Give Your Customers a Mic: How to Build a Killer VoC Program
- Stephanie Roulic
- 5 days ago
- 34 min read
Listening to your customers isn’t just good practice, it’s your greatest growth strategy. A thoughtful Voice of the Customer (VoC) program turns feedback into focus, helping startups make smarter product decisions, deepen trust, and build lasting relationships. Whether you’re just starting to collect feedback or looking to formalize your process, this session dives into how to design a VoC program that fits your stage, your team, and your goals.
Recorded live at Startup Boston Week 2025, this conversation explores how to move beyond surface-level surveys to create meaningful customer collaboration from choosing the right feedback channels to closing the loop and showing customers their voices truly matter.
Featuring insights from:
Michael Fodera - Founder and CEO, BccBuddy.com
Shari McGrath - Customer Experience Executive, Opus1.io
Jean-Pierre Frost - Customer Success Community Strategist
Sarah Caminiti - Manager, Tailscale
5 Takeaways
1. Start Simple, Then Build Structure Around What Works
You don’t need a sophisticated tech stack to start a Voice of the Customer program. Shari McGrath emphasized that what matters most early on is consistency and clarity: designating where feedback lives (even if it’s just a Slack channel) and how often it’s discussed. Start with a lightweight process that fits your team’s size and maturity, then layer in tools like Notion, Monday.com, or a CRM once the rhythm and ownership are clear.
2. Ask Better Questions, Don’t Lead the Conversation
Michael Fodera reminded founders that great feedback starts with great questions. Instead of pitching your solution and asking if customers like it, focus on understanding their pain points and behaviors. Leading questions create false validation. He recommended reading The Mom Test to sharpen interview skills and ensure you’re uncovering real insights instead of confirmation bias.
3. Close the Loop and Make Customers Feel Heard
Collecting feedback is only half the job. The real impact comes from showing customers how their input shaped your product. Sarah Caminiti encouraged teams to “close the loop” by following up, communicating changes, and celebrating customers who shared ideas. Even small gestures - a thank-you note, stickers, or a quick acknowledgment - reinforce that their feedback matters and keeps engagement high.
4. Balance Customer Voices, Not All Feedback Is Equal
Not every customer should carry the same weight in decision-making. Both Fodera and McGrath stressed that founders need to evaluate who the feedback comes from, paying attention to patterns rather than volume. While large accounts may influence short-term priorities, diverse input across customer segments ensures you’re not overfitting your roadmap to one client’s needs.
5. Make It Cultural, Not Just a Function
A successful VoC program is less about tools and more about company culture. Caminiti and Frost agreed that customer-centricity starts with leadership and cross-functional alignment. Everyone - from engineering to sales - should hear customer stories directly, not filtered through reports. Embedding VoC rituals into planning meetings, bringing support teams into discussions, and encouraging transparency across departments help make “listening to customers” a shared habit, not a departmental task
Key Quote Highlights
All five of these quotes are direct paraphrases or lightly cleaned for readability
“Find the rhythm that lets your team breathe, feedback shouldn’t add friction. Create a cadence and a single home for it, even if that’s just a Slack thread.” — Shari McGrath, Customer Experience Executive, Opus1.io
“Just make it as easy as possible to collect data points. Ask, ‘What do you dream we could do for you?’ That’s often where the real insights live.” — Michael Fodera, Founder & CEO, BccBuddy.com
“Most people who fill out surveys are either very happy or very angry, but your best data is in the middle. The everyday users are where the gold is.” — Sarah Caminiti, Manager, Tailscale
“A founder with a strong sense of mission can connect people across silos, that’s how customer-centricity actually happens inside a startup.” — Jean-Pierre Frost, Customer Success Community Strategist
“Investing in your CX and VoC teams early sends a message to the whole company: we care enough about our customers to listen and to act.”— Sarah Caminiti, Manager, Tailscale
Parting Thoughts, Video & Transcript
At the end of the day, a great Voice of the Customer program isn’t about forms or dashboards, it’s about empathy in action. The best startups don’t just listen to their customers; they make them co-creators in the journey. As Boston’s startup scene continues to grow, this mindset of curiosity, responsiveness, and shared ownership is what turns good products into great ones and customers into long-term advocates.
Full Transcript Below
Want to revisit a particular quote or share with a teammate? We’ve got you covered. Read the transcript here:
Sarah Caminiti
[ 00:00:00,000 ]To continue doing this work that you can do when you are a founder with just a couple of people on the team and you're just trying to figure out what you're doing.
Shari McGrath
[ 00:00:09,740 ] Absolutely. So, you know, I would say the difference there is gathering— you're pulling together all the data and then building that system is building the communication.
Shari McGrath
[ 00:00:20,259 ] The right cadence structure and the accountability portion of that system for the data to flow through. One of the things I like to start with is how are we planning as a company? Because we want that voice of the customer to be received by the product and go-to-market teams ahead of their planning schedule.
