615: How to separate signal from noise in customer feedback – with Kristyn Corrigan

Make the most of AI tools for voice-of-the-customer research Watch on YouTube

TLDR

Kristyn Corrigan, Principal at Applied Marketing Science, joins me to discuss how product teams can move from drowning in customer feedback to identifying the core needs that drive product decisions. We explore shifting the Voice of the Customer (VOC) from a formal research method to an organizational mindset, the risks and opportunities of using AI in analyzing feedback, and actionable tools like the VOC focus brief to enhance cross-functional alignment and innovation.

Introduction

Your customers are telling you what they need every day, through usage data, support tickets, sales calls, online communities, and more. AI can summarize all of it in seconds — that’s no longer the hard part. Instead, it’s knowing which needs are worthwhile — what’s the signal to act on and what’s the noise to avoid. 

To help us answer that, Kristyn Corrigan joins us again. She is a Principal at Applied Marketing Science, where she leads the Insights for Innovation practice. She has more than 20 years of experience helping companies uncover customer needs and turn them into products, and she trains teams to run their own VOC programs. At the PDMA conference, she led a workshop on moving from a pile of customer feedback to the few needs that should drive product decisions. She’s here so we can learn to do that too. 

Summary of Concepts Discussed for Product Managers

Reframing Voice of the Customer (VOC)Kristyn explains that VOC has shifted from being just a set of research interviews to a comprehensive mindset that leverages the wealth of customer insights found throughout an organization. This includes feedback from CRM data, recorded sales conversations, social media, forums, and support tickets. Product teams need to intentionally curate these sources to ensure the insights inform key product decisions. Kristyn has had success helping salespeople learn to ask voice-of-the-customer questions to help sales interviews provide more valuable insights.

Separating the Signal from the Noise in Customer ResearchWith the explosion of data from internal and external sources, product teams risk getting lost in noise. Kristyn discusses the importance of aligning the entire organization on research and business questions and identifying which data sources are relevant. Not all feedback holds equal value so strategic focus is essential.

Responsible and Effective Use of AI for VOC ResearchAI tools like Copilot and Claude can rapidly synthesize and summarize large volumes of feedback, but Kristyn warns they often miss meaningful innovation details and tend to smooth out themes, potentially losing valuable nuance. These tools can’t be used without trained humans guiding the process and critically evaluating the customer needs that AI identifies. Kristyn notes that AI tools are built to affirm the user. AI is good at summarizing and smoothing themes, but innovation lives in the details, so effective VOC can be lost when using AI summaries alone. A customized AI tool built for customer r