The Marketer’s Ultimate Guide
How to Use Voice
of the Customer to
Accelerate SaaS
Growth
The Power of VoC in B2B SaaS Marketing
What is Voice of the Customer?
Voice of the Customer (VoC) is a complete set of your customers’ wants and needs...
- expressed in your customers’ own language
- organized the way your customers think about, use, and interact with your product or service
- prioritized by your customers in terms of both importance and performance
The original term, coined by Griffin and Hauser in 1993, described how incorporating customer insights into quality management improved product R&D, engineering, and manufacturing.
Today, the most successful B2B SaaS companies use VoC to improve every part of their sales and marketing funnels.
Why Voice of the Customer Matters for CMOs
Meet Monica, the CMO of Up-N-Coming SaaS company. She leads her company’s marketing efforts — and they’re ambitious. Her tasks include developing and managing marketing strategies, optimizing cross-channel engagement, and conducting marketing research.
That’s the job description. But it’s hard to do when Monica is always fighting fires like:
- Justifying marketing spend: C-suite wants her to justify every dollar spent and tie it back to sales KPIs like revenue, customer lifetime value, and retention.
- Securing executive buy-in: There’s a strong bias toward sticking with “proven tactics” … even if those tactics no longer generate results.
- Overcoming pushback: Whether it’s introducing new technology, shifting messaging, or evolving the company’s brand, any change that disrupts workflows sparks a lot of resistance from other teams.
Monica’s challenges aren’t unique.
According to Gartner, 69% of marketers say demonstrating ROI is their top strategic priority but the overwhelming majority struggle with barriers like budget restrictions, executive buy-in, and organizational resistance.
That’s why listening to Voice of the Customer is so important.
Your customers' wants and needs serve as a grand unifier for your team — and aligning your brand with what matters to your audience is the best way to increase engagement, loyalty, and retention.
How Voice of the Customer Can Accelerate SaaS Growth
Voice of the Customer insights can be a powerful catalyst for SaaS growth, driving significant ROI through increased customer acquisition, retention, and lifetime value.
SaaS companies leveraging VoC can tailor their product features, messaging, and user experience to resonate more strongly with target audiences. This alignment enhances customer satisfaction and loyalty, reducing churn and boosting referrals, while VoC-driven brand positioning attracts higher-quality leads by addressing prospect values.
Plus, VoC research takes the guesswork out of decision-making. Whether you’re launching a new campaign, relaunching your website, or revising your entire brand strategy — VoC enables all of those efforts to bear fruit.
Example
Tired of ineffectual marketing campaigns, Monica decides to dive into Voice of the Customer data. She interviews power users of Up-N-Coming’s flagship CRM product and mines hundreds of product reviews.
Using this data, Monica begins to lay the groundwork for organizational change, including:
- Establishing branding that commands attention and boosts credibility
- Creating marketing strategies that drive MRR and retention
- Aligning her entire organization around a shared, customer-centric vision
With VoC research, Monica finally feels like she knows why past campaigns went awry and she has a clearer idea of how to create messaging and outreach that aligns with customer values.
Turning Voice of the Customer Into Action
How to Get Buy-In For VoC Initiatives
Even if you understand the need for robust Voice of the Customer research, getting started can feel daunting. After all, developing a brand new VoC program is not a one-person job.
But one savvy person (you?) can help kickstart new initiatives if you:
- Make a Business Case: Showcase how VoC initiatives drive core business metrics like customer acquisition, retention, and revenue growth.
- Overcome Objections: Address concerns about resources, costs, or disruption. Emphasize cross-team collaboration and consider a pilot project to demonstrate value and reduce risk.
- Develop a Strategy: Implement a framework for ranking feedback based on impact, urgency, and strategic alignment and outline a concrete plan for turning VoC insight into action.
How to Overcome Objections to Implementing VoC
There are a variety of potential reasons why a SaaS company might hesitate to implement VoC research into their overarching growth strategy. Understanding those reasons and knowing how to combat them is the key to successful new initiatives — like rebrands and website redesigns.
