Customer Feedback Utilization

Don't reject unconventional use of your products. Embrace unanticipated ways that your customers use your products. 🚀 As product managers, we design, develop, and forecast how our products would be used by customers. But what happens when our customers surprise us by employing our products in entirely unexpected ways? Some examples 💡 Collaboration tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams were designed to facilitate team communication and project management. However, users have expanded their use cases by creating virtual communities, hosting webinars, or even organizing online events and conferences. 💡 Ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft were originally created as an alternative to traditional taxis. However, users have found additional uses, such as using these services for deliveries, running errands, or even as a means of transportation for their pets. 💡 Crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter or Indiegogo were designed to help individuals raise funds for creative projects. Users have extended their use cases to include launching new product lines, funding charitable initiatives, or even validating market demand for new business ideas. Instead of resisting unexpected customer usage, product managers should eagerly embrace the unanticipated, reaping the rewards of uncharted territory. 1️⃣ Listen and Learn: Actively seek feedback from your customers and diligently monitor their usage patterns. Their unanticipated usage reveals new needs and pain points, allowing you to unlock innovation and tailor your product more effectively. 2️⃣ Adapt: Embrace the mantra of flexibility and adaptability. By tweaking your product roadmap to incorporate unexpected use cases, you can stay ahead of the curve and respond to emerging customer demands with agility. 3️⃣ Redefine User Research: Traditional user research focuses on expected use cases, but true insights lie in understanding the context and motivations behind unexpected usage. Dive deeper into your customers' experiences to unveil hidden opportunities and build stronger, more customer-centric products. #productmanagement #productleadership #productinnovation #productdesign

Most teams guess what to build. We talk to 100s of prospects a month and let them tell us exactly what’s broken. In the early days of Salesforge, we knew one thing: The company that talks to the most customers the fastest… wins. That’s why we book 10–20 meetings a day not just to sell, but to learn faster than anyone else in our category. Every single day, we hear what prospects hate, where their current stack fails, what gets them excited, and what they wish existed. That learning compiles. It compounds. And over time, it becomes your strategic edge. Here are 4 lessons we’ve learned by doing this at volume and how it’s shaped how we build: 1. Feedback isn’t optional Most teams try to prioritize based on opinions, roadmaps, or investor pressure. We don’t. We let volume of feedback decide what gets built and what doesn’t. When you’re on 100+ calls a week, patterns become undeniable. If 6 out of 10 people mention the same workflow friction — we tag it, push it to product, and ship fast. Sometimes within a week. Without this level of signal clarity, you risk overbuilding, building in the wrong direction, or even worse — building something nobody wants. Velocity of feedback → velocity of learning → velocity of execution. 2. The best ideas don’t live on a whiteboard We’ve never treated the roadmap as a fixed blueprint. It’s a living document that adapts with every conversation. Some of our biggest wins started out as throwaway questions from prospects: “Can you guys do this?” “What if your agent could also handle that?” When you hear something like that three, four, five times in a single week, it’s no longer a fluke. It’s a market pull. We’ve built entire products like Warmforge and Leadsforge based on patterns that showed up first in conversations. Too many teams fall in love with their own ideas. We fall in love with patterns. 3. Repetition forces clarity or it exposes fluff If you’ve ever delivered the same pitch 50+ times in a week, you know one thing: you can’t fake it. If your messaging isn’t sharp, people will tune out. That’s the beauty of repetition. It either breaks your narrative or forces you to tighten it. Every meeting becomes a stress test for your story. 4. Geography matters more than you think One of the most underappreciated lessons we’ve learned from talking to prospects globally is just how different buyer behavior is by region. → Southeast Asia and LATAM? WhatsApp. → US? Email + cold call + LinkedIn → Europe? Email + cold call + LinkedIn + Whatsapp Without the conversations, we’d be shipping the wrong thing into the wrong market. TAKEAWAY Most teams optimize for pipeline. We optimize for learning velocity. That’s how you ship products people want. That’s how you write copy that converts. That’s how you build an agent that actually works in the wild. And the only way to do it? Listen harder. Track everything. Move fast. It’s messy. It’s unscalable. And it’s the reason we’re winning.

