Customer feedback chaos: how to please everyone?

It’s no secret anymore: collecting customer feedback is essential. In our book Build to Sell, we’ve put a strong focus on making customers the core of our strategy, equipping teams with practical tools like JTBD and customer preferences, both of which are explored in this article.

But here’s the challenge I keep hearing during community roundtables and training sessions: How do you craft a product roadmap or vision when your customers are so diverse, their preferences so scattered, and the feedback so overwhelming?

Every product team has faced it—the avalanche of customer feedback that feels impossible to untangle. I’ve myself encountered these challenges and dilemmas firsthand multiple times during my experience as CPO at Theodo Apps. One particularly striking example was a project with a client operating multiple ski resorts. Their ambitious objective was to design a unified app for all their resorts, starting with a pilot involving three of them. The challenge was twofold: first, each resort catered to a distinctly broad and diverse audience, making it difficult to identify and prioritize customer needs. Second, we had to align three separate stakeholders—each with their own priorities—on a cohesive strategy and vision for the app.

As expected, our initial discussions with the operator and representatives from the three resorts quickly revealed a familiar challenge. Each stakeholder had their own list of must-have features, driven by the diverse needs of their audiences. What followed was a battle of opinions, where the loudest voices often dictated the direction.

While each perspective made perfect sense when explained in isolation, the result was a product that began to morph into a jack-of-all-trades. The problem with such products is that they fail to resonate with their customers due to cognitive overload. Customers don’t see a clear value or understand what problem the product is solving, leaving them emotionally disconnected. Without this resonance, the product risks falling flat.

It’s surprisingly easy to find ourselves in this situation. When confronted with the challenge of handling a flood of diverse customer feedback and requests, we are faced with several temptations.

Temptation #1: Let’s do everything they ask!

When faced with an overwhelming flood of differing customer feedback, it’s natural to feel lost, unsure of where to focus or how to move forward. The first temptation often feels like the safest bet: to build everything your customers are asking for. After all, if we deliver what they want, satisfaction is guaranteed, right? And maybe, just maybe, we’ll attract new customers who have been waiting for those features too.

This is a misconception.

Building an emotional connection with your customers requires more than simply ticking off feature requests. It starts with identifying the right problem to solve—a unique, compelling issue that resonates deeply. This is the “job” for which the customer “hires” your product (more details in the linked article). Once your product nails that first job, you can always expand to address other jobs in the future. This approach is known as horizontal innovation, where each job represents a new customer segment.

Temptation #2: Do nothing with feedbacks

When a customer reports an issue, how do we typically respond? Too often, we dismiss it with phrases like, “It’s just one customer, it’s not representative,” or “They just didn’t understand how the product works.” The result? Nine times out of ten, we end up doing nothing—no changes, no actions, and worst of all, no learning.

We absolutely must break free from selective listening, where only feedback that aligns with our narrative matters. It’s not our job to educate customers. If they’re voicing dissatisfaction, it’s not because they failed to understand the product; it’s because we missed something in the design. That feedback signals an opportunity: our customer model needs to evolve.

As Clayton Christensen aptly said: “Customers buy products to accomplish a job. When they complain, they’re telling us the product isn’t fulfilling the role they hired it for.”

Temptation #3: Going with your instincts

If you know your product and market like the back of your hand, doesn’t that mean you can safely trust your intuition?

Not exactly. Leaning solely on intuition is like making decisions with your eyes closed—not just blind to the market (even if you know it well) but also to the intricacies of your product. 

Designing a product is like exploring uncharted territory—the intricate landscape of our customers' preferences. When we rely solely on intuition to make decisions, we risk unintentionally changing an aspect of the product that is crucial to them, and we risk their loyalty.

Take Coca-Cola as an example. In 1985, the company made a bold move by introducing New Coke, an updated formula aimed at countering Pepsi's growing popularity. However, Coca-Cola underestimated the deep emotional connection their customers had with the original recipe. The backlash was swift and intense—loyal customers felt betrayed, and sales dropped as a result. Within just 79 days, Coca-Cola reversed course and reintroduced the classic formula as Coca-Cola Classic, which eventually regained market dominance.

The second problem with relying solely on intuition is the challenge of gaining buy-in from others. Without a solid foundation of data or evidence, discussions can quickly devolve into a "law of the jungle" dynamic, where the loudest voice wins—and the customers often lose.

A product compass to navigate waves of customer feedback

Every piece of feedback, no matter how challenging, is a chance to refine our customer model—our compass. As our compass, we propose a framework we call the performance-based product. It breaks down into several key components: 

• The job to be done (or JTBD, explained earlier).
• Our customers’ key preferences: the non-negotiable criteria they use to evaluate and select a solution for their JTBD.
• The product’s critical performances: measurable attributes that enable the product to effectively meet these preferences.

In our case with the ski resorts, the first JTBD we chose to tackle was: "Spend more time skiing and less time doing everything else." Here is an excerpt from our customer model:

Each time we analyze feedback, we have the opportunity to refine and enhance this model: Could it be that we misunderstood our customers’ preferences? Are they trying to achieve a job to be done (JTBD) we hadn’t considered? If so, is that a JTBD we want to pursue—and if not, why? Could we be missing out on new opportunities? Or does the feedback hint at broader market shifts that require us to adapt?

Once we’ve incorporated these insights, we can reassess: for a given JTBD, how do we stack up against competitors on key customer preferences? If we’re falling short, it’s worth doubling down to improve, finding creative solutions. If we’re performing well and spot opportunities in untapped JTBDs shared by many customers, it might be time to expand into a new segment and address a new JTBD entirely.

For instance, in the ski resorts project, we initially faced a wide variety of requests from both customers and resort stakeholders: some wanted features to track their performance on the slopes, like speed or kilometers skied in a day, while others prioritized buying ski passes or viewing real-time lift wait times. Once we aligned everyone around the primary JTBD—“Spend more time skiing and less time doing everything else”—the path forward became clear. It was obvious and non-negotiable that we needed to focus first on enabling ski pass purchases and providing real-time lift traffic information, leaving other JTBDs for future iterations.

Of course, when confronted with hundreds of feedback items, it’s impossible to analyze every single one. The key is to maintain a consistent and unbiased analysis routine. For example, you could review one piece of feedback per day. Regularly bringing the team—tech, designers, sales, and marketing—around the table to analyze feedback is also essential. This practice not only helps share and align everyone around the customer model, making it a collective asset, but also involves the entire team in deciding and implementing the necessary product improvements.

Customer feedback management is not just trendy—it’s transformative. But without a robust customer model, you risk product chaos, dilution of value, and loss of loyalty. As we saw in the ski resort example, instead of addressing all requests and prioritizing them one at a time, it's essential to view things through the lens of the performance-based product. This model helps us focus on customer preferences—the non-negotiable criteria—and ensure we meet at least 80% of them. Where we fall short, the model provides a clear path to improvement, rather than taking a scattered approach or letting the loudest voice dictate the direction. Thus, this not only protects your product; it also unlocks opportunities for innovation, paving the way for sustained growth and accelerated success.

Want to build your own customer model? Let’s chat!