The most common objections to implementing Voice of the Customer:
- Resource Constraints: You can’t effectively gather, analyze, and act on VoC if you lack time, tools, or budget. The thought of paying for another tool in your tech stack might be a huge barrier, especially for SMBs.
- Fear of Disruption/Change: Some companies are worried about uncovering evidence that they need to make significant product or customer service changes — changes they feel unprepared to face or implement.
- Lack of Strategy: If you don’t know what you want to achieve with feedback, then collecting VoC can feel aimless and overwhelming.
- Team Misalignment: VoC initiatives often fall apart if marketing, sales, product, and customer success teams are all pushing in different directions.
- Perceived Low ROI: When you’re focused on short-term growth (or digging yourself out of a ditch), it’s easy to cast aside long-term growth strategies in favor of immediate revenue generation.
- VoC Data Integrity Concerns: Some companies give up before they start collecting VoC because they don’t know how to prevent bias or weed out low-quality data.
- VoC Data Overload Concerns: The sheer volume of feedback can be overwhelming and difficult to synthesize and apply — especially for larger companies.
- Operational Complexity: When you already have other systems in place (CRM, analytics tools, etc.), the thought of incorporating feedback into existing workflows can feel like a high barrier to entry.
- Reliance on Internal Expertise: If your team has a “mother knows best” attitude and think they already have all the answers, they may not see value in VoC.
- Leadership Resistance: If leaders don’t value or understand the importance of customer feedback, your VoC initiatives are dead before they start.
Overcoming these objections isn’t easy, but it’s possible if you show up with a plan for collecting VoC data, a strategic (and measurable) end goal, and a clear understanding of the long-term benefits it will have on your product, marketing initiatives, and overall business growth.
How to Collect Voice of the Customer Data
If the thought of interviewing every customer one by one is overwhelming, don’t worry. There are tons of ways to collect customer feedback and there’s definitely a right fit for you. The best place to start is by looking at your company’s size, available internal resources, and how many existing customers you have.
STARTUP
Startups should gather deep, qualitative VoC data from a small, engaged user base.
Your goal should be validating product-market fit. When your company is small and nimble, it’s easier to adapt your processes and evolve your product. Conducting early customer research is also a great way to establish personal relationships with your customers!
Some of the best ways to gather feedback as a SaaS startup include:
- Usage Analytics: Track feature adoption and user behavior
- User Interviews: Ask your early adopters about needs/expectations
- Customer Success Calls: Learn how early adopters drive results
- Focus Groups: Understand group dynamics and shared pain points
- Customer Advisory Boards: Obtain strategic input from your most engaged users
- Prototype Testing: Identify usability issues before launch
- Feedback During Onboarding: Capture customer feedback and first impressions
- Exit Interviews/Surveys: Learn why customers churn
- Competitor Analysis Feedback: Identify gaps in your offering
- Ongoing Usability Testing: Spot and solve friction points
- Five Second Tests: Assess first impressions
MID-SIZE
Scaling companies should focus on a blend of quantitative and qualitative feedback to identify trends and specific customer insights.
Your company is probably dreaming up new products and marketing initiatives. Your goal should be maintaining a customer-centric approach as you scale.
Some of the best ways for mid-size SaaS to gather feedback include:
- Beta Testing Programs: Get feedback on new features
- Net Promoter Score (NPS) Surveys: Gauge loyalty and advocacy
- Website Feedback Tools: Collect instant website feedback
- Customer Webinars/Q&A: Interactive discussions with customers
- Customer Journey Mapping: Visualize touchpoints and pain points
- Churn Analysis Surveys: Learn from lost customers
- Product Feedback Forms: Collect structured feature requests
- Tree Testing: Evaluate website navigation
- First Click Testing: Understand user navigation behavior
- Product Roadmap Voting: Engage customers in product decisions
- Feedback from Sales: Learn common objections and needs
- User Community Forums: Gather insights from your community
- Social Media Polls: Quick insights into user opinions (if your audience is big enough)
ENTERPRISE
Well-established companies should focus on scalable feedback collection and use quantitative VoC data to spot patterns and emerging trends across customer segments.
