Importance of Customer Insights

Let’s clear something up: Customer Experience is not a department. And it’s not interchangeable with Customer Support. Support is a function. Necessary, but reactive by desgin. It steps in when something breaks. Customer Experience is something else entirely. It's a strategy. And when embedded into the core of the business, it becomes a growth engine. -It drives retention. - It scales advocacy. - It strengthens lifetime value. - It builds trust. - It creates a moat-like differentiation. Yet, too many companies still treat CX as a downstream department, when it should be the operating system of the business. Support resolves issues. 👉 CX designs journeys that prevent them. Support reduces friction. 👉 CX designs seamless paths from the start. Support is cost. 👉 CX drives profit. The real shift isn’t about where CX reports. It’s about how deeply it integrates into the business model to create long-term value. Customer Experience isn’t a team. It’s a culture. It’s a system. It’s a multiplier across product, brand, operations, and revenue. Where CX lives, the business doesn’t just respond. It blooms. #CamilaFerreira #Leadership #CX #LimitLess

„It costs five times more to acquire a customer than to keep one.” When I first encountered this magic number “5” in the academic literature in the 1990s, the source was usually cited as Technical Assistance Research Program (TARP), 1979. This was long before I lost my academic innocence. So I did what young researchers still did back then: I tried to find the original study. For more than two years, I found only papers that repeated the citation—never the study itself. Then, in 1999, I visited New York City. Mandatory stop at Strand Bookstore on East 12th Street. Followed by a visit to the New York Public Library. And there it was. The ominous TARP study. On microfiches. (If you don’t know what those are, you may be forgiven.) I searched for the magic number 5. It wasn’t there. What I did find was something far more interesting: Estimates of how much more expensive acquisition is compared to retention varied wildly by industry—from 2 to 32. Apparently, someone averaged it to 5. It sounded plausible. So it became management wisdom. And that’s where the problem begins. Because regardless of whether the number is 5—or 12 or 27—I question the underlying assumption: That customer loyalty is always superior to customer acquisition. Why? Because retention at all costs can be just as value-destroying as reckless acquisition. Some customers should be nurtured for decades. Some should be grown. Some should be acquired aggressively. And some—uncomfortably—should be let go. This is where Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) comes in. CLV asks a simple question: What is the net economic value of a customer over the entire relationship— revenues minus service costs, acquisition costs, and retention investments, discounted over time? In other words: Not How long do we keep customers? But Which customers are actually worth keeping—and which are worth acquiring? The real question is not acquire vs. retain. The real question is where the sweet spot lies between old and new customers to maximize profitability and growth. That sweet spot is different for every business. Different by industry. Different by strategy. Different by moment in time. #reframing #strategy #customervalue #growth

Real consumer insight does not sit in market reports. It lives in everyday behaviour. I have always believed that if you want to understand the Indian consumer, you must walk the aisles, visit the kirana stores, and spend time in homes. The questions are simple: why did they choose this brand, what made them switch, what are their latest unsatisfied needs, what habit stopped them from trying something new. The answers are rarely written down. They are observed in the pauses, the hesitations, the way a hand reaches for one pack over another. India is a mosaic of markets. What sells in Chennai might fail in Chandigarh. A message that resonates in Delhi could fall flat in a tier-three town. Income, culture, and even climate shape choices. Unless you immerse yourself in these realities, your strategy risks being built on assumptions. The sharper your consumer insight, the stronger your competitive edge. Do not delegate consumer understanding to agencies or reports. Make it a personal discipline. Sit with retailers, shadow buyers, watch the trade. The real breakthroughs are found not in a meeting agenda, but in how people actually live, shop, and decide. #leadership #entrepreneurship #consumer #mindset