Shari McGrath
[ 00:00:42,889 ] So, okay, you're planning quarterly. When are the leadership teams or the people leading those departments starting their work of pulling together what's most important for them? We want to be a little ahead of that. So that they can know what's important in the voice of the customer when they're starting to look at what's been important and highlighted to them already. So, if you're not ahead of that, you can start to get real friction. You're having these, you know, very typical early-day voice of the customer meetings and people are just frustrated. You know, you got the CS team. You're not doing any of the feature feedbacks we requested. And you got the product team. All you do is come here and complain.
Shari McGrath
[ 00:01:22,120 ] Everybody's stressed out.
Shari McGrath
[ 00:01:24,590 ] So trying to find that rhythm that they have the ability to intake it without it adding additional stress and burden to a team that's already trying to prioritize, you know, so many things. Um, so, so finding that right cadence to start to build the rituals, you know, is really important. Um, and then I'd say just kind of going from there on maturing how the system works. So, um, okay, we have the cadence of which we're talking about it. Do we have a system that's capturing the feedback in a singular place that we've designated that feedback is going to live here? You know, maybe we're not doing a lot with it yet, but it's all here so that when we do want to do something with it or someone wants to look at it, it's in a singular place and we all know it's captured in that place. It could even be a Slack thread. People say everything gets lost in Slack. But you're a small enough team and you have a feature feedback Slack and that's all that goes in there, you know. So out of quarterly planning, I can scroll through there. I can export it. I can do what I want to do.
Shari McGrath
[ 00:02:25,790 ] So, you know, no matter how big or small your team is, you can kind of designate the area where you want to capture it and you can designate the time that you want to talk about it. I think once you find those two things, you'll find a lot of ease, you know, in having the conversation about what's important to our customers.
Shari McGrath
[ 00:02:44,800 ] And oftentimes those initial communications can just be baked into, you know, currently standing meetings. So maybe you have a weekly, you know, leadership meeting and your team is five people. The company is only five people and the three leaders meet, you know, weekly. Maybe that's where you bring customer feedback and there's a segment and they're baked in, and, you know, bi-weekly we talk about customer feedback.
Shari McGrath
[ 00:03:11,620 ] And then eventually you grow into defining its own standalone segment. So those would be some of my suggestions of kind of how you can start and then have the things ready to mature as the team grows.
Sarah Caminiti
[ 00:03:26,250 ] Are there any tools that outside of Slack that people should be kind of thinking about? You don't have to name specific companies, but like a type of tool that people can search for.
Shari McGrath
[ 00:03:37,900 ] Yes. So I found, you know, great success in leveraging. If you're pulling in a CRM, you know, leveraging that to capture the feedback. What can be really nice about baking it into your CRM is. You're able to see the customer's information so how much revenue is tied to this customer that's giving you this feedback. How many users, uh, when's their renewal, um. So it can have sort of give you additional insights into, you know, where that feedback's coming from and the impact it might have on that specific customer. Now CRMs can be a lift. So are you at the point where you want a CRM or do you want to stand up something more quickly? I've also had great success in standing up a customer feature feedback board in Monday. com.
Shari McGrath
[ 00:04:23,099 ] Also, I've seen teams use Notion. So I think it's just defining what you want to capture out of the gate, you know, naming where it's going to be captured is the most important. And then talk to other folks that have done it before to see what tools they use when their team was really, really small. And how they started to scale it. I loved Monday ahead of moving to the CRM because Monday was very lightweight. But provided great visibility. We could pull in different teams. We could capture deeper level of information in there as opposed to a Slack. But again, we weren't mature enough to fully define that in a CRM, which takes a bit more work.
Sarah Caminiti
[ 00:05:04,990 ] Amazing. Thank you. JP, you talk to so many CX leaders on The Daily Stand-Up, and you have been in this industry a long time.
Sarah Caminiti
[ 00:05:18,180 ] A good amount of time. The right amount of time. Yes. So from all of these different conversations, what have you learned about the difference between gathering feedback and actually building these systems?
Jean-Pierre Frost
[ 00:05:33,020 ] Good question.
Jean-Pierre Frost
[ 00:05:37,720 ] I think it goes back to that knowing where you're at. So knowing, OK, we have this many, as I sort of referenced before, with if you have so many people wearing so many hats, asking them to wear one more, that can be a challenge. But if it's like a paper plane hat, then maybe that's doable. And so I think like coming up with the system that really makes sense for the capacity that people have. I think that there's usually a risk in the overshooting, you know, the ideal of what you see versus the capacity of what you have to actually execute on it. So I think, yeah, when it comes to, you know, gathering feedback, it can be great to just have like a simple system to start out with. You know, we don't need to whip out the calculus yet. You know, maybe just sort of stick to the addition of subtraction and then just build from there. See what really makes sense.
Sarah Caminiti
[ 00:06:35,410 ] Yeah, definitely. And Mike, as a founder, how was it for you moving from entering into that space, wanting to learn from the customer, gathering that feedback, and then thinking, 'I should actually build this foundation'?
Michael Fodera
[ 00:06:49,710 ] Well, I'll just even start with gathering the feedback.
