Voice of the Customer Program Guide: How to Set One Up

If you’re serious about truly understanding your customers and driving meaningful change in your business, running a Voice of the Customer program is essential. Putting together a well-executed VoC program not only helps you capture valuable customer insights but also allows you to do it in an ordered, structured way. 

In this guide, we’ll show you exactly how to build a VoC program from the ground up. From defining your objectives for the VoC initiative and mapping customer touchpoints to choosing the right tools and turning insights into action. We’ll cover all the steps you need to ensure your VoC program delivers real, measurable results. 

Why is this important? Because in today’s competitive landscape, understanding and responding to customer feedback gives you those nuggets of truth to make impactful improvements to your product.

What is Voice of the Customer?

Voice of the Customer (VoC) is the act of actively tuning in to what your customers are saying – and not saying – about your product or service. It’s more than just passively collecting feedback. VoC is a hands-on, proactive research approach for gathering insights across channels like surveys, support tickets, app reviews, interviews, social media, you name it.

Done right, VoC helps you spot what’s working, flag what’s not, and uncover what your customers actually want. It’s your fast track to reducing customer churn, prioritizing the right features, and delivering more of the stuff your users love.

And it’s not just for Product Teams. Be it Support, Sales, Marketing, or Leadership, everyone wins when the customer’s voice is part of the conversation.

Want the full lowdown? 

We’ve broken down the nuts and bolts of VoC in our Product Management Glossary. If you want to dive deeper into the philosophy and origins of the concept, you’ll find it all there. 

What is a Voice of the Customer program? 

So, a Voice of the Customer program is your game plan for actually doing VoC research in a structured, repeatable way. Instead of rushing into feedback collection in a slap-dash way, a VoC program defines a specific way to:

• Capture insights from all your key touchpoints
• Organize and analyze that data
• Turn feedback into meaningful action
• Close the loop with customers

What are the benefits of a Voice of the Customer program?

Why build a whole program around your Voice of the Customer initiative? Because it’ll be chaos if you don’t. Diving into customer interviews has good intentions, but if no framework is in place on how you handle responses, analyse feedback, and action it, you’re essentially wasting time. 

It’s like writing an essay at school. You could dive headfirst into analyzing the meaning of Romeo and Juliet off the cuff, but a better essay will be one that is planned with a structure and a compelling argument. This is all you’re doing when setting up a Voice of the Customer program – you’re laying out a framework for your feedback to fall into. 

Here’s what a well-run Voice of the Customer program brings to the table:

📊 Real, reliable customer insight: A VoC program creates a clear, consistent pipeline of feedback. No more guessing what your customers want, you’ve got the data to prove it.

🧠 Better product decisions: When VoC is part of your process, you’re not building in a vacuum. You’re solving the right problems, for the right people, at the right time.

🔁 Lower churn, higher retention: Customers stick around when they feel heard. A strong program helps you surface pain points early, show users you’re listening, and keep them coming back.

📌 Smarter prioritization: Not all feedback is created equal. A structured approach helps you spot patterns, weigh impact, and prioritize what actually matters, preventing you from barking up the wrong tree.

💪 A leg up on the competition: When you’re plugged into what customers want (sometimes before they know), you can move faster, adapt quicker, and stay ahead of the curve.

🤝 Cross-team clarity: A shared VoC program gets everyone on the same page. Everyone’s working from the same source of truth about what customers really need.

Who leads a Voice of the Customer program?

A Voice of the Customer program works best when there’s a clear owner, but it shouldn’t live in a silo. 

Now, your Customer Success team is going to be a major player in acquiring Voice of the Customer feedback, leading the charge in gathering feedback. These teams are closest to the customer’s voice day to day, so they’re often in the best position to act once things are kicked off. But who makes that call? 

Well, that is down to the Product Team to set the direction. Remember, a Voice of the Customer initiative is an active endeavor that you start when there’s a strategic need: a question you need the answer to. 

So the Product Team needs to lead the way and define what they want to learn, when to ask, and where to listen. They’re responsible for shaping the questions, selecting the right touchpoints, and ensuring the insights gathered align with broader product goals.

It is a collaborative, cross-functional team effort, though. As well as this, Marketing plays a key role in communicating changes driven by customer feedback, and Leadership helps prioritize what to act on and allocates resources to make it happen. This all goes to say that VoC is not a one-person show.

Some companies even appoint a dedicated VoC Manager or form a cross-functional task force to drive the program forward. Regardless of your setup, what matters most is that someone is responsible for keeping the wheels turning and ensuring insights are actually acted upon.

How do you run a Voice of the Customer program?

Here’s where the rubber meets the road. Setting up a VoC program means building a process that captures feedback, makes sense of it, and turns it into meaningful change. Here’s how to do that step-by-step:

1. Define your objectives

Before you start collecting feedback, you need to figure out what you’re trying to learn. Otherwise, you’re just gathering opinions without direction – and that is just general feedback management, not a focused VoC effort. 

You never want to run a proactive Voice of the Customer program for the sake of it – that just wastes time. If you have something you want to learn, figure out what it is right at the start.