When the Head of Product drives strategy top-down, PMs get frustrated. But when PMs drive bottom-up planning...execs get nervous. And when they don’t talk? Roadmaps fall apart. The best product planning lives in the middle. You need top down planning and bottom-up discovery Too often, orgs pick just one side: 🧠 Top-down: Execs set bold bets. PMs execute — even when the data says “this won’t land.” 👟 Bottom-up: PMs chase user needs. Strategy gets lost in the backlog. Here’s what works: strategy as a loop, not a broadcast. 1️⃣ Set Strategic Guardrails Top-down strategy should provide the North Star. Not a list of features. But a set of outcomes: → What problems are we trying to solve at the business level? → What does success look like 12–24 months out? Think: revenue targets, market positioning, platform investments. PMs need these boundaries to prioritize with purpose. 2️⃣ Run Bottom-Up Discovery This is how we understand customer value. → Who is the core customer? → Where's the true pain point? → What patterns are emerging across segments? Not just voice-of-customer — real behavior, real usage. PMs should synthesize signal, not just collect noise. 3️⃣ Drive the Planning Loop Now comes the hard part: translation. → Which bottom-up signals align with strategic goals? → Where do they challenge the current direction? This is where planning becomes strategic. You’re not just slotting features into a timeline — you’re shaping the roadmap based on live feedback. Push for course-correction before commitments solidify. 4️⃣ Package for Executive Buy-In Insights only drive action when they’re communicated in the right language. → Use exec framing: risk, revenue, roadmap. → Use BLUF and the 5-slide rule. → Show tradeoffs, not just problems. This is where influence happens — not just up, but across product, design, eng, marketing. Final thought: The best strategy lives at the intersection of business value and customer value. Not just vision. Not just feedback. Real planning that connects the two. -- 👋 I’m Ron Yang, a product leader and advisor. Follow me for insights on product leadership & strategy.

A few days ago, I had shared about a customer who had waited weeks for his dream car (link shared in the comments). That built customer trust before and during delivery. But real loyalty, it sparks afterwards and takes time to develop. Picture this: A customer walked into our showroom, new SUV keys in hand. Delivery excitement had faded fast, replaced by frustration over a recurring issue with the AC. He didn't just want a fix, he wanted answers. We often celebrate sales deliveries, but Service is where relationships get the opportunity to stabilize. Over the years, I’ve learned something simple: Inside every complaint lies an opportunity – if you know how to unlock it. That day, our team followed the playbook we’ve built over time: 1️⃣ Listen without defense – Instead of rushing to justify, our service team leaned in. “Tell me more, when does it happen?” A simple question revealed the AC glitch surfaced only during dense city traffic. Zero blame, full empathy. 2️⃣ Respond with speed and a little extra. We didn’t let the issue linger. Diagnostics overnight. Warranty fix done. Plus, a complimentary polish and AC filter upgrade. Speed rebuilds trust. The “extra” creates delight. 3️⃣ Follow up before they ask. The next day our advisor called: “How’s the drive now? Any concerns?” The customer mentioned navigation confusion, so we invited him in for a 15-minute personalised walk through voice commands, custom routes, the works. 4️⃣ Capture and amplify the win. A frustrated rant turned into a glowing 5-star review, a family referral, and a road-trip post where he tagged our dealership with pride. In our industry, complaints aren’t setbacks, they’re customer intelligence. They reveal gaps, build loyalty and when handled well, convert skeptics into advocates. Train your teams in this mindset, and your biggest “crises” will become your strongest differentiators. Would you like to try this approach? Gautam Modi , Gautam Modi Group #CustomerCentricity #Complaints #Opportunity #BrandLoyalty #Resolution

Most retailers treat their app and their stores as separate worlds 🌍 Customer data from each channel lives in different systems, measured by different teams. But Abercrombie & Fitch Co. is doing something really smart with geofencing. And it's a good example of what omnichannel actually looks like when it's done well ✅ When a customer downloads the Abercrombie & Fitch app and opts into location sharing, the app can detect when they walk into a store. It switches to in-store mode and gives them a tailored experience while they shop 📲 But here's the clever bit. About an hour after the customer leaves the store, Abercrombie & Fitch sends them a push notification asking for feedback on their visit. The timing is deliberate: long enough for the person to leave the store, short enough that the experience is still fresh. The brand rewards participation with loyalty points 💰 Why this matters for eCommerce brands thinking about omnichannel: Abercrombie & Fitch is using the app as a bridge between the physical and digital experience. Geofencing isn't new technology. But using it to close the loop between store visits, customer sentiment and loyalty, that's a genuinely useful application of it. And it only works because the customer opted in, gets something back (loyalty points), and the experience feels helpful rather than intrusive. More of this, please. https://lnkd.in/eJmwZApA

𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝘁𝗲𝗹𝗹𝘀 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗪𝗛𝗔𝗧 𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗱; 𝗙𝗶𝗲𝗹𝗱 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺𝘀 𝘁𝗲𝗹𝗹 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗪𝗛𝗬. The "Hybrid Sales Model" is failing if your data is siloed. There is a statistic from McKinsey’s 2024 B2B Pulse that every Commercial leader needs to see: B2B decision-makers now use 𝟭𝟬 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗰𝘁 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗹𝘀 during their journey. In Pharma, this means a Healthcare Professional (HCP) might watch a webinar (Marketing), visit a portal (Digital), and meet a Rep (Sales). Too often, the Sales Rep has no idea the webinar happened. When Sales and Marketing operate in silos, the "Omnichannel" experience becomes a "Multi-channel" noise factory. The HCP gets a generic email from Marketing the day after a Rep visit, referencing a totally different topic. That’s not engagement; that’s collision. To fix this, 𝘄𝗲 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗺𝗼𝘃𝗲 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 "𝗖𝗮𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗶𝗴𝗻𝘀" 𝘁𝗼 "𝗖𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿 𝗘𝗻𝗴𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗝𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗻𝗲𝘆𝘀." That means:  • 𝗨𝗻𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗲𝗱 𝗩𝗶𝗲𝘄: The CRM must show all interactions (digital + in-person) to the Rep in real-time.  • 𝗥𝗲𝗽-𝗧𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗴𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝗘𝗺𝗮𝗶𝗹: Empower Sales teams to trigger marketing-approved digital content based on their face-to-face conversations.  • 𝗙𝗲𝗲𝗱𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸 𝗟𝗼𝗼𝗽𝘀: Marketing needs 𝗾𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗳𝗲𝗲𝗱𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸 from the field to adjust digital tactics. Data tells you what happened; field tells you why. Set up a 15-minute "Insight Swap" meeting between one Marketing Brand Manager and one District Sales Manager. No slides. Just discuss: "What questions are customers asking you right now that our current emails aren't answering?" Sales leaders: Does your team currently see digital interactions in their CRM before they step into a clinic? #PharmaSales #SFE #Omnichannel #CustomerEngagement #PharmaTrends

Want to know one of the biggest eCom “growth hacks” you can use for your brand? It’s actually not a hack - but a fundamental way to squeeze more revenue out of your marketing: Asking for feedback from your customers. That’s right - it’s that simple & it’s a HUGE growth lever for our clients. Here’s why: You can use that feedback to improve: * Your email & SMS flows * Your landing page copy * Your cold-traffic ads Every part of your marketing funnel can be made better with customer feedback. Especially if you’re asking the right questions to get *useful* feedback. For instance, let’s say someone has bought & consumed your product. Send them a post-purchase email asking them: 1. What do you love most about our product? 2. How can we enhance your shopping experience? 3. Are there any other products you’d like us to offer …Just a few examples of good questions to ask. Your understanding of your customers goes up. Your visibility into your customers' likes & preferences goes up. Your ability to make changes to your marketing assets go up. All in all it’s an effective way to gather more zero party data. Which just to remind you: Is data that’s voluntarily given to you by customers. Which you can then use to improve their shopping experience. The bottomline here is to ask your customers more questions. Treat their answers like direct market research. It’s an underrated growth lever that’s extremely easy to pull.