Michael Fodera
[ 00:06:53,290 ] Initially, it starts like asking the right question, because if you're asking leading questions, you're going to get. The wrong information and that will set you up pretty much for failure. And when I say, like, the right type of question, you should be asking about what their pain points are, versus telling them about what you are product solving. Because if I'm telling you with all this excitement, here's what we're going to do for you, you're not going to look me in the face, like, that's a terrible idea.
Michael Fodera
[ 00:07:18,240 ] That's great, Mike. That's perfect. Go ahead and go run with it. So really, starting with asking the right type of question is fundamental and part of the startup journey. And, you know, I haven't scaled too big yet, but when I think about what does a bootstrapped voice of the customer program looks like, it's what are my inputs? So what's coming into me? And inputs could be how are people using the product? What white papers are they clicking on most right, so there's all these different data points that could be part of that voice of the customer? And then where's that going to— your point, like, what is that central repository and then what is that loop? So it could be very very simple, but those are, I think, the three mechanics that you need to kind of get the ground going.
Sarah Caminiti
[ 00:08:01,460 ] I completely agree. And I think it's also worth acknowledging too, when we're talking about gathering data about the customer, yes, there is the conversations that are purposeful in, I am trying to learn about you and your experience, but then there's also all of this information that's sitting in support. And all of that information is coming from customers that have already taken the time to reach out to you. They have already shared a pain point with you. They have already shared a struggle because, again, going to the consumer brain. No one wants to reach out to support. I mean, I've had lovely support experiences. I mean, I built my career on it, so I would hope that I would have a lot of great support experiences, but I still don't want to get in touch with support if I don't have to. You read the documentation. So looking at what are they clicking on the most in our knowledge base? Oh, maybe we should pay a little bit closer attention to this because obviously they're struggling with this. How are they asking these questions? What kind of language are they using? Have we worded things incorrectly?
Sarah Caminiti
[ 00:09:02,440 ] In our knowledge-based docs. And they're thinking about things totally differently than how we've explained it. And then, just what trends are existing within there. I think that's why there's so much friction. Between the CS teams, the CX teams, the support teams, and the rest of the company, because we are hearing and absorbing all of these things all the time. That is our purpose: to understand the struggles of the people that have already agreed. To pay for this product and are not looking elsewhere yet, hopefully and so we've got all this data, and oftentimes it just It doesn't have those systems. It hasn't been part of the conversation since the very beginning. And so when you're building these VOC programs, when you're gathering this feedback, don't forget about an inbox that has all of the feedback. The folks that are talking to these customers are the people that you want in every single conversation that you're having related to how is the customer going to enjoy these new features.
Sarah Caminiti
[ 00:10:14,170 ] Are our docs actually aligned with what these folks are going to be asking? Do we have the right kind of rollout? All of that involves being thoughtful from the very beginning of all of these different places when you're wearing all these hats.
Sarah Caminiti
[ 00:10:28,640 ] You've probably got someone working support and they're also doing a million different things. Make sure that you are sending that message that the support space is so valuable from the very beginning. It's not just something that anybody can do. It's not just a cost center. That is. the start of most VOC programs right there because you've got the folks that care enough to ask a question so that they can figure this out and they want to hear from you. They want to talk to you. So think about that when you're forming your loops as well. And I want to pause for a second here because. We have covered a ton of ground in a very short period of time. And often when we wait until the last handful of minutes, we're only going to be talking about the last question that was asked because so much has happened in between. And so I'm going to put the lovely folks in the back on the spot here and see, is there anything that we've covered that anyone has a question about or we want to dive into more?
Sarah Caminiti
[ 00:11:30,050 ] Look at this. Awesome. The first one I saw was way in the back there.
SPEAKER_8
[ 00:11:39,850 ] So we talk about gathering all of this data, right? Alistair. What's up, JP? So what are the tools that you're giving your individuals in order for them to be able to ask the right questions?
SPEAKER_8
[ 00:11:57,460 ] Because that tends to be the barrier, right? They tend to ask closed-ended questions and et cetera. So what are the tools that you're looking at to do that?
Sarah Caminiti
[ 00:12:08,560 ] Awesome question. Who wants to answer it?
Michael Fodera
[ 00:12:11,470 ] I'll just start by saying: The Mom Test is a hundred-page kind of pamphlet that everybody should read if you're in customer success or product. So The Mom Test, great book, definitely get that. Um, and then, as far as like, how do you prepare your people? It's—aren't you doing quantitative or qualitative? Like, are you putting together those surveys on behalf of your uh constituents? But if you're doing kind of customer calls. Of course, you might want to do some pre-work. What questions? Like, actually, what is the goal? What are we trying to understand with this call? Like, what is the outcome we're looking for? Because lots of times you're going to go in with a preconceived notion. Like, here's what we want to build. How do we get them to say that? So you have to make sure when you go into these conversations, you've got like an end in mind. Do you want to be told to keep going, to stop, to pivot?
Michael Fodera
[ 00:13:00,620 ] And I just want to, I should have made this point earlier, but one of the biggest mistakes you can make is continuing to add features to your product. Because what really winds up happening when you look at your business is, what have we just?