I’ve learned that the most important voice in building a business isn’t mine, it’s yours. When we started indē wild, we knew we wanted to create more than just another beauty brand. Our goal was to solve real problems for real people. But to do that, we had to go straight to the source: our customers. Today, we have over 60 focus groups across India, the UK, and the US—because listening to our community isn’t just part of our process; it’s our foundation. For example, when we looked at common beauty products like moisturisers and cleansers, we heard something surprising from our target audience: “We already have good options for these.” What they didn’t have? Solutions for challenges like pigmentation or postpartum hair loss—issues that truly mattered to them but weren’t being addressed in the market. That insight changed everything for us. Instead of launching products based on trends or assumptions, we let our customers lead the way. And that’s now one of our biggest strengths. Here’s why listening matters for any entrepreneur or brand: Your customers are your greatest resource. They know their needs better than anyone else—ask, listen, and let them guide you. Solving real problems builds loyalty. When you address gaps in the market that truly matter to your audience, you don’t just sell products; you create solutions. Empathy drives innovation. By prioritising what people need over what’s trendy, you create products and services with real impact. I’ve learned that when you prioritise the voices of your audience, you don’t just create products—you create solutions. What problem are you trying to solve? I’d love to know👇💬

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

At Amazon, we would often spend months working on a single paragraph of the PR/FAQ for a new product idea. This was the "problem paragraph". Done well, it could lead to a successful product. Done wrong, it will lead to failure. Here is how to write a successful problem paragraph: The “problem paragraph” defines the customer problem you’re solving. Without this, you will build a product that doesn’t address a customer pain point. It shows whether you truly understand your customer's needs, not just your company’s capabilities. To write this paragraph, start by precisely identifying the customer segment that will be served by your product. Great products are built for specific people with specific needs. For instance, designing a car for single urban professionals under 35 differs significantly from designing for suburban families with three kids and a dog. If you think your product is for everyone, you’re mistaken. A strong way to begin your paragraph is: “Today, [customer segment] has [problem], which they currently solve using [methods A, B, and C]…” Next, quantify the problem: → How large is the segment? (e.g., 17 million households) → What methods do they use? (e.g., 45% use A, 25% use B, 30% use C) → What are the tradeoffs? (e.g., speed, cost, quality) Here’s an example for a hypothetical robot vacuum product: “Today, 15 million busy urban and suburban professionals earning between $100,000 and $200,000 struggle to find the time and energy to keep their homes clean. Approximately 30% of these households use traditional vacuuming, which requires up to 2 hours per week. 55% hire a cleaner at a minimum of $50/week, and 15% use robot vacuums that cost $600 plus $100/year in maintenance, while leaving behind up to 30% of dust and dirt.” This problem paragraph quantifies the customer problem in terms of money, time, and other metrics where possible (in this case, the dust and dirt left behind). The problem should always be quantified; otherwise, how can you assess the potential value of a product that solves it? Well-defined customer problems are built on data-based insights. Insights are gleaned from swimming in data and metrics. This includes customer usage metrics, process or operations metrics, user interviews, demographic data, customer feedback, customer support data and anecdotes. The more data-based and specific your insight, the more accurate and helpful your problem paragraph will be. This is why the process can take months. However, distilling these quantified insights into a single paragraph gives you the best chance at building a truly useful product. At Amazon, this paragraph was always the most debated section in a PR/FAQ. This is because getting the problem wrong is the worst mistake you can make in building a product. Everywhere else, you can pivot. But if the problem is incorrectly diagnosed, nothing else matters. (cont. in comments)

⚡If Customer Success isn’t driving alignment, then alignment isn’t happening. Agree / disagree? One of the biggest mistakes CS leaders make is waiting for alignment to come to them. Waiting for Product to invite them into roadmap conversations Waiting for Sales to loop them in early Waiting for Marketing to share messaging Waiting for Finance to understand retention math. But alignment doesn’t "arrive." It’s created. And quite often, The CS team is the one to create it. That's not because CS “owns everything,” but because CS is the team that sees everything (as I like to say, company inefficiency leaks towards the customer): the promises made and not kept, the product gaps, the customer realities, the revenue risk, and the growth opportunities. That vantage point is a privilege. And it comes with responsibility. 🔥 CS leaders must be unapologetically proactive and bold about driving alignment across teams. Because misalignment isn’t a communication problem, it’s a leadership problem. Here’s what I think being proactive about alignment looks like: 1️⃣ Invite yourself into the rooms you need to be in and show up with purpose. Don’t wait for someone to “loop you in.” Forward progress rarely comes from permission, but instead comes from perspective and presence. 2️⃣ Translate customer insights into business decisions. Data means nothing if it doesn’t influence Product, Sales, and Strategy. Your job isn’t to deliver "insights." It’s to drive action. 4️⃣ Be the connective tissue, not the cleanup crew. Proactive alignment deters fire drills, reduces escalations, and minimizes churn far better than heroics ever will. 5️⃣ Lead boldly, even (especially) when it feels uncomfortable. Alignment requires challenging assumptions, asking more direct questions, and pushing teams toward clarity. The future of Customer Success belongs to leaders who don’t wait for alignment, but for those who architect it. Because when CS leads alignment with confidence, the rest of the company moves faster. And our customers are the ultimate winners in the end. #CustomerSuccess #CSLeadership #CustomerExperience #CreateTheFuture #GrowthMindset #RevenueGrowth #SaaS