Clear objectives keep your program focused and aligned with business goals. They help you filter out noise and focus on insights that drive impact.

Ask yourself, are you trying to…

• Improve customer satisfaction or loyalty? Use feedback to understand what makes your customers happy and double down on it.

• Reduce churn? Identify what’s pushing users away before it’s too late.
• Spot friction in the onboarding experience? Learn where users are getting stuck so you can smooth things out.
• Validate your roadmap with real user needs? Ensure you’re building the right things, not just the loudest things.
• Refine your messaging or positioning? Use customer language to speak in ways that actually resonate.

2. Map your customer touchpoints

To gather meaningful feedback, you need to know where conversations are already happening.

If you only listen in one place, you’re only hearing part of the story. Many believe that Voice of the Customer is only obtained through interviews, but there are so many other touchpoints that give you a much fuller picture. Mapping the touchpoints you’re going to look at helps you cover your blind spots and collect feedback from different angles.

Sure, run Voice of the Customer interviews and surveys, but also consider looking at:

• Support tickets – Customers are already telling you what’s broken or confusing.
• App stores or review sites – Raw, unfiltered opinions, especially from new users.
• In-app chats or feedback widgets – Great for capturing context-sensitive input.
• Sales and success calls – Rich insights from direct conversations.
• Social media mentions – Where emotions often run high (both good and bad).
• Online communities or forums – Where your power users often hang out.

Map these out so you can plan where you want to investigate to hear from your customer.

3. Choose the right tools

A VoC program lives or dies by its tool stack. You need systems that help you capture Voice of the Customer feedback at scale, organize it in one place, and surface actionable insights. Without the right tools, feedback gets lost, scattered, or ignored. Good tech turns chaos into clarity.

The tools at your disposal include:

• Survey tools: These let you easily create, distribute, and manage surveys across different customer segments. They’re ideal for capturing structured feedback at key moments in the customer journey.
• Support tools: Capture real-time customer conversations, frustrations, and wins, often revealing valuable feedback without customers even knowing they’re giving it.
• Analytics tools: Turn user behavior into insight. They help you understand where customers are succeeding, struggling, or dropping off, offering feedback through action, not just words.
• Product feedback tools: Allow you to route all feedback from other systems and sources into one central place, tag, organize, analyze and then link feedback to your idea backlog and roadmap, helping your product and CX teams turn insight into actionable next steps. ProdPad is the best example out there 😜

Top Tip ✅ Look for tools that integrate with your existing workflows. Features like automation, tagging, sentiment analysis, and easy-to-share dashboards will help scale your program and keep everyone aligned.

4. Design your feedback loops

Now that you know where to listen and what tools to use, decide how and when you’ll collect Voice of the Customer feedback. A great customer feedback loop asks the right question at the right moment, in the right format. Bad timing = missed insight.

Proactive Voice of the Customer work is not something you need to do all the time, but instead at certain times when there’s something specific you need to learn. Some good options for creating a feedback loop include:

• CSAT surveys after support interactions: Measure how helpful your support experience actually is.
  
• Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys after a user reaches a wow moment:  Gauge long-term loyalty and willingness to recommend.
  
• In-app micro-surveys tied to product usage:  Ask quick, relevant questions when users are already engaged.
  
• Post-cancellation surveys (exit interviews): Learn why people are leaving, and what might’ve kept them.
  
• Customer interviews or focus groups: Go deeper with power users and champions. Run a Customer Advisory Board meeting to get valuable insight.

No matter what way you get this feedback, keep it short, relevant, and frictionless. Your customers are busy, so make it easy for them to share.

5. Collect and centralize feedback

With your loops in place, the data starts coming in. Now you need somewhere to put it. Scattered feedback leads to missed opportunities. Centralization ensures feedback is visible, shareable, and usable.

Options include:

• A feedback inbox or Slack channel
• A shared Notion board or spreadsheet
• A dedicated tool that centralizes and categorizes feedback

That last option is something ProdPad can help you with. With ProdPad, you can store all your feedback alongside your product roadmap, linking customer feedback directly to your Ideas and Initiatives, helping you to prioritize what to do next as you develop the product. 

CoPilot can also help organize and sort through your feedback – from summarizing long pieces, to automatically suggesting links to relevant Ideas in your backlog. 

6. Analyze the data

Now it’s time to make sense of the mountain of feedback you’ve collected. Data without analysis is just noise. 0s and 1s. Insight turns noise into action.

Look for:

• Recurring pain points – Where are people getting stuck or frustrated?
• Highly requested features – What are users consistently asking for?
• Moments of delight – What’s exceeding expectations?
• Gaps between expectations and reality – Where are you under-delivering?

At this point, you’ve got loads of noise shouting at you. Analyzing this feedback turns it into one collective voice that you can understand and act on.

If you use ProdPad you can enjoy automatic feedback analysis with Signals, our AI tool scans through all your feedback and spotlights the themes to help you understand what problems you should be tackling.

7. Turn insights into action

Listening is just step one. Real value comes when you act on what you’ve learned. If nothing changes, feedback becomes a black hole, and customers stop sharing it.