Michael Fodera
[ 00:13:14,680 ] Adding product is the first thing that you have to do. Everything else is: how do you onboard people to that product, that new feature? How do you advertise that new feature? Have you just introduced a new competitor by adding that feature to your stack? How do you support that feature?
Michael Fodera
[ 00:13:30,940 ] As you get wider as far as what you offer, you wind up creating a whole bunch of work that needs to be supported. And I think with this kind of new vibe coding, you can almost build anything. But just because you can do it doesn't mean you should. And being really diligent about what your product roadmap is, what is your North Star, I think is really, really important.
Michael Fodera
[ 00:13:54,150 ] Sorry to go off on a tangent. That was like, I answered your question for like a minute, I think.
Sarah Caminiti
[ 00:13:57,450 ] No, I love that tangent. And I think that that's a really good thing to call out too, because I mean, if you guys are founders, if you've worked in startups before, you are well versed in the idea of tech debt. And when you start a company, you don't have tech debt yet. So you make a conscious choice. Do we build this fast and maybe we'll get back to it later? You never get back to it later. Or do we actually set the tone here that we're going to gather as much information as possible? We're going to listen to the customers. We're going to include them on this journey. And that's when we're going to add a feature. Instead of only features to move you forward, is there something that just needs a little bit of a pivot? Is there a button that needs to be moved a little bit? Because people are annoyed that they have to go to all these different places. It's not obvious all the time. You can pay attention to that, too. And that, again, is celebrating the folks that already signed up for your product because it shows that you're listening to them. And that carries so much weight. Anybody else have a question? I know there are a lot of people that have a question.
Sarah Caminiti
[ 00:14:59,290 ] All right. The gentleman that I am married to over there, I'm not doing that because he's my husband. I promise he was the second person to raise his hand.
SPEAKER_7
[ 00:15:07,410 ] Hi, my name is husband. It's also Michael. I'm not a plant, I promise. I'm actually here on work out in Westwood. I'm curious, do you all think that... all clients should have an equal voice? And if so, how do you ensure that your clients who give you the largest ARR are equal to those that don't? So you're not just building things for your five biggest clients, you're building things for everyone.
Jean-Pierre Frost
[ 00:15:32,890 ] Yeah, I'd like to know.
SPEAKER_7
[ 00:15:34,330 ] Love this.
Michael Fodera
[ 00:15:38,570 ] It depends. It depends.
Michael Fodera
[ 00:15:42,120 ] How you're paying your bills, right? Depends on how many clients you have. Depends on if those clients look like more clients that you want. Depends on if that client's network can get you more of their peers. It also depends on what they're asking for.
Michael Fodera
[ 00:15:57,700 ] Because just because someone's using your product doesn't mean that you need to design product around them. And I would say some of the folks that maybe ask the least of you might be the ones that you want to.
Michael Fodera
[ 00:16:08,550 ] Either figure out why that is, right? And you have the most to learn from versus someone trying to pigeonhole you to building them a customized solution for the lowest dollar amount. So it depends— is my answer. Basically, what I'm saying is just like chase the money.
Shari McGrath
[ 00:16:27,070 ] I love the, it depends. And I think, you know, keeping that in the forefront and reviewing both things. So review all the feedback, sort of impartial of this waiting of, you know, ARR or whatever. Have you? But then also saying, is this a time where we want to intentionally, you know, look at this sort of cost of delay or waiting of the feature feedbacks and see. What are the largest dollar amounts customers asking for? Is there a trend there with our largest spend customers? And leveraging that data to provide different slices and dices of the feedback that you're receiving, I would say. So, I think keeping it in mind and making sure you're capturing it and using it as part of your review of the data, then you know it depends on— is this important because if we don't renew this customer, that's half of our company.
Shari McGrath
[ 00:17:28,750 ] So, you know, having it there, I think, is extremely important data point on evaluating the feedback that you have.
Sarah Caminiti
[ 00:17:37,820 ] And then I just want to quick follow that with when you decide how you're going to approach this, be transparent with everybody on your team, with the whole company. Let them know the why behind your choices. Because if you're not letting them know the why and you're not putting that deep into the culture, that's when people start making assumptions. And most of the time, they're not positive assumptions. And the reality could be very positive. It could be, 'Okay, we're going to do this so that we can grab five of those feature requests from those free customers because we've always wanted to do this.' And now we're going to be able to do it, and we're going to celebrate them. It's going to be part of our marketing campaign, but we just got to get this one thing over the finish line. But if you just say 'not right now,'
Sarah Caminiti
[ 00:18:25,670 ] what does that mean? So make that conscious choice to say, 'this is why we're choosing to do this.' This is when we are going to revisit this conversation. We're putting it on the calendar now.
Sarah Caminiti
[ 00:18:38,610 ] Everybody deserves to be a part of the know of where the company is going. And this is such a great piece of the puzzle to be transparent. All right. Next round. What do we got? The one right next to Michael. You were third.
