Summary
Shipra Kayan, the former head of insights at Upwork, will present the origin story of Upwork's hugely successful and long-running VoC program. From the moment that triggered the formation of a VoC initiative, the ups, and downs of experimenting with its operating model, to why this program is still going strong 7 years after it was launched. She will field questions like "Who owns the VoC?", "What is its purpose?", and "Will we just create another presentation that won't have any real impact?" - 15 minutes Upwork VoC case study - 15 minutes for Q&A
Key Insights
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Initial chaos in feedback management can impede progress.
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Consensus around problems is crucial before implementing solutions.
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A drastic decline in NPS can catalyze the need for a VOC program.
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Establishing a coalition among customer-facing teams can streamline VOC efforts.
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Focus on NPS provides a long-term view of customer sentiment.
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Tools and techniques for aggregating feedback evolve as companies grow.
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Building a customer-focused culture requires collaboration between departments.
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Prioritization meetings with leadership can drive meaningful product changes.
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Customer feedback should inform not only product but also pricing and policy issues.
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Continuous adaptation of VOC programs is necessary as company dynamics evolve.
Notable Quotes
"We saw what was happening to the product managers suddenly starting to get requests from dozens of people a week."
"We didn't do anything about it for a while; I tried to do something about it, but I didn't succeed."
"Don't jump to a solution without consensus around the problem."
"Our NPS really plummeted as soon as we rebranded, and that really freaked out our executives."
"We had to ask ourselves, is this just a temporary thing or are we building towards something longer term?"
"We made that our how metric: maximizing the number of gear tickets that are solved with the tag VOC."
"It became hard to keep up to date because we had about a dozen people trying to keep the affinity up to date."
"None of these tools had the human qualitative sense of understanding that we had."
"We had some of these product channels set up at the time—keeping it pretty light and not competitive."
"VOC ownership can be a hot potato; we needed to build a coalition with a facilitator."
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