How to Build a Voice of Customer Program

At Enterpret, we spend our days helping some of the world's best companies scale their customer insights.

We’ve analyzed thousands of hours of conversations over the last five years to figure out what separates companies that just say they are customer-obsessed from the ones that actually are.

The difference usually comes down to having a structured Voice of Customer (VoC) program.

This guide captures the best practices we’ve extracted from working with companies like Notion, Figma, and Apollo. It’s a framework to help you move from scattered noise to actionable insights.

Here is how to build a VoC program that actually drives impact.

What is Voice of Customer, Really?

Before jumping into the "how," let’s align on the "what."

Voice of the Customer (VoC) isn't just sending surveys. It’s a strategic research strategy used to capture, analyze, and acton customer feedback regarding their experiences and expectations. Its goal is to bridge the critical gap between what your business thinks it’s providing and what customers actually need.

Phase 1: The Readiness Check (Is it Time?)

Many companies aspire to be customer-obsessed but don’t know where to start. The first step is admitting that your current ad-hoc methods are breaking.

You are likely ready for a formal VoC program if:

• The noise is overwhelming: Feedback is coming from everywhere—Slack, email, support, sales—and no one has the time to manually aggregate it.
• Silos are forming: Your Engineering, Product, and Design (EPD) team is now large enough that no single person holds all the details of what’s being built or why.
• You hit the threshold: Communication breaks down when companies reach between 75–150 employees.
• You use formal systems: You have distinct data pools in Zendesk/Intercom (support), Gong/Chorus (sales), and G2/Trustpilot (marketing).

If you’re nodding your head, it’s time to operationalize.

Phase 2: Getting Buy-In

A VoC program cannot live solely in the Support or CX department. It is a team sport. If Product and Engineering don't care about the data you produce, the program will fail.

To run a successful program, you need cross-functional stakeholders to agree that customer feedback matters to their goals.

How do you get that buy-in? Don't talk about "feelings"; talk about metrics that demonstrate the benefits of a voice of customer program.

Shek, CPO at Apollo.io, puts it perfectly: “Use data to demonstrate the program's potential impact on key metrics like gross dollar retention and cost reduction... At Apollo, we knew reducing the human inquiry rate by 40% would positively impact retention. Getting buy-in became a tactical step after that.”

Frame VoC as the tool that helps the company achieve better alignment, ship faster with confidence, and improve the pace of development.

Full guide on how to get executive buy-in for your VoC program.

Phase 3: Operationalizing the Loop

Once you have buy-in, you need a structure. A successful VoC program needs a centralized team of "Insight Producers" (who align the company on top pain points) and decentralized "Insight Consumers" (development teams who take action).

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Here is the 5-step flywheel we recommend to keep this running and some helpful resources for each one:

1. Map Customer Conversations: Identify where it’s happening—social, support tickets, surveys, review sites. You can't analyze what you don't capture.
   
   • Voice of Customer Survey Template
   • Voice of Customer Questions
2. Identify Top Pain Points: Analyze that feedback to find recurring themes. Categorize them by frequency and severity.
   
   • Voice of Customer Translation Matrix
3. Get EPD & GTM Alignment: Present this data-driven list to Engineering, Product, and Go-To-Market teams. Get their commitment to address the top issues.
   
   • Voice of Customer Reporting Template
4. Address the Pain Points: This is where the work happens—shipping the fix, the feature, or the process improvement.
   
5. Repeat and Close the Loop: VoC is ongoing. Crucially, you must go back to the customers who complained and tell them you fixed it.

Phase 4: Making it Stick

A VoC program isn’t a one-time project; it’s a new way of operating. You need to establish rituals to ensure the insights are actually integrated into business processes.

• Weekly Summaries: Push weekly feedback summaries into development squad Slack channels for "ambient awareness" of what users are saying.
• Monthly Top 10 Lists: Create lists of the top pain points every month to align EPD and GTM teams on critical issues.
• Quarterly Planning: Ensure VoC insights are a core component of strategic roadmap decision-making.
• Product Launches: Use VoC data to validate launch strategies and immediately gauge reaction post-launch.

Advice from the Experts

We’ve learned a lot from the leaders running these programs. Here are a few key takeaways from our customers:

• Figma on minimizing friction: "Design your VoC program as a scalable platform that serves the entire organization, rather than a bottleneck... The goal is to make engagement with the VoC program as effortless as possible for all roles involved." — Michael Nguyen, Head of Voice of Customer
• Notion on identifying silos: "Figure out what feedback silos currently exist and bridge them. Silos often emerge when different departments collect and analyze customer feedback independently, resulting in fragmented insights." — Kayla Eliaza, Head of User Insights
• Apollo on data hygiene: "Garbage in, garbage out. Make sure you have a good understanding of the data, where it's piping into, and where the data is coming from." — Lyn Li Chi, Business and Product Operations

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Ready to Start?

A Voice of Customer program isn't just about collecting feedback—it's about integrating customer insights into the DNA of your organization.

Companies like Canva, Notion, and Figma have shown that when you structure this correctly, you don't just make customers happier; you drive faster product innovation and revenue growth.

If you’re ready to elevate your VoC game and stop guessing what your customers need, get in touch with us at Enterpret. We’d love to help you turn that noise into a signal.

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