With a deep background in MarTech, CRM technology, and customer data platforms, Aisha Amaira has built a career on a simple but powerful premise: technology is only as good as the human curiosity that drives it. She joins us to discuss a philosophy that challenges companies to move beyond the shallow metrics of “Voice of the Customer” programs. Our conversation explores the crucial shift toward generating true “Customer Insights,” the paramount importance of building an insights-driven culture over simply buying new tools, and why every piece of data should ultimately serve to fulfill a brand’s core promise to its customers.
You suggest shifting from “Voice of the Customer” to “Customer Insights.” Beyond the name change, what are the first tangible steps a company should take to embrace this philosophy, and how does this impact the type of analysis they perform?
The first step, honestly, is a shift in purpose. It’s an executive-level decision to stop asking, “What is our satisfaction score?” and start asking, “Why are our customers feeling this way?” A tangible action is to break down data silos. Your survey data is one small piece. The first thing I advise is to bring the head of your contact center, your CRM data analyst, and your survey manager into the same room. Have them overlay their data. The analysis immediately changes from high-level reporting to forensic investigation. You’re no longer just charting a dip in a KPI; you’re exploring the root cause, looking at the call transcripts and ticket data that correspond with those low scores to find the real, human story behind the numbers.
The text dismisses relying on just surveys, suggesting “walking in the Customers’ shoes.” Can you share a specific example of this in practice? Please detail the process you followed and the surprising root cause or trend you uncovered as a result.
Absolutely. I worked with an e-commerce brand that was getting vague survey feedback about a “clunky” checkout process. The numbers weren’t terrible, but the comments were persistent. Instead of sending another survey, we assembled a small, cross-functional team and gave them a simple task: buy one of our products from start to finish, but do it from your personal phone, on your home Wi-Fi, using a guest checkout. It was eye-opening. We discovered that our payment processor was flagging and declining a specific, very popular credit card for any purchase over $50, but only on the mobile version of the site. It was a technical glitch that a survey would never identify. The root cause wasn’t design; it was a faulty API call. That experience taught everyone that you can’t see the friction until you feel it yourself.
You mention that a company’s attitude is more important than its tools. For leaders trying to build an “insights culture,” what are the most critical behaviors they must model, and how can they measure if this cultural shift is actually taking hold?
Leaders have to model relentless curiosity. When an analyst brings them a chart showing a 5% drop in customer retention, their first question can’t be, “How do we fix the number?” It has to be, “What happened to those customers? Tell me their story.” That single question changes the entire dynamic. It gives the analyst permission to dig, to connect with the contact center, to listen to calls. As for measurement, it’s less about a new KPI and more about observing behaviors. Are teams proactively bringing insights to meetings that weren’t asked for? Are project proposals starting with a customer insight as their justification? When you hear a product manager say, “I was reviewing support tickets and noticed a trend we need to address,” you know the culture is starting to take hold. It’s about moving from a culture of reporting to a culture of discovery.
The article notes some brands collect “VoC for VoC’s own sake.” When you’ve seen a company successfully move past this, what was the catalyst for change, and what specific kinds of insights finally demonstrated the true value of their efforts?
Often, the catalyst is a painful realization that all their “good” numbers are masking a slow decline. I saw this with a company that had fantastic top-level satisfaction scores, but they were bleeding long-term customers. The leadership team was baffled. The change began when a new leader empowered the analytics team to stop reporting and start investigating. They stopped asking about satisfaction and started analyzing customer effort. The insight that broke everything open was a report correlating the number of support contacts a customer made in a year with their likelihood to churn. They found that even if every one of those interactions ended with a “satisfied” rating, the sheer effort of having to call in three or more times a year made customers leave. That insight directly tied the operational burden on customers to lost revenue, and for the first time, the “VoC program” was seen as a profit center, not a cost center.
You argue that everything should focus on delivering the “Brand Promise.” Could you share an anecdote where a customer insight directly challenged a long-held internal belief and ultimately led to a significant improvement in a core process that better served customers?
There was a financial services company whose brand promise was “Effortless Banking.” Internally, they were incredibly proud of their multi-factor authentication and complex, multi-step wire transfer process, viewing it as a sign of their commitment to security. But customer insights, pulled from chat logs and session replays, painted a different picture. We saw a massive drop-off rate during the transfer process. Customers were frustrated, confused, and felt it was anything but “effortless.” The insight directly challenged the sacred internal belief that more security steps equaled a better customer experience. It sparked a huge debate, but ultimately, they streamlined the entire process, using backend technology for security instead of placing the burden on the customer. Not only did transfer completion rates soar, but the company finally started living up to its own promise.
Do you have any advice for our readers?
My advice is to become a storyteller. If you’re an analyst, stop delivering spreadsheets and start telling the stories hidden within the data. If you’re a leader, stop asking for numbers and start asking for the narrative behind them. The most powerful force for change in any organization isn’t a new dashboard or a new survey tool; it’s a compelling, human story that makes the customer’s experience impossible to ignore. Find those stories, tell them relentlessly, and connect them directly to your brand’s core mission. That’s how you move from simply collecting voices to driving real, meaningful change.