Your goal should be driving strategic decisions and shaping larger product direction by prioritizing the needs of your largest user segments. Leverage automation to collect feedback and feed it into existing platforms that multiple teams can access.
Some of the best ways to collect customer feedback as an enterprise SaaS company include:
- Usage Analytics: Track feature adoption and user behavior
- In-App Surveys: Capture customer feedback at the point of experience
- CSAT Surveys: Measure customer satisfaction
- Social Listening & Sentiment Analysis: Analyze feedback for emotional alignment
- Customer Support Feedback: Identify common support issues
- Customer Advisory Boards (for key accounts): Strategic insights from top customers
- Live Chat Feedback: Capture support interactions
- Social Media Polls: Fast and cheap way to gather a lot of user opinions
How to Separate Customer Insights From Noise
But wait — there’s a problem. Not all customer feedback is created equal. So after you’ve gone through the work of collecting customer feedback, whose voice do you prioritize?
The best place to start is by analyzing your feedback and identifying three core ingredients. We call these the Three C’s of VoC Insights:
- Context: Examine where customers are in the buying cycle. Separate feedback by segment (early adopters, churned users, loyal customers, etc.). Use contextual feedback to identify areas for improvement that will resonate with your target audience.
- Clarity: Customer insights are often hidden beneath layers of noise. Strip away the fluff and try to determine: What are your customers really saying? Clarity comes from understanding the pains, desires, and pressures that made them seek your solution.
- Connection: Customer insights must connect back to your business goals. If you can’t tie insights to strategy and strategy to outcomes, then it’s just an observation. The best customer insights bridge the gap between their needs and what you want to accomplish.
When you’ve successfully identified the Three C’s of VoC Insights you’ll be able to look for recurring patterns.
Example
Monica conducts customer interviews with two different Up-N-Coming SaaS company customers.
Customer A says they’re under pressure to upsell and cross-sell more customers.
Customer B says they need to find a way to improve sales forecasting.
On the surface, these look like two different problems.
But through further conversation, Monica realizes both fundamentally struggle with the same thing — effectively managing and utilizing customer data. Good thing Up-N-Coming’s CRM product centralizes buying signals and information!
Just like that, Monica has found a key customer insight (and a couple specific use cases) that will help inform her next campaign's messaging.
How to Create an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)
With customer insights locked and loaded, it’s time to create an ICP. You might be thinking “Wait, I already have a buyer persona — how is that different from an ICP?” The key difference is...
- A buyer persona is a fictional representation of your current customers. You’re likely working with a number of buyer personas, each representing a different segment of your audience.
- An Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is a reflection of your perfect customer. Your ICP is the person who grows with your solution, gets the most value out of your features or services, and operates in the niche you want to serve. Your ICP is the answer to the question: If I can only help one person, who is it?
There are thousands of different ways to build your ICP, but here are five must-have traits you should identify:
- Industry: Identify the sectors that align best with your product or service.
- Company Size: Consider factors like revenue, employee count, or market share to match your ideal clients.
- Pain Points: Understand their core challenges and how your solution addresses them.
- Decision-Making Process: Recognize who makes buying decisions and their criteria.
- Budget: Know the typical spending capacity of target clients to verify compatibility with your pricing model.
Revisit this process once every six months and refine your ICP by looking at new customer feedback, sales patterns, and engagement. Your SaaS company is evolving over time, your ICP will too.
Partner with a web and brand expert that actually gets your customers.
Creating Stronger Branding with VoC
What is Branding?
Branding is the process of shaping the perception of your company or product in customers' minds. Strong branding comes from...
- Solid positioning to strategically differentiate your brand from competitors in the minds of your target audience.
- Memorable value proposition that articulates the specific benefits of your brand and how it solves real problems.
