The Problem
Understanding customer sentiment is essential to creating products that meet evolving needs. However, capturing and acting on feedback at scale can be challenging without a structured Voice of the Customer (VOC) program. I sought out to create one after seeing the value it brought at Amazon.
Goals
- 📢 Feedback Collection — Developed a structured feedback loop across the entire company with 300+ customer responses in 2024
- 📊 Insights & Trend Analysis — Identified key data and product pain points/opportunities, leading to 50+ product improvements
- 🚀 Driving Feature Enhancements — Prioritized roadmap decisions based on real customer feedback, increasing product adoption
Development Timeline
- Problem Identification and Program Pitch — Identified gaps in customer insight collection and pitched a structured VOC program to leadership, securing buy-in
- Creating a VOC System of Record — Designed a centralized repository to collect, track, and categorize customer feedback from multiple touchpoints
- Small Wins — Delivered quick, high-impact improvements using early feedback insights to build credibility and momentum
- Evangelism — Embedded VOC insights into decision-making processes across teams, ensuring customer feedback drives product development and prioritization
Challenges & Solutions
| Challenge | Solution |
|---|---|
| A consolidated system of record was missing for feedback | Feedback intake, ingestion, and analysis phases for VOC insights were created |
| A process to analyze feedback was nonexistent | Product feedback was reviewed each week in a PM meeting while Services and Data feedback were forwarded to POCs for analysis |
| A consolidated feedback loop was needed | Allowing all employees access to the feedback, status, and next steps, along with self-service filtering and search, added transparency and closed the loop |
Program Impact
The VOC program has played a critical role in refining Komodo's product offerings by ensuring customer feedback directly influences product decisions.
Specific data masked to ensure compliance
Failures & Lessons Learned
- ⚖️ Different Motivations — Each department has different motivations for providing or analyzing feedback. My initial failure was being too narrowly focused on Product. As quarterly reports drew requests for different views of the data, my manual collection and analysis couldn't keep up. I needed champions and SMEs from each department to shape their own view of the data.
- 🔗 Unchecked Assumptions — I assumed everyone, especially Product Managers, would want this feedback. Utilization varied widely, with some never looking at it. I wanted validation and to 'surprise and delight' when the better route was ensuring others had a hand in the value creation.
- ⏳ Consolidate Tooling — Feedback lived in a separate system (Dovetail) from commonly used tools, so I kept getting 'where is this feedback' questions despite universal access. With Product Operations' help, I learned complexity must be reduced by consolidating systems so users can get data as easily as possible.
- 🔄 Completing the Feedback Loop — 'And now what?' was a common question after deploying the program. Individuals wanted not only to be heard, but to ensure their voice had value — something my doctoral research spoke to directly. Consolidating tooling helped, but it's a constant battle to keep feedback coming in and everyone feeling part of the process.