Michael Fodera
[ 00:18:56,150 ] Hello, hello. This question is for Mike, but if anyone wants to jump in, they can. I was curious, how important is it that the person who's onboarding the new people has actually experienced the full transformation that we're going to deliver?
Michael Fodera
[ 00:19:13,950 ] Or can AI just pretty much fill in that gap?
Michael Fodera
[ 00:19:19,250 ] Interesting question.
Michael Fodera
[ 00:19:22,870 ] I don't think AI can fill. I think you're always going to need the human element in customer success. I mean, I think AI can help you analyze all those data inputs because there's basically an untapped amount of things coming into that company. But if you want to do a good job, I still think people buy from people they know and they respect. So building that relationship is really how you get the most out of that customer and get the most feedback from them. AI companion, 100% on board with. Will that be replaced over time? I don't know, but definitely have AI helping, but I don't think it's doing the work today. My best guess.
Sarah Caminiti
[ 00:20:01,320 ] Yes. Agree.
Shari McGrath
[ 00:20:02,580 ] I would say half the time AI: I ask it to do something for me and I say, 'I have all this and I type for like an hour and I'm like, create this thing so I don't have to do it. And it spits it out and I'm like, well, now I know what I don't want to do. And this actually clarified for me now what is in my brain and I want to do. And I'll quite oftentimes not do what it has suggested, though it's a great partner. So I would 100% say, you know, I think. You're just always going to have to have that human element— one to engage with the customer so that they know there's a human behind there and someone they want to engage with. But as well to say, hey, AI, you know, nice try.
Shari McGrath
[ 00:20:46,620 ] Love what you gave me. It definitely helped me move faster and, you know, create things and that I can use, but I think you have to have eyes on it, especially early days. These are critical decisions.
Shari McGrath
[ 00:20:58,960 ] Yeah.
Sarah Caminiti
[ 00:20:59,970 ] And what a message you're sending to your customer too. We care enough about you that we are going to staff a person to listen to you because we care that much when we could just have it be part of our tech flow, our tech stack, not tech flow, that's not a thing. But no, it sends a message and everybody's listening right now and everybody's watching. Is this person on the chat actually a person or are they trying to make me believe it is and they'll never tell me the truth? Is this person on the phone now an actual person?
Sarah Caminiti
[ 00:21:31,970 ] Just hire a person, please. Please hire a person. All right, I'll do two more here in the striped shirt.
SPEAKER_3
[ 00:21:47,260 ] Sorry. Thank you so much. That has been my experience, but that's not my question. My question is about integrating your plans. We talked about cadence. We talked about systems. But really getting your entire company on board. And I'm thinking, like a 20-30 person company, not huge, but you've got a marketing department, you've got a sales department, you've got product.
SPEAKER_3
[ 00:22:08,930 ] My personal experience has been that there can be clashes between, I'm in marketing, marketing and people doing market research or customer research, the voice of the customer, because they ask the wrong questions. Customer, you know, something has been opened up to the world. They go to somebody who is not in our ICP or our target audience, and now they're telling product to go build these things. We're like, 'You know, what are you? This is not who we're actually going after. This is not what the product's meant to do.' There's just this like almost negative feedback loop. That has been my experience. How do you, and I've thought about this, and I don't have the answer. So I'm glad that there are people who maybe do. How do you work it so that. Marketing, sales, product are all looped in on a regular basis so that we're talking to the right people, getting the right information, pushing it through the company in a productive way. Getting that feedback loop with the customer? Long question.
Sarah Caminiti
[ 00:23:04,710 ] It's a great question, though. And it's a conscious choice. And it is a choice that senior leadership have to make. We are going to put in the systems that everybody is in the loop. We are going to make sure that these silos aren't formed. And if you start seeing these silos begin to show themselves, you've got to step in and you've got to say, 'Hey, let's move up the cadence on these meetings. Hey, let's figure out if there's a better place for us to store this information because we are all working towards the same goal. And that is something that is so easily forgotten, especially when you're getting to that point of like 20 to 30 employees, because. You're not wearing as many hats anymore. You actually have your lane. And that is a hard thing sometimes to to kind of pause on and be like. We were like all doing this like 10 months ago and now we're all laser focused and our lane is the best lane and it's the right lane. Everybody else's lane is terrible, even though I was doing that lane a couple of months ago.
Sarah Caminiti
[ 00:24:03,420 ] But if you actually acknowledge that and say, 'Not here,' we're going to get together more. We're going to talk more because we're a team. At least in my experience, that type of honest conversation is what is going to change the culture because it is a culture change at the end of the day.
Sarah Caminiti
[ 00:24:22,460 ] But I'd love to hear from everybody else because I kind of just jumped in there.