- Consistent messaging to show up and be recognizable across every touchpoint, communicating your value prop, identity, and personality.
- Brand identity that distinguishes your brand. Includes visual and experiential elements like logo, color scheme, and typography.
- Brand personality that resonates emotionally with customers, evoking positive feelings like “trustworthy” or “innovative.”
Why Strong Branding Needs Voice of the Customer Research
Branding powered by Voice of the Customer research is magnetic. It speaks directly to your audience’s needs, desires, and frustrations in a way that aligns with their expectations and values. VoC-backed branding also fosters stronger emotional connections and customer loyalty, because you’re attuned to what your customers need.
By contrast, branding built on guesswork runs the risk of:
- Inaccurate Positioning: Your brand positioning might not match customer perceptions or expectations, causing confusion and loss of trust.
- Weak Value Proposition: Without understanding customer pain points and desires, the value proposition could be vague or irrelevant, reducing your competitive edge.
- Misaligned Messaging: Messaging may fail to resonate with the target audience, leading to poor engagement and missed opportunities.
- Generic Brand Identity: Your brand’s visual language may appear uninspired or out of touch, preventing the brand from standing out in the market.
- Low Customer Loyalty: Failure to reflect customer preferences and values could result in weak emotional connections, leading to reduced brand loyalty.
- Ineffective Marketing Campaigns: Without customer insights, campaigns may miss their mark, wasting resources on strategies that don’t resonate or drive action.
- Missed Opportunities for Differentiation: Your brand might overlook unique selling points that could have been discovered through research, blending in with competitors.
- Higher Churn Rates: Failure to anticipate and respond to user needs might have once-loyal customers searching for new brands or products that better meet their needs.
- Negative Brand Perception: Your brand might feel out of touch or disconnected, which can harm the brand's reputation and credibility.
- Limited Growth Potential: Without a clear understanding of the target audience, your brand may struggle to adapt, innovate, and grow, hindering long-term success.
How to Test and Evaluate Branding
As markets and customer preferences change, what resonates today may not resonate tomorrow. Test and evaluate your branding regularly to verify that it's still relevant, effective, and aligned with customer expectations. This also reduces the risk of investing in misaligned strategies or campaigns.
To test the strength of your branding, use tools and customer research to measure:
DIFFERENTIATION
To compete in saturated markets, your branding needs to be unique and memorable. Gather feedback from customers to see if they find your brand personality and visual language recognizable across different channels.
Useful tests:
- Brand Perception Surveys: Directly ask users how they perceive your brand versus competitors. You’ll quickly learn if your brand is truly memorable and differentiated.
- Preference Tests: Present different designs to target customers and see which design they prefer and why, to learn what elements are actually eye-catching.
- Five-Second Tests: Show a brand image to a customer for five seconds and then have them answer questions about it based on their memory and first impressions.
CONSISTENCY
Logo, font, color, voice, and messaging consistency help cement brand recognition. It’s important to show up consistently at every touchpoint, from your website to your social channels.
Useful tests:
- Card Sorting: Participants sort cards labeled with different brand elements (e.g., values, features, messages) into categories that make sense to them. This helps solidify information architecture and allows you see how users perceive different aspects of your brand.
- Logo and Tagline Association: Show your logo and tagline separately and ask users if they can connect them, testing for consistent recognition.
- Social listening: Regularly monitor and respond to customer feedback on your social accounts to learn about the customer experience. Watch for signs of tonal inconsistencies (e.g., customers who say your website’s messaging is warm and friendly but customer support is always frigid).
EMOTIONAL IMPACT
Visual language and copy can both evoke specific emotions in your audience. Both need to convey the right message and resonate with your target audience. Gather direct feedback from your audience to test whether your messaging, copy, and visual elements evoke emotions that align with your brand values.
Useful tests:
- Customer Interviews: Ask users to directly respond to different brand visuals. This is especially useful for SaaS startups with small but dedicated user bases.
- Storytelling Feedback: Present brand stories or campaigns and see if customers create an emotional connection.
