Cross-Functional Voice-of-Customer Synthesis
Put sales, success and TAMs in one room, synthesise the signal, then have research validate or dispute it.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 92%
Most companies collect customer feedback in parallel silos — sales hears one thing, customer success another, technical account managers a third — and each escalates separately to the PM, who becomes a filter. Itwaru's process collapses the silos first: get the revenue-side groups in one room so they can see they are describing different facets of the same customer, synthesise the qualitative and quantitative inputs into a single readout, hand that to the PM, and then run it past the research team for validation or dispute. Crucially, the synthesis also flows backwards — teaching revenue teams that not every friction point requires a product change.
Origin
Built by Christine Itwaru's product ops team at Pendo, where she personally owned NPS. It emerged from noticing that Pendo's sales, customer success, and technical account management teams were each escalating separate, individually-valid demands without ever comparing notes.
Core principles
- 01Feedback silos produce three loud, contradictory asks; a room produces one coherent picture.
- 02Synthesis is the product ops deliverable — the PM should receive conclusions, not raw feedback.
- 03Synthesised signal must be validated (or disputed) by research before it steers a roadmap.
- 04Not every reported friction is a product problem; some are enablement, positioning, or onboarding problems.
- 05Voice of customer runs at two speeds: process-heavy for mature products, fast and loose for new products still finding their way.
How to run it
- 1
Inventory every channel that hears the customer
List every group with a direct customer line — sales, customer success, technical account managers, support, the in-product feedback tool, NPS, prospect conversations — and note what each is currently escalating in isolation.
Pro tip Segment the signal: prospects vs paying customers, and by customer segment. The same complaint from a prospect and a renewal-risk account are different problems.
- 2
Put the channels in the same room
Rather than aggregating on paper, convene the groups together so each sees that the others are shouting for something different but related. This is the step that converts three competing demands into one shared understanding.
Pro tip The cross-functional value shows up in unexpected places — Pendo's Professional Services head realised the same data could change onboarding, not just the roadmap.
Watch out Skipping the room and just merging spreadsheets loses the cross-functional insight; the point is that each team learns what the others are seeing.
- 3
Couple qualitative signal with quantitative ownership
Pair the qualitative themes with the quantitative instruments product ops owns — NPS, product analytics, risk data, high-priority deal feedback — so the readout carries both what customers say and how much noise the data shows in that area.
Pro tip Owning NPS gives product ops standing to say 'we're seeing a lot of noise around X' with evidence, not opinion.
- 4
Hand the synthesis to research to validate or dispute
Take the pooled synthesis to the head of research and ask whether it aligns with the direction the relevant product team is already going, or whether their current efforts are pointed at the wrong problem. Research may confirm or explicitly dispute the theme.
Pro tip Research disputing your synthesis is a success condition of the process, not a failure — it stops noise becoming a roadmap.
Watch out If research reports into UX and product ops does not partner with them, you build a second, competing source of customer truth.
- 5
Push education back down the pipe
Close the loop with the revenue teams: for the friction points that do not warrant a product change, explain what would actually fix it — enablement, a different conversation with the customer, better onboarding.
Pro tip This is what converts the revenue team from a source of firefighting requests into a partner.
In the wild
Pendo was about to invest in the guides area of the product. Product ops pooled the post-sales input, layered on the NPS noise Itwaru personally tracked around guides, and brought the combined picture to the head of research to ask a single question: is this in line with where the guides team is already going, or are their current efforts pointed at the wrong growth area?
→ A single validated (or disputed) signal replaced three parallel escalations, and the investment decision was made against research-checked evidence rather than the loudest internal channel.
Itwaru's team noticed sales was screaming for one thing, customer success for another, and technical account managers for a third — all of them legitimate, all of them being escalated separately. Product ops put them in a room together to see the overlap.
→ The Professional Services lead realised the combined data could reshape onboarding, and the PM began receiving a single readout — risk data, high-priority deal feedback, in-product feedback, prospect vs customer signal, and segment breakdowns — instead of three competing queues.
Common mistakes
Making the PM the aggregator
If raw feedback from every channel lands on the PM, the PM spends their scarcest asset — time — filtering rather than talking to customers and engineers. The whole point is that the PM receives conclusions.
Treating every customer complaint as a product change
Itwaru is explicit that not everything requires a product change. Friction is often an enablement or positioning gap, and routing it all to the roadmap both bloats the backlog and hides the real fix.
Running the same heavy VoC process on a brand-new product
A mature, long-standing product team can absorb a process-heavy voice-of-customer cadence. A team building something new and moving fast needs the signal delivered quickly so they can experiment and iterate — the same process applied to both stifles the new team.
Is it for you?
Best for
A product ops lead or head of product at a B2B company where sales, success, and support each have a separate line to the roadmap and the PM is drowning in contradictory escalations.
Not ideal for
Early-stage teams where the founders talk to every customer directly — there is no silo to collapse, and the process only adds a layer.
From the transcript
“our sales team was screaming for something and our success team was screaming for something else but our Tams were looking at something else right”
“our feedback product what are we hearing from prospects versus paying customers what segments are saying what all that stuff got fed over to the…”
“we have all of this input coming in from our customer success or post sales teams and we know we're about to invest in our…”
“we were able to educate our Revenue team on behalf of the product team and say you know guys like not everything requires a product…”
From the episode
Understanding the role of product ops
Christine Itwaru (Pendo)