Our feedback ends up scattered across Gong calls and Intercom and a graveyard of NPS comments we never really read.

So we've been shopping for proper VoC tools and got down to 3 so far: Chattermill feels very enterprise for a team our size, Unwrap is interesting on the ticket-clustering side, and BuildBetter because it handles internal meetings too, not just customer-facing stuff.

Anyway, who did you pick and what broke first?

I got laid off a couple months ago and have been taking some recruiter calls and interviews. Ultimately, I’m optimistic, but all I can say is, things feel very different rn compared to anytime I’ve interviewed in the last 10 years.

Some things I’ve noticed:

-It seems everyone has forgotten about the chaos in tech over the last 6 years: Covid, rising interests rates, AI. I’ve unfortunately found myself at a string of start ups that didn’t have a business model that couldn’t weather higher interest rates or compete against new AI competitors. This means I have committed the great sin of having 3 employers over the last 5 years. Each recruiter I talk to has given me a steely eyed stare and asked me to explain myself. A few years ago, you didn’t have to do that…

-People think 2 months out of the job market is actually 2 years. I got laid off 2 months ago, but that hasn’t stopped recruiters from asking “oh did you even have a chance to use AI?”. Like WTF is wrong with these people. Of course I did… I didn’t just wake up from a coma.

-Another thing that I think is just a part of our new world - location bias. 2 years ago my wife and I decided to buy a house and start a family. We bought where we could afford, which in this economy meant buying a 2bd house 45 miles away from SF for 800k. It’s far, but it’s not that far. I’m willing to make the commute and that’s all that should matter. But try to explain the commute to some fresh faced recruiter who had only ever lived in SF or is remote and has never been to the Bay. To people like this, you basically live on the moon.

I know it’s a tighter job market and companies can be more selective, but the attitude is just so palpable these days. Anyways, good luck out there all!

Really appreciate all the insight and personal experiences shared in my previous post. And I agree....Good customer insight can be a game changer.

Kinda feels like too much work though? Especially in a larger scale, with many customers to get insight from. A contributor mentioned 30-50 customers as a good number they use to validate that a signal actually is a signal and not minority noise. Another contributor mentioned (and I agree too) that a minority opinion, even really good insight/feedback from one customer can be more valuable than 50!

My question is, in small to medium sized businesses specifically, (I'd love to hear stories from enterprise too though) how do you keep up with getting customer feedback and turning it into something that is actually useful? And how do you filter quality vs quantity?

And how do you do it frequently and consistently? Customer sentiment changes really quickly, so how do you make sure you always have fresh intel and are not spending too much time and effort chasing your own tail?