- Preference Testing: Show different versions of brand elements (e.g., ads, taglines) and ask users which they prefer and why, to determine which options elicit the strongest positive emotional response.
ACCESSIBILITY AND CONTRAST
Collect feedback from visually impaired customers to see if your brand visuals are welcoming to everyone. Strive to develop inclusive and accessible branding. For example, you should aim for a contrast ratio of 4.5:1 for regular text and 3:1 for larger text, because poor contrast can result in difficulty reading, which might alienate potential customers.
Useful tests:
- First Click Testing: Tracking what users click first can help you pinpoint confusing messaging or visuals.
- Simulated Vision Tests: Evaluate your visuals under different vision conditions. Tools like Color Oracle can simulate how your brand colors might appear to people with different types of color blindness.
- Usability Testing: Monitor how users interact with different brand elements. Evaluate if your website or app’s UI is intuitive and easy to engage with.
EXPECTATION ALIGNMENT
How your brand shows up in the market has a big impact on your brand credibility. This applies to overall customer experience, product quality, and design language. Your brand should reflect how you engage with customers on a day-to-day basis.
Example
Up-N-Coming’s last paid advertising campaign targeted lawyers. It didn’t go well. Despite tons of traffic, almost nobody booked a sales call.
By interviewing lost opportunities, Monica realizes Up-N-Coming’s bubblegum pink color palette and in-your-face messaging are misaligned with expectations. If law firms are Up-N-Coming’s ICP, the website will need more professional brand visuals and copy.
Useful tests:
- Message/Copy Testing: Share copy variations of key messaging (e.g., H1s or CTAs) with users to ensure your messaging resonates with their needs before full rollout.
- A/B Testing of Visual Elements: Show users different versions of your brand visuals or web pages to see which drives the most engagement. Repeat as you optimize for clarity and effectiveness.
- Journey Mapping Workshops: Gather insights about how users interact with your brand across touchpoints to align your brand identity with customer expectations at every stage of their journey.
How to Apply the Results of Brand Testing
The most effective way to apply Voice of the Customer insights to your branding is to start at the top and verify your positioning and value proposition. You can then build on that strong foundation to sculpt customer-centric messaging and create a value-aligned brand identity.
1. Refine Brand Positioning
- Step 1: Review feedback from brand perception surveys and positioning tests. Look for trends in how your audience perceives your brand compared to competitors.
- Step 2: Use this data to adjust your positioning statement. Focus on unique attributes that resonate with your audience and stand out in your market.
- Step 3: Update internal and external documentation to reflect the refined positioning, including customer personas, mission statements, and strategic guides used by marketing and sales teams.
2. Strengthen Your Value Proposition
- Step 1: Identify specific customer pain points and desires revealed during brand testing. Note which benefits or features your leads rave about (and which ones they claim competitors lack).
- Step 2: Rewrite your value proposition if necessary to clearly explain how you solve pain, do things differently from competitors, and generate desirable outcomes.
- Step 3: Integrate the new value proposition into all brand touchpoints (e.g., product pages, drip campaigns, PPC ads, sales pitches, etc.) to ensure consistency.
3. Enhance Brand Identity
- Step 1: Use feedback from differentiation and preference tests to assess which visual elements (logo, color scheme, typography) stand out and which feel generic or unclear.
- Step 2: Adjust visual language based on these insights. For example, if customers struggle to associate your logo with your brand, consider making it more visually distinctive.
- Step 3: Apply your updated brand identity to everything — your website, app, emails, and any customer-facing materials to maintain consistency.
4. Build Emotional Connections
- Step 1: Examine the results of emotional impact testing to identify which elements resonate most emotionally with your audience.
- Step 2: Modify your brand personality traits to match the emotional responses you want to evoke. For example, if your goal is to be seen as “innovative,” try testing out more dynamic messaging and visuals.
- Step 3: Integrate brand personality adjustments into your copy, social media interactions, and customer service practices, so all brand touchpoints communicate your updated personality.
