Stop Letting Customer Feedback Go to Waste
- Chris Burgess
- Apr 29
- 4 min read
Imagine leaving money on the table. That’s exactly what happens when valuable customer feedback gets lost in the chaos of fragmented tools and organisational silos.
My recent research with 19 product and business leaders across North America and Europe revealed a consistent pattern: companies of all sizes are struggling to truly understand and act on the voice of their customer, and the cost of this inaction is significant.
Who I Spoke To:
Regions: 68% Europe (13 people), 32% North America (6 people)
Company size: 47% small (<25 employees), 21% medium (26–499), 32% large (500+)
Roles: 53% Product & Marketing, 26% C-Suite, 21% Business Development
Despite the modest sample size, consistent themes appeared across industries and geographies. This highlights universal pain points around managing customer feedback.
What I Asked
I used six open-ended questions to guide the conversations:
How do you gather customer feedback?
What challenges exist in the feedback loop?
How does feedback get to the people who act on it?
Where are the gaps in using feedback to shape products or decisions?
If you had a magic wand, what would you change?
What is your current approach to feedback costing you?
The Fragmentation Problem
Customer feedback across all the companies is typically:
Scattered across tools: Different teams use different tools (or indeed methods) due to the cost of individual licenses, such as Jira, Zendesk, Confluence, Slack, and even basic email.
Siloed between departments: Feedback is captured by customer-facing teams but rarely shared systematically across the organisation.
Viewed in isolation: New feedback often trumps historical data, preventing companies from seeing valuable patterns and trends.
One SaaS client discovered 40% of feature requests from sales calls were already buried in support tickets, saving 6 months of engineering time once these connections were made visible; this "chaos to clarity" journey exemplifies the power of breaking down feedback silos. This fragmentation often means, as one product manager shared, "information flows from wherever, we have no single source with which to funnel it," highlighting the struggle to gain a unified view.
The B2B vs. B2C Feedback Landscape
While feedback challenges exist across business models, the accessibility of feedback often differs significantly.
In B2B environments:
Feedback is harder to collect and typically filtered through sales or customer success, introducing bias.
One-to-one customer conversations are valuable but time-consuming, limiting scalability.
Indeed, the reliance on second-hand data was a common theme, with one participant noting, "I rely on a lot of second hand data which is difficult - feedback from Sales and Support specifically - but capturing it is hard."
In B2C companies:
Direct feedback is more abundant, through reviews, social media, and analytics platforms, but often overwhelming in volume.
Analysis and prioritisation are key challenges. Even in B2C, teams often rely on second-hand summaries rather than engaging directly with raw insights.
One participant stated: "We use automated tooling as much as possible due to the volume of information we collect, but this means we might miss details".
Product Manager Dilemmas
PMs often face a tough trade-off:
Spend time gathering feedback, risking that engineering moves ahead without it
Proceed without enough input, increasing the risk of building the wrong thing
Quotes that capture the tension:
"Usability tests with video are helpful, but it takes over four hours to distill a 30-minute clip."
"We’re product- and sales-led—customers don’t suggest ideas."
"You try to find things that support your argument, which means you might miss what’s most important."
"We have a library of research, but no one ever goes back through it."
Regional Differences
My research revealed compelling variations in how companies approach feedback management:
North American Companies (32% of sample):
📊 83% report context getting lost between functions despite formal processes
🛠️ 100% use enterprise software solutions, yet struggle with fragmentation
📈 Greater focus on aligning engineering with validated customer needs
🔍 More likely to invest in tech-driven solutions
European Companies (68% of sample):
💬 62% of companies with 20+ employees still using ad-hoc feedback methods
🤖 AI tools and CRMs for feedback are significantly underused
👥 85% emphasise a strong customer-centric culture
🔄 Many are actively seeking scalable feedback solutions
Whether in North America's tech-heavy workflows or Europe's relationship-driven approaches, siloed feedback remains a universal growth blocker that prevents companies from developing truly customer-driven products.
Proof That Size Doesn't Matter
Regardless of scale, companies face similar obstacles in transforming fragmented customer feedback into actionable insights. Here's how the pain shows up at each growth stage:
Small Companies (47% of participants)
100% lack formal tools for feedback collection
89% cite time constraints as the biggest barrier
Medium Companies (21%)
75% struggle with departmental silos
50% find it difficult to balance individual client needs with broader market signals
100% report inconsistent or immature feedback processes
Large Companies (32%)
100% cite cross-system fragmentation as a major issue
83% need more robust tools for feedback analysis
Customer Feedback is Essential but not Prioritised
This preliminary research across a range of software companies, from early-stage startups to established enterprises, in both B2B and B2C sectors, reveals a persistent challenge: despite a wealth of customer input, few organisations are equipped to harness it effectively, but nor are they prioritising it either.
The result is missed opportunities, redundant effort, and products that fail to reflect real customer needs. Whether due to manual processes, overwhelming volumes of unstructured data, or fragmented systems, the value of customer feedback remains largely untapped.
To build truly resonant products, companies must treat customer feedback not as an operational burden but as a strategic asset; one that deserves investment, structure, and cross-functional ownership.
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