Shari McGrath
[ 00:24:27,640 ] I mean, I would love to say that one of the things, you know, one key to solve that would be to intentionally, if you're seeing this, you know, you're going after customers and you're sort of like, 'Why did this team go for that customer? Why are they talking to them?' would be to implement an ICP ranking, you know, right out of the gate. Because then you can say, 'Hey, you're intentionally talking to someone who is not our ideal customer profile. Why? And it can help you just flag it and like. Take away the feelings or, you know, the subjectivity to your disagreeing with them approaching that customer. Because you can say, 'This is why they're not, you know, one of our ICPs.' So why are we speaking with them? So I think that can be a really powerful tool to help steer away from that. And then I would just also say, when and how are you talking about it? Are you all talking about it together? So is that customer, you know, voice session, you know, does it have the leaders from each of those departments? You know, are you getting their feedback after the session? What hit here for your team?
Shari McGrath
[ 00:25:27,950 ] Did this work? Did it not? What do we need to include so that? This is meaningful to your team and you can march out of here with what you need. Um, you know, would be some of the things I would think to help sort of like end the teams working in different directions, if you will. With feedback for the customers.
Michael Fodera
[ 00:25:48,950 ] The only thing I'll add is it sounds like maybe too many people have a voice. Not to say that people shouldn't have a voice, but maybe not everyone should be delivering the message. So maybe having someone be the champion that basically does the intake analysis and then speaks on behalf of the feedback coming in. And then how does that align with what is the goal of the business? Is the feedback coming from sales reps because it's blocking a sale? Okay, is that sales reps probably aren't the right people to talk to product because they're thinking here now, right? I need to make my quota. Product's thinking six to nine months out, right? So you have to kind of... and it should be cultural. So like, what is the CEO saying is important right now? And then how are we delivering that message internally? How are we collecting that data? How are we making sales reps feel heard while also being put in line? Not in line, but like in a queue per se. Uh, we hear you because what you don't want to do is you don't want to create an environment where that feedback stops. Um, because that's, I mean, sales reps are the front line of the business, right?
Michael Fodera
[ 00:26:49,890 ] They're the ones that pay for daycare. Um, so they do need a voice. Um, as a sales rep, I can tell you that we are prima donnas and we need to be heard.
Michael Fodera
[ 00:26:59,550 ] But I don't think we're the ones that need to deliver the message internally because we're here now, focused versus longer strategic vision.
Sarah Caminiti
[ 00:27:08,850 ] JP, is there anything you want to add?
Jean-Pierre Frost
[ 00:27:11,690 ] First of all, I'd like to say, if I could answer this, I would be interviewing for different positions.
Jean-Pierre Frost
[ 00:27:17,430 ] I do believe in, whenever I hear about alignment, I do think about the founder and CEO, though.
Jean-Pierre Frost
[ 00:27:26,640 ] Throughout my long career, as you mentioned, the thing that I've seen is just how important the founder or CEO can be in setting alignment. And if it's, I'll tell you, I guess 'heavy is the head'— you know, that wears the crown.
Jean-Pierre Frost
[ 00:27:43,950 ] But as far as the logistics of how you achieve that, I think you all answered that a lot better. But I think that a founder with a strong sense of the mission and the company that's able to articulate that to people, I think that that really helps because then people can sort of use their creativity. To sort of find those ways in which they can connect and maybe not be so siloed.
Sarah Caminiti
[ 00:28:07,460 ] All right. We got one question before I've got the rest of my note cards. Yes.
SPEAKER_5
[ 00:28:13,710 ] Hello, everyone. My name's Claire. I do fractional research and product strategy with startups. And one of the things that I noticed, especially with B2C, is that as you get more and more customers, you can't talk to them all. So they turn to surveys. And as a former academic, I can say that surveys are really challenging to get people to do. There's a lot of survey fatigue and issues. So what are some strategies for getting that feedback at scale when you have too many customers to speak to, while not overburdening them with surveys?
Michael Fodera
[ 00:28:47,720 ] I'll just start by making it as easy as possible.
Michael Fodera
[ 00:28:50,320 ] Injecting, I mean, both companies— I mean, this one's kind of just getting off the ground— but we just have like an intake field. What do you dream that we could do for you? So you just make it as easy as possible to collect those data points.
Michael Fodera
[ 00:29:05,410 ] of course you know lots of people need to be nudged to take action so you could also offer rewards or benefits you mentioned earlier like getting a phone call from the ceo sometimes that's cherry pick sometimes that's not as far as who you reach out to but those are really good practices to have at scale but you know you need a lot of data points to make strategic decisions. A hack that I think every startup founder knows is you bring people into these, you are a strategic partner, right? So you bring your 10 biggest customers that you want to renew into this, give them these special titles, you make them feel really good, you can do a dinner, whatever. to make sure that you are hearing directly from your customers, because I think a lot is lost in pen and paper, check boxes, et cetera.
Sarah Caminiti
[ 00:29:49,170 ] I mean, think about who answers surveys most of the time. It is someone who is very angry or it's someone who's very happy. Nobody in the middle is really going to answer those surveys. And the people in the middle, those are the ones that are using your product all the time. You know, they, they enjoy it. They aren't looking elsewhere. Probably it's a doing what it needs to do. And there's a ton of great data in just paying attention to those middle people. But for some reason we've gotten it in our heads that the people that score. In the middle are are negative scores. Those are bad things. And uh, and we have to kind of shift our perspective. So proving that you're listening, proving that the customer has a voice here. If you're doing those 10-person dinners, you know, in the early days, have that be part of your culture. Have that continue. Have that be something that you are loud about, just because you're growing, just because the customer base has grown.