5. Ensure Consistency Across All Channels
- Step 1: Analyze results from logo association and card sorting exercises to identify any inconsistencies in how your brand voice and messaging are perceived.
- Step 2: Create a comprehensive brand book for internal teams and contractors. Train your team to apply messaging and design updates to maintain consistency across all customer interactions, from automated emails to sales calls.
- Step 3: Update your website (starting with the highest impact pages) to match the new branding. Then apply that branding to everything, from your Meta account to your email campaigns.
By constantly testing and mapping user needs to benefits, you’ll have a North Star to guide you in the right direction. Remember: The most persuasive brands don’t shout their value propositions the loudest — they solve real problems.
Drive More ROI with a Brand and Website that Customers Love.
Optimizing SaaS Websites with VoC
Why Great Websites Leverage VoC
Great web copy and engaging visuals go a long way, but to truly reduce bounce rates, and drive conversions, your website needs to be relevant, persuasive, and engaging.
The only way to clear that high bar is to use customer insights to understand and address what information visitors seek, what pain points they want addressed, and how they describe these challenges. Learning what users value will also help you prioritize the most important elements on each page.
Incorporate Voice of the Customer insights into the creation of every new page, from landing pages to services pages.
And if you ever need a top-to-bottom website redesign, make Voice of the Customer the bedrock you build it on.
Why Customer-Centric Messaging Matters
Your team is made up of a lot of smart, talented individuals. The trap that comes with that level of expertise is it’s easy to think you know what your customers want... even if you haven’t asked them in a while.
Analyzing customer feedback — through surveys, interviews, or online reviews — is a good way to check those assumptions. You’ll often find recurring themes and differentiators you'd never thought of.
You can also use competitors’ customer feedback. Look at the criticism they receive (especially if it’s about lacking features or functionality) and see if it’s something you’ve solved that you could highlight as a differentiator.
Once you’ve identified these opportunities, you need to make sure your website’s messaging accurately captures and communicates value to your ICP.
Example
Monica believes most people love the way Up-N-Coming SaaS company’s CRM aligns teams and automates workflows. But after interviewing 10 different customers, she’s surprised to learn most users (and 90% of the company’s reviews!) focus on ease of use.
Monica arrives at an unexpected insight — user-friendliness really matters to her audience and her company is doing it better than most competitors (that’s a differentiator!).
TIPS FOR IMPROVING WEBSITE MESSAGING
- Home Page Hero Section: The hero section is often the first thing visitors see, so it needs to capture attention quickly. VoC data can inform the main headline and subheading by highlighting the primary pain points and desired outcomes of customers. Go ahead and steal words and phrases you see customers using frequently — plain language always trumps jargon and buzzwords.
- Feature/Service Pages: VoC research can reveal which features customers value most and why. This will help you craft feature descriptions that emphasize benefits over technical details and create copy that speaks to how each feature solves a problem or adds value. Up the ante by including positive customer reviews and case studies about how an ideal customer used that feature to achieve tremendous success.
- Calls to Action (CTAs): Effective CTAs are clear and persuasive, encouraging users to take the next step. VoC data can help you understand what motivates customers, which in turn can influence this messaging. For instance, instead of generic phrases like “Learn More,” maybe what customers actually want is to “Start Reducing Downtime.”
These are just a few examples of how good VoC data ensures every page's messaging is precise, relatable, and more likely to convert visitors into engaged users or customers. Keep testing and iterating over time!
Example
Low conversions have convinced Up-N-Coming SaaS company’s stakeholders that their customers are price-sensitive. They’re considering lowering prices or changing the pricing structure entirely.
Monica’s not so sure. She suspects something else is at play, so she decides to host a focus group with a mix of leads and customers, including:
- Existing customers (to understand why they converted despite the assumed price sensitivity)
- Lost prospects (to gather insights on why they didn’t convert)
- Sales team representatives (to bring context on common objections)
- Customer support team members (to identify recurring customer feedback and issues during trials or demos)
During the focus group, Monica learns practically nobody objects to the price (one or two converts actually say it’s very competitive!). Instead, the most common problem seems to be unclear time-to-value. The prospects who churned note that even though the price was right, they didn’t want to wait months to see ROI.
