Voice of Customer Initiatives

👥 Are our customers a name and a logo, or a real person trying to help themselves and their companies win each day? Let’s be honest: CS doesn’t always get this right. I don’t always get this right. When things get tough (aka churn risk, low usage, budget pressure) our instinct is to reach for the metrics. What can we quantify? What can we prove? How do we show we’re “doing our job”? We start building dashboards, framing health scores, chasing outcomes. Not wrong But also not enough. Because often, metrics make us feel better internally. But they don't us understand the people we’re here to serve. This is the tension at the heart of CS. We sit between the customer’s lived reality and the company’s operational pressure. And it’s our job to resolve that tension. Not avoid it. Not outsource it. Own it. So here’s what I’m thinking about today: What can we do to drive a deeper understanding across our orgs of client needs and value? And more importantly: How do we humanize the people at those clients? Here are 5 small moves with outsized impact: 1️⃣ Tell customer stories, not just stats. Share a 30-second anecdote at an All Hands Meeting. Real people. Real outcomes. 2️⃣ Bring a voice into the room. Quote an actual user in a roadmap meeting. Let them shape the build. 3️⃣ Translate feedback into intent. Don’t just say what a client asked for. Explain why it matters. 4️⃣ Invite cross-functional teammates to customer calls. Let them hear the tone, nuance, and urgency directly. 5️⃣ Celebrate wins that start with the customer. When a feature lands or a renewal closes, connect it to the human story behind it. CS isn’t just about adoption or retention. It’s about being the customer people engine inside the business. And that starts with us, every day, choosing to fight for understanding, not just validation. #CustomerSuccess #Leadership #VoiceOfCustomer #CustomerCentricity #CreateTheFuture

When Cinthia Catana moved her young family from Mexico to Hamburg last year, it might have looked like a risk. It was, I suppose. A dramatically different country, culture, colleagues. But I think it was more a geographical version of a Cinthia pattern: she sees most boundary lines as mirages. Here’s how I know. When we started working together in 2018, KN had already been talking for years about “customer excellence.” Never my favorite phrase but a decent proxy for a noble intent: design extraordinary customer experiences, moment by moment. But the truth was (still is, sadly): most of the ways companies measure customer experience isn’t very human. “Voice of the Customer” is a misnomer. Not a lot of actual talking. Just a lot of data. Scores. Aggregates. A disembodied pulse that you can’t really hear. Cinthia thought we could do better. So did I. So the idea we championed was deceptively simple: At the bottom of every email, a single question: How was your experience today? Click to answer, 1 to 5 stars. Then, a landing page where customers could tell us why, by choosing the part of their shipment journey that stood out — good or bad — and sharing their story. What started as an experiment soon became a vision: A feedback platform that matched quant with qual, numbers with narratives. One that would send every piece of feedback directly to the right person or team, so they could resolve, escalate, or, (more often than anyone expected) celebrate. Because what we learned, and what Cinthia always believed, is that customers don’t just use their voices to complain. They use them to thank. Simple tool. Pretty inarguable value prop. But to build and scale across 40,000 employees, 100 countries, dozens of languages, diverse business units... Not so simple. Cinthia navigated the standard cast — IT, finance, managers — each with their own concerns, their own priorities. There were budget battles. Technical hurdles (understatement!). Behavioral resistance. Step by step, she took over the full scope. From product design to global rollout. Steering the project through years of setbacks and compromises without ever losing sight of what feedback is: gift. A way to make us better as colleagues, as teams, as a company. And doing it with that rare corporate virtue: grace. I’ve never met anyone more deliberate at listening, learning, handling politics and pushback with patient determination. Today, our customers talk to us by the thousands. Stories that reinforce our best, help us recover when we’re less than that. If you work with us, you know: we’re only a click away. Cinthia built the click. She’ll say she didn’t do it alone. true! The list of contributors, champions, and funders who made it possible is long, a testament to the best of Kuehne+Nagel collaborative culture. But, if there is one person without whom this would never have happened, it’s Cinthia. I give her 5 stars. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Image: Hamburg. 2025. (This is #3 / #100KNStories)

Most Voice of Customer programs fail within 18 months. Not because of tech. Because they can’t prove business value. I’ve seen it play out too many times. Surveys are running. NPS is tracked. Dashboards look beautiful. But when leadership asks: “So what changed because of this?” Silence. Here’s why most VoC programs stall: → No hard link to revenue or cost savings → Weak executive sponsorship → Siloed ownership across journeys → Insights-to-action gap (findings don’t translate into changes) Without impact, VoC becomes a reporting function. And reporting functions are the first to get cut in a downturn. The fix is not more surveys. It’s not bigger dashboards. It’s building a direct line from insight → action → business outcome. ✔ Show how churn reduced after a fix ✔ Show how complaints dropped after a redesign ✔ Show how revenue grew after removing friction That’s when VoC moves from “nice to have” to “critical to growth.” If you’re running a VoC program today, how do you show its value to your CFO?

Successful tips on how to capture Customer Voice at your Customer Event This year marks our fifth year partnering with our customer Acumatica at their annual customer conference in Las Vegas. One of the most impactful initiatives we run is the “Minute Booth”—a low-pressure way for customers to share their experiences in just a minute. Working closely with my champion at Acumatica, we craft five strategic questions aligned with their company’s key initiatives. Customers step into the Customer Experience Hub, where they can quickly and easily share their stories. Many even leave a review on product review sites, making this a true one-stop shop for all authentic customer feedback. The best part? Customers love it! Some start off a little timid, but after recording, they often say, “Wow, that was so easy and fun!” My key takeaways for capturing authentic customer voice at events: ✅ Create a welcoming, fun environment – When customers feel comfortable, they’re more likely to say yes. ✅ Ask easy, relevant questions – Keep them simple, aligned with business goals, and easy to answer on the fly. ✅ Make it seamless – Giving customers a quick and enjoyable way to share their voice leads to better participation. ✅ Maximize the content – These stories serve multiple purposes—internal insights, external marketing, and product reviews. This week alone, we captured 200+ customer stories on how Acumatica helps them save time, access data, and improve their business. These are real, unfiltered, and powerful voices that showcase the true impact of their products. Authentic customer voice doesn’t need to be overproduced—it just needs to be real. How do you capture customer insights at events? Interested in learning more about our minute booth services let me know!!! #CustomerExperience #VoiceOfTheCustomer #CX #CustomerSuccess #Marketing #Acumatica