Sarah Caminiti
[ 00:30:52,990 ] That doesn't mean that you get to say that you can't do it anymore, that you can't listen more closely. It doesn't mean that you have to say, 'We just have to resort to a survey because a survey is a survey.' Yeah, a survey is a survey. We know what a survey is because we've answered those surveys.
Sarah Caminiti
[ 00:31:10,480 ] We've also hit the X button on those surveys every single time they pop up or you get hit with it so many times you do a terrible review because you're so annoyed with the survey. So don't use that as an excuse that you got too big. Make the choice, figure out how you're going to do it. If you need to hire more people, that is worthwhile for an investment to hire more people that are going to continue that culture.
Jean-Pierre Frost
[ 00:31:38,620 ] At my very first company, ten dollar Amazon gift cards. Yes, yeah. It's right in the middle. It's not too much. So no one feels greedy, but it does the trick. Yeah. Swag.
Sarah Caminiti
[ 00:31:49,910 ] I mean, stickers. That little thing just says, 'I care enough about you to stop what I am doing right now and move on to the next thing in my to-do list and send you something because I'm grateful for you.' We like talking to you. Keep talking to us. That's it.
Michael Fodera
[ 00:32:08,150 ] On that talking point, I mean, I think companies that are truly at scale start bringing together these advocacy groups, right? Where you've got your customers speaking on your behalf, like inside of these large Slack groups. So now you're not, and your company's not first-line response. You've got your community responding on your behalf, which. If you get that, I think you're in a really, really good position.
Sarah Caminiti
[ 00:32:29,760 ] No, I couldn't agree more. And there's so many different places for communities to build and grow and thrive. And you don't know what you don't know until it's too late. And so you can start pushing Reddit. As a subreddit, you can start pushing Discord. You can start all of these little things that can build over time and they will build with the people that are your advocates that really believe in what you're doing and will be loud about it because they care so much. That's not something you have to wait to hit a certain number of customers for. You can start that anytime and just kind of let it grow organically and not stress about the fact that you haven't had somebody sign up for two weeks. That's okay. It will happen. I promise. And if it doesn't, see where your customers are and go to where they are. And listen to them there.
Sarah Caminiti
[ 00:33:18,630 ] I want to pivot a little bit over to Sherry because you've driven retention and adoption at scale, but you've also advised the earlier stage founders through underscore VC. How do you think about the tension between scrappy feedback, habits, and building towards the kind of retention engine that you are known for? Takes place. I know that we've talked about it a little bit, but I think that retention engine is something that we need to really, really highlight.
Shari McGrath
[ 00:33:49,060 ] Yeah, absolutely.
Shari McGrath
[ 00:33:50,740 ] So I think, you know, when you're thinking about that scrappy starting, you know, feedback, powering the company versus that retention engine, one of the things that jumps out to me is, you know, having the founder of the company be bought in to that voice of the customer program, whatever it is, whatever stage it is, but helping them lead with you by telling the customer stories and not just leading with the data, but talking about things that are actually happening with our customers and what it means. So I think, you know, ensuring that, no matter what size your VOC program is, is that your founder is bought in and helping lead with that customer first voice, you know, whether it be at the all-team meeting or telling a customer story or in the leadership meeting, you know. Narrowing in on important customer stories so that we're all kind of constantly thinking and leading with that customer voice is extraordinarily important.
Shari McGrath
[ 00:34:51,170 ] And then, when I think about that scrappy one, you know, the scrappy process, getting going, small team. Is you know how can we make it a safe space, uh, for a team that's under a lot of duress, has a lot of things on their plate, to you know be a place that we're talking about everything we're seeing, all of the data, where that data is living, how the process is evolving and forming, how we're serving the information to who, you know, what are the things we're trying to do with the information and just communicating about the program itself and what it's supposed to do. What do we want it to do? How do we want this to impact the business? So we can be really, really intentional as we're. You know, leaning into this program and creating it with, you know, what is it— one person, two people, teams, if that, you know, that that are trying to empower the company with this voice of the customer.
Shari McGrath
[ 00:35:46,710 ] So when I think of scrappy, that's what I think of is you're really intentionally talking about it a lot of what you want to be doing with this voice of the customer. Because it's going to keep changing in those early days. So you want to continue to pivot like each quarter. It's maybe a little different. OK, now we want the engineering team listening in before it was a little too much information for them. And we were taking it just to the VP of engineering. But now we want this broader view. And how are we thinking about the whole company hearing about feedback and being, again, intentional of how we're bringing that program along? And then, in a more mature, sustainable, larger company that you're trying to drive, is embedding it into the...