Monica brings the VoC data to her team. Collectively, they realize a price adjustment isn’t the solution. Instead, they decide to implement a fast-start program backed by a new educational drip campaign to help customers learn to use the tool and realize results faster.
Improving Website UX with Voice of the Customer
Once you have your messaging dialed in, you need to make sure that users can actually find the right message at the right time.
Good navigation is at the heart of great web UX — but it’s also important for SEO and conversions. A well-designed website will improve CTR and keep users on each page longer.
You also need to make sure your website's Information Architecture (i.e., how you structure and present different information) is grouped logically and transitions seamlessly.
And of course, the user interface needs to be clean. Not too much clutter. No distracting visuals. Buttons that are clearly labeled and include clear next steps. The last thing you want to do is confuse a visitor on their path to conversion.
Useful tests for analyzing and improving website UX include:
- Assess Information Architecture using tests like card sorting to see how users group concepts together.
- Identify navigation issues via first-click tests to learn if users intuitively find key information.
- Review user paths, common drop-off points, and time spent on pages to find areas where the structure could improve.
- Analyze heatmaps and adjust menus or reorganize pages based on where users encounter difficulties.
- Create clear paths that guide users smoothly from awareness to being ready to buy, addressing drop-offs along the way.
How Customer Insights Can Help Boost Website Conversions
When your car doesn’t start, you don’t rush out to buy a new one — first, you check the basics. Maybe your battery’s dead. Maybe you have a faulty motor. Or maybe you’re just out of gas.
Similarly, when conversion rates are low, it can be tempting to overhaul your entire website. But before diving into a complete rebuild, you need to diagnose the real issue.
Addressing the root cause is far more efficient than costly, unnecessary overhauls.
That’s why Voice of the Customer is so important for conversion rate optimization. VoC will help you diagnose your pain points and it will challenge your assumptions about why customers do — or do not — take a desired action on your website.
Case Study
In 2024, Tiller solved a CRO problem for a leading SaaS company that didn’t know why conversions were low despite high monthly traffic and a strong clickthrough rate.
They thought the problem might have something to do with their website’s layout or messaging. But when we analyzed their website, we realized that the problem was much simpler — prospects were trying to engage but 85% of all form submissions failed.
Four out of five users abandoned the website after the first failed attempt.
We used Voice of the Customer data to identify the form’s main point of friction. Removing one field resulted in 3x higher conversions from users who engaged with the form.
Aligning Product Experience with VoC
How Product UX Connects to Brand
The way customers experience your product shapes their overall view of your brand. That’s why it’s so important for your user experience to accurately reflect your brand values:
- Do you empower users? Your product should enable autonomy.
- All about simplicity? Your UI better be clean and straightforward
A well-loved, well-designed product doesn’t just function; it feels like it was made for your customers. That can only happen if you have a deep understanding of their needs, frustrations, and goals.
When you align product experience with Voice of the Customer, you create a solution that meets functional needs, fosters retention, and ultimately strengthens your brand.
Integrating UX Practices Into Product Design
Every click is a chance to either win over your customers or lose them. Your user interface is where brand and user experience collide — and where Voice of the Customer helps you find intuitive user flows that get your customers from point A to point B while enabling their goals.
As you think about UX design, strive to…
- Create user-centered experiences to meet needs and expectations
- Ensure your product UI is enjoyable to use and intuitive to navigate
- Support positive UX by ensuring that product design is accessible
How to Address Product UX Issues
UX best practices place the user at the center, making their experience intuitive, enjoyable, and impactful. This isn’t something that has to happen later — you can test user interactions and find opportunities at every stage of a product’s lifecycle.