Stop treating customer feedback like Jira tickets, if you want to improve your product. I hear so many product managers still use terms like "request" or "feature request" or "customer request." And I really dislike this. It's already setting the wrong expectations and the wrong tone because it suggests that someone is requesting something from you. Hence, you should give them what they request. But here's the thing: feedback isn't a ticket. It's a signal. When you mix customer or sales "requests" directly into your product backlog, you've already said "yes" without thinking. You're playing feature factory, not building strategy. So what should you do instead? 𝗙𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁, kill the word "request." Call it what it is: feedback. Language shapes expectations. 𝗦𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗱, separate your workflows. Create a dedicated feedback repository - not mixed with your product opportunities. This protects your product integrity and gives your team actual space for discovery. 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝗿𝗱 - and this is where it gets powerful - link relevant feedback excerpts to your opportunities, epics, or initiatives. Don't copy-paste. Link. Why? Because now you can: • Aggregate insights across time and customer segments • Detect trends (is that "AI chatbot" request gaining traction?) • Build prioritization confidence (are your top-tier customers behind this?) Here's what this looks like in practice: Let's say you get feedback about needing an AI chatbot. Instead of creating a ticket, you capture it as feedback. Then you realize - wait, this applies to both our desktop AND mobile teams. So you link that same feedback to opportunities in both workspaces. Now both teams have context. No duplication. No telephone game. Plus, you can clearly see how many customers have given this feedback and which segments it's coming from. The result? When your PM sits down to write a PRD or define a problem, 80% of it writes itself. They're not flying blind - they're guided by validated signals from actual customers. They can transparently communicate why certain decisions were made. The go-to-market teams feel heard because they can see exactly how their feedback connects to product work. It's not about ignoring what customers want. It's about treating their input as valuable data points that inform your strategy - not as a to-do list. Because at the end of the day, customers don't know what needs to be built in most cases. They have pains and wishes. But those are feedback signals that you need to sort and organize along with all the other signals - your five-year strategy, your one-year initiatives, your technical constraints. Request simply doesn't fit in that map. How do you handle the flood of feedback without turning your roadmap into a wishlist?

Your customers are talking. Are you listening? Most brands miss out on a goldmine—they gather feedback but never use it strategically. Here’s how you can turn #customerfeedback into a powerful tool for #positioning and #marketing: 1. Dig into the “Why” Behind the Feedback:  ↳ Don’t just note what customers say—understand why they say it. Are there recurring pain points or desires? 2. Identify Patterns and Trends:  ↳ Is a certain feature praised repeatedly? Or a common frustration echoed? 3. Use Language Directly from Your Customers:  ↳ The words your customers use to describe their problems are the words that should be in your marketing copy. 4. Prioritize Features and Content Based on Real Needs:  ↳ Customer feedback can inform which features or content topics should take center stage. What’s driving engagement? 5. Close the Feedback Loop:  ↳ Show your customers you’re listening. Incorporate their suggestions and communicate those changes. 70% of customers are more loyal to brands that act on their feedback. Customer feedback isn’t just a checkbox—it’s a strategic #asset. Let your customers guide your positioning and marketing, so you speak directly to what they care about most. Have you tried incorporating customer feedback into your #strategy? Share your experiences or challenges below! Let's discuss how we've been making the most out of this powerful tool. #productmanagement #productmarketing #product #productstrategy #productmanagers #customers #customerfirst #productledmarketing

𝗪𝗲 𝗧𝗮𝗹𝗸 𝘁𝗼 𝗖𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗘𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗗𝗮𝘆, 𝗕𝘂𝘁 𝗗𝗼 𝗪𝗲 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗟𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗻? During my last 𝗯𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 𝘀𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 with a dealership 𝘀𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗰𝗲 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺, I asked a simple question: “Why are we still unable to satisfy customers?” One team member quickly replied “Sir, our PSF is 94% and TAT is 87%. We’re doing everything right.” Numbers looked perfect. But customer emotions didn’t. So I asked again “Are we talking to customers to 𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱 them, Or just to 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗮𝗰𝘁 one more time?” The room went silent. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗧𝗿𝘂𝘁𝗵 In the automobile industry, we often measure satisfaction through reports But real satisfaction lives in relationships. ✅ We check TAT (Turnaround Time), ✅ We quote PSF (Post Service Feedback), But do we really check how the customer felt when they left our premises? Customers remember tone more than turnaround. They value empathy more than efficiency. They stay loyal not for discounts, but for connection. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 𝗟𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗼𝗻 Service excellence isn’t about closing jobs faster It’s about opening conversations deeper. Every Service Advisor, CRM, and Manager should ask: “Am I here to serve a vehicle, or to understand a person?” 𝗕𝗲𝗰𝗮𝘂𝘀𝗲 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝘄𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼 𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱, Numbers improve automatically, and satisfaction becomes a natural outcome. 𝗔𝘁 𝗔𝘂𝘁𝗼𝗣𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗲𝘂𝗿 𝗦𝗰𝗵𝗼𝗼𝗹, We mentor service professionals to lead with empathy, not just process Because excellent service is not mechanical, it’s emotional. #automobileindustry #customerservice #leadership #careers #customers #business