Shari McGrath
[ 00:36:36,900 ] into the planning, you know, cycle. So are you, what is the PI planning schedule for product? And what is the go-to market planning? You know, is that quarterly? How are these— are these teams meeting on the same cadences? And again, planning the voice of the customer to be embedded at the point where it can have impact and drive change for that go-to-market planning session and that product roadmap planning session are some of the really big keys there.
Shari McGrath
[ 00:37:12,610 ] I'm totally i'm spacing on one of the things that I wanted to to touch on here. Yeah, add to it.
Michael Fodera
[ 00:37:18,950 ] Yeah, so one of the things that you mentioned was, you know, when is it time to bring in engineering? Like, I think a really big unlock is having folks that are non-customer facing get on a customer facing call every once in a while. Because hearing information from the customer firsthand goes a lot further than being held something or reinterpret it, especially if there's no trust between those teams, right? When sales is constantly arguing with product, bring product into that call, have them hear it. They can ask questions if needed because that just builds trust all around. And, you know, who knows, you know, especially for flatter organizations.
Shari McGrath
[ 00:37:55,360 ] I love that. The other thing that was sort of stirring, stirring around in here, was around, you know, bringing all the feedback. So I've heard a couple of times folks mentioned support and how integral that is to a full VOC program. I think that was one of my unlocks is when I finally owned the technical support team. So I was able to say, 'Hey, you know, manager of technical support or the one person in technical support I would like you to have a segment in our voice of the customer session with the team and talk about what types of tickets we're seeing and how the product is actually landing when customers are using it in the real world.' And I will tell you from the moment I brought support into the voice of the customer program. That is the favorite part of the session, you know, hands down. People are meeting with my technical support leaders after. They are becoming thought leaders in the organization of how the product really works with our customers.
Shari McGrath
[ 00:38:58,660 ] And it's just hugely impactful if you can have technical support, even if they're not on your team, you know, be a part of that voice of the customer, work cross-functionally, bring them in. Tell the story of how it's working in the hands of the customer. And then you have that quantitative and qualitative feedback. I look to capture both of those. You know, here's the surveys and what the surveys are saying, but here's what my CSMs are capturing when they're actually meeting with customers. And we also tracked that here. So you can see all of the different perspectives of how the voice of the customer is coming through to us as a team. And then, you know, you keep just layering that cake to make it more powerful as it goes on. What is the cost of delay— or, you know? the weight of those feedback. So is it the larger customers? What segment are we segmenting our customers? And that's sort of telling us a deeper level of, oh, it's just certain segments of our customers requesting this or experiencing this. We'll continue to help you build, you know, towards that scalable program.
Sarah Caminiti
[ 00:39:59,130 ] For sure. And I also think, just to kind of build on this too, staffing your CX teams, whether it's the VOC, support, customer success.
Sarah Caminiti
[ 00:40:09,870 ] Do it. Do it sooner rather than later because you're just going to hurt yourself in the long run because a stressed team, no matter how great they are at their job, the customers are going to feel it on the other side. They're going to feel the tension. They're going to feel the need for speed because, you know, they've got a ton of things in the queue that they need to get to in order to hit their metrics that are not attainable in reality. You're not making a bad call by building your CX space early and robustly, just like product and engineering and marketing and sales.
Sarah Caminiti
[ 00:40:50,040 ] Making a conscious choice to listen to your customer, invest in your customer, which is what you are doing when you are adding to these teams, sends a message to the entire company that you care enough about the customer to do this. And so, just like with the question earlier, about all of these different silos, that is another way to send that message that we want to hear from the customers. We want to do it right the first time, not after someone was so burnt out that, you know, they hit the wrong button and everything blew up in their face.
SPEAKER_4
[ 00:41:24,000 ] All right, I want to give a huge thank you to our speakers. We all want to give them.
SPEAKER_4
[ 00:41:38,480 ] Okay, so we have a lot more in store for both today and the rest of the week. We also have our welcome party, if you are interested, here at 6:30, presented by HPE and NVIDIA.
SPEAKER_4
[ 00:41:50,070 ] We know you all want to mingle at this event, and we very much encourage it. However, we do ask you to do so outside of this room because we have to reset it for the next session.
SPEAKER_4
[ 00:42:00,970 ] If you're joining us virtually, though, you don't need to go anywhere. Just choose the next session on the schedule. We'll be back shortly. For early-stage founders, this Friday, there is a— or at the closing party, we do have a chance to actually share your startup, showcase it on an open mic. This does require a signup though. So you do have to go down to the first floor, the welcome desk, sign up for yourself. And for everyone else, you can check out the community bulletin board on the first floor to post opportunities or see what's happening around the startup space yourself. But otherwise, I hope you all have a wonderful rest of Startup Boston.
Sarah Caminiti
[ 00:42:42,340 ] And before you guys go, I know I didn't get a chance to do the second part of the questions because this went by way too fast. Thank you all for coming. If you have questions for us, I'm just going to volunteer everyone here without asking them first. Find us on LinkedIn. Send us messages. We could talk about this, obviously, for days. So don't be a stranger. Asking a question shows you care enough. To do it right, so uh, please don't be a stranger and come to us for more, but thank you all.