Ways to put insight into motion:

• Feed key findings into your product backlog and tie feedback directly to your new or existing ideas.
• Share customer stories across the business and build empathy and alignment across teams.
• Update user personas and other documentation. Make sure internal artifacts reflect real user needs and what you’ve learnt. 
• Refine onboarding, messaging, or education. Remove friction or confusion right where it happens.
• Shape roadmap priorities and themes to align what you’re building with what people care about.

But most importantly… close the loop. 

Let customers know you heard them. “You asked, we built” goes a long way toward loyalty. We actually have a template on how to close the loop via email. Check it out, as well as 10 other customer email feedback templates: 

How often should you run a Voice of the Customer program?

A Voice of the Customer program isn’t a box-ticking exercise, it’s a strategic tool you turn to when you need clarity, not just activity.

VoC is most valuable early in the product development process, when you’re exploring new territory and need to make confident, customer-informed decisions. It helps you dig into the real problems worth solving and uncover how your users think, feel, and behave, before you’ve committed to building anything.

Run a VoC program when:

• You’re kicking off a new product or feature
• You’re entering a new market
• You’re targeting a new user segment

These are the moments when a VoC program shines. It gives you richer, deeper insight that helps shape what you build and how you deliver it.

Treat your VoC program like a focused tool. Use it when you’re trying to answer a specific question, test a hypothesis, or inform a key decision. When your purpose is clear, the insight you get will be too.

Once you’ve gathered what you need, scale back the program. Shift into a lighter, more passive customer feedback collection method. Keep listening through support conversations, product analytics, in-app feedback, and other ongoing channels.

How do you measure the success of a Voice of the Customer program?

A successful Voice of the Customer program isn’t defined by simply collecting lots and lots of feedback – it’s about what you do with it. So, if you’re wondering how to know whether your VoC program is working, here are a few solid indicators to keep an eye on:

1. Internal engagement
Are teams actually using the feedback? A healthy VoC program fuels roadmaps, influences marketing, informs onboarding, and shapes support processes. If customer insights are popping up in internal discussions and decision-making, you’re doing it right.

2. Time to action
How quickly does feedback lead to action? You don’t need to solve everything instantly, but customers should see visible improvements based on what they’ve shared. If it’s all being collected and none of it’s closing the loop, you’ve got a bottleneck.

3. The right actions
Often you’ll be conducting a VoC initiative to test the validity of a new problem area, or to check a hypothesis around a new market opportunity. So one major way of testing the success of your VoC program is whether or not you built the right thing (or avoided building the wrong thing) as a result. 

4. Customer metrics
Look at things like NPS, CSAT, user retention rates, and churn. These metrics aren’t perfect, but if they’re improving alongside your VoC efforts, you’re on the right track.

5. Closed feedback loops
Track how many feedback items have been acknowledged, addressed, or actioned. Bonus points if you follow up with the customer to say, “Hey, we heard you and here’s what we did.”

In short, the best VoC programs don’t just measure sentiment, they move the needle. They help you become more responsive, more aligned, and more customer-centric with every iteration.

What tools do you need for a Voice of the Customer program?

You don’t need a high-tech dashboard or complex AI to run a successful Voice of the Customer program. But having the right tools in place can help you capture, organize, and act on feedback without losing track of it.

Here’s a quick rundown of what you’ll need:

1. Feedback collection tools

These help you gather insights directly from your customers. Whether through surveys, in-app feedback, NPS, reviews, or social media listening, these tools capture the voice of your users at key touchpoints.

2. Centralized feedback management

A system to bring all the feedback together, organize it, and identify patterns. This ensures you can easily analyze and prioritize the insights you receive.

3. Analytics and reporting

Tools to help you track trends, identify key themes, and generate useful reports for stakeholders. Look for features that allow you to filter and segment feedback by customer type, product area, or other relevant categories.

4. Collaboration and Product Management tools

Once feedback is turned into actionable insights, you’ll need a way to track and manage those ideas. Integrate your VoC program with your existing Product Management tools to ensure feedback is properly acted upon.

5. Customer data platforms

Bonus points for connecting feedback to specific customer segments or behaviors. This adds valuable context to the insights and helps drive more targeted improvements.

Building your program 

By now, you should have a solid understanding of what it takes to build a successful Voice of the Customer program. You know how to define your objectives, gather feedback, analyze it effectively, and turn those insights into actionable steps that can drive real improvements. 

The main point here is that listening to your customers is only part of the equation. The real value comes when you act on that feedback and ensure it’s integrated into your broader business strategy

To make the most of your VoC insights, it’s crucial to have the right tools in place to track, organize, analyze, and act upon the feedback you receive. This is where ProdPad comes in. 

With its seamless integration with customer feedback from multiple channels, ProdPad makes it easy to store, analyze, and track feedback on your roadmap. It empowers your team to make informed, customer-driven decisions, making sure that your product development is always aligned with real user needs. 

Start turning your VoC insights into actionable change today. Try ProdPad and bring your Voice of the Customer into focus.