"Talk to customers" is classic startup advice. But not enough folks teach you how to talk to users in a way that gets you actual insights. Since launching Decagon and raising $100M over 3 rounds, we’ve learned a lot, especially about GTM. Here's how we've adapted our customer conversations to go beyond surface-level excitement and uncover real signals of value. We benchmark around dollars when discussing product features. Why? Because it’s easy to run a customer interview where the customer seems thrilled about a new idea we have. But excitement alone doesn’t tell you if a piece of feedback is truly valuable. The only way to find out is to ask the hard questions: → Is this something your team would invest in right now? → How much would you pay for it? → What’s the ROI you’d expect? Questions like these don’t allow for generic answers—they'll give you real clarity into a customer's willingness to pay. For example: say you float a product idea past a potential user. They're stoked by it. Then you ask how much they'd pay for said product—and the answer is $50 per person for a 3-person team. Is that worth building? It might be, depending on the outcome you're shooting for. But if your goal is to build an enterprise-grade product, that buying intent (or lack thereof) isn't going to cut it. If you'd stopped the interview at the surface-level excitement, you might have sent yourself on a journey building a product that isn't viable. By assessing true willingness to pay you can prioritize building what users find valuable versus what might sound good in theory. Get to the dollars as quickly as you can. It’s an approach that has helped us align our roadmap with what customers truly need and ensure we’re building a product that has a measurable impact.

Five years ago, Warburg Pincus LLC invested in BetterCloud and urged us to work on a project to narrow our ideal customer profile (ICP). It's the most impactful thing I've ever done to improve conversion rates, shorten sales cycles, increase deal size and ultimately transform the company. A big mistake many CEOs make is believing their product is for everyone. It’s tempting. More potential customers should mean more sales, right? But in reality, chasing too broad a market drains resources, distracts your team, muddles messaging, confuses your product roadmap, and kills go-to-market efficiency. Being laser-focused on your ICP drives alignment across product, messaging, and the go-to-market motion. When the right prospect engages, they’ll feel like you built it just for them. Anyone who has built a product or service knows that the things a small business needs are very different than what a huge enterprise needs. A company is different from a school. An IT buyer is different from a security buyer, a sales buyer is different from a marketing buyer, a director level decision maker is different than a C level decision maker… but we still believe we can sell to different segments and personas as the same time. The process to define and use your ICP is relatively straightforward but does take time. The larger your business, the more data you have, the more resources you have to crunch that data the more time you should spend to do it as scientifically as possible. The high level steps are: 1. Build a Customer Dataset: Gather all your customer data. Current and churned customers, won and lost opportunities. Enrich it with firmographic, business-specific, and buyer demographic data. 2. Engage Your Team: Your best sales and customer success people hold invaluable insights about your most successful (and worst) customers. 3. Analyze & Identify Pockets of Gold: Identify common attributes of high-performing accounts and avoid the traps of poor-fit customers. 4. Communicate the ICP to the entire company with the “why” behind the attributes that make up an ideal customer.  5. Rework your messaging to appeal to your newly defined ICP and narrow your growth initiatives to be focused only on the accounts that matter.  6. Assign the right ICP accounts to your reps and ensure they’re focused on the right buyer personas. 7. Product Development: Reassess your roadmap to align with the needs of your ICP. You should see impact fast. GTM funnel metrics will improve. Conversion rates should rise, with better leads turning into stronger opportunities. You may not get more leads, but their quality will increase. I’ve been discussing this with many Not Another CEO Podcast guests, so don’t just take my word for it. I wrote a deep dive on how to “Narrow Your ICP and Transform your Company”, with real examples from other companies. You can read the full article here https://lnkd.in/e5EN3XSR