Here’s a breakdown of how to use VoC insights to address UX challenges:
RESEARCH PHASE
Goal: Understand the end user
Reason: Effective product design starts with empathy and understanding of users’ perspectives and challenges. VoC insights can help you discover user needs and preferences.
Consider:
- User Interviews: Gain qualitative insights into the goals, frustrations, and motivations that led users to seek out and adopt your product.
- Focus Groups: Learn about your ICP's pain points and desires. Use what you learn to assess product-market fit.
DESIGN AND PROTOTYPING
Goal: Build with empathy
Reason: Craft narratives reflecting real user journeys to ensure your product design addresses actual pain points and facilitates key tasks. Prototyping then allows for testing and refinement.
Consider:
- Customer Journey Maps: Visualize how users engage with your product and pinpoint areas that need improvement.
- Prototype surveys: Collect structured feedback on preferences and product functionality.
- Usability Testing: Assess how easily users can complete tasks.
VALIDATION
Goal: Test and refine UX
Reason: You should be constantly evaluating and validating to verify your product truly meets user needs and guide where to focus improvements.
Consider:
- A/B Testing: Compare different design options to determine the most effective one.
- Usage Analytics: Analyze product usage data to understand common pain points or dropped interactions.
- User Observation: See firsthand how users interact with the product. Identify areas for optimization.
Driving Retention with Voice of the Customer
Voice of the Customer is a powerful tool in driving retention.
By setting up structured feedback loops — such as post-onboarding surveys, quarterly check-ins, etc. — you can monitor customer satisfaction and address potential issues before they escalate. VoC data is key to spotting early signs of dissatisfaction, making UI improvements, and introducing new, crowd-pleasing features.
Effective onboarding is also foundational to customer retention. It sets the tone for a positive, intuitive experience that builds confidence. By using VoC insights, you can design onboarding flows that address real user needs and eliminate pesky friction points that lead to early churn.
A successful onboarding process should be simple and user-focused. Consider adding step-by-step tutorials, contextual guidance, and interactive elements to enhance navigation and encourage exploration. Or maybe add templates if VoC data reveals a common way that almost every user interacts with your product (e.g., a specific reporting feature).
Example
After a software update, Monica sees multiple reviews indicating customers struggle with the reporting feature. She helps the product team create an in-app survey to get customer feedback at the point of engagement.
The survey reveals that the new update overcomplicated the reporting and most users only need a few core reports regularly. Super users prefer simpler, pre-configured templates that save time vs. a ton of customizable options.
Based on Monica's insights, the product team introduces a “Quick Report” option to auto-generate the most commonly requested reports. This solves the problem without removing any of the newly added advanced configuration options.
When you listen to your customers and continue to refine product design, UI, and onboarding based on their feedback, you can create an experience that strengthens positive brand associations from the very first interaction and promotes long-term satisfaction.
Conclusion: Using Voice of the Customer to Fuel B2B SaaS Growth
Voice of the Customer can transform your approach to marketing, branding, product development, customer retention, and so much more. It’s your secret weapon for understanding your audience and solving their most pressing problems. When you capitalize on VoC insights, B2B SaaS growth is inevitable.
But as you’ve already realized — implementing a Voice of the Customer is a lot of work.
The process is resource-intensive and needs...
- The tools, strategies, and commitment to continually gather, analyze and act on feedback.
- Buy-in from every member at every level of your organization.
- Cross-team alignment on what to prioritize and how to execute.
But you don’t need to go from zero to 100. You just need to start.
To kickstart the process and accelerate insights, consider partnering with an agency that specializes in capturing and actioning VoC data.
Not only does it take the burden of sourcing and analyzing VoC off your shoulders, but it also gives you a valuable third-party perspective to cut through the subjectivity that often creeps in when multiple stakeholders have different opinions.
Partnering with an agency that has a proven Voice of the Customer methodology isn't just a shortcut — it’s a smart, efficient way to turn customer feedback into actionable strategies that fuel your company’s long-term growth.
You’ve got the customers. Now it’s time to hear their voice.
