don't let a tech decision stand in your way) A regular forum ...Read More

If there's only an ad-hoc process in place, put in something programmatic that's simple and straightforward so customers and partner teams can understand and follow. If your company has a Customer Success team responsible for activation, usage, renewals, etc, I'd start there with periodic customer surveys/interviews (quarterly would be great) that gather both quantitative and qualitative feedback consistently so you can track changes over time. Partner with Product Management, Sales Engineers, C ...Read More

Two great sources of VOC that will interest your counterparts from other teams: CAB - customer advisory board, usually run by Product but PMM and CS are well-positioned internally to be deeply involved (select customers, choose topics, even moderate the discussion). Customer Communities - an avenue for PMM, Product and CS to communicate with customers directly and for customers to communicate with each other. This could look like a community-specific site with announcements, polls, Q&A, (gat ...Read More

That’s a great question. A full, NPS-style VOC program with a closed-loop feedback system is quite complex and requires dedicated people, processes and systems to execute. It’s a major, long-term initiative that should be driven by the C-Suite and has to be part of the organization’s cultural DNA. It’s far too large in scope for Product Marketing to manage. But not all VOC has to be so formalized and structured. Product Marketing can go a long way to bring the voice of the customer into the busi ...Read More