Twenty years ago, I made a decision that shocked my team but revolutionized our business: I started inviting our customers to our staff meetings on a consistent basis.
At the time, this was a radical departure from how companies learned from their customers. Feedback was usually collected through surveys, forms or focus groups – often filtered through multiple layers before reaching decision-makers.
It was like a corporate game of telephone, where the original message from customers became distorted as it passed through various departments.
To break this cycle, I wanted my team to hear directly from our customers, unfiltered and in real time. What started as an experiment quickly evolved into a transformative practice that I’ve carried with me across leadership roles at Intuit, HubSpot and Udacity. By bringing customers into our weekly meetings, we eliminated the middleman and got straight to the source of our most valuable insights.
This approach went beyond traditional Voice of the Customer (VoC) programs and leveraged Intuit’s Customer-Driven Innovation – a framework that focuses on solving unsolved customer problems effectively while building durable competitive advantages.
By creating ongoing, real-time engagement with customers, we embedded their perspectives into the very fabric of day-to-day operations. In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, staying ahead requires more than intuition – it demands this radical approach to integrating customer feedback into your business strategy.
The power of direct customer engagement
This approach is about more than collecting feedback – it’s about co-creating solutions alongside your customers in real time. By making customer participation a regular, almost everyday business practice, we created an ongoing feedback loop that didn’t rely mainly on surveys or forms.
As Salesforce’s ‘2020 State of the Connected Customer Report’ highlights, 73 percent of consumers expect companies to understand their unique needs, underscoring the importance of embedding the customer voice directly into decision-making processes.
By making customer participation a regular, almost everyday business practice, we created an ongoing feedback loop that didn’t rely mainly on surveys or forms.
When I first proposed this at Intuit, some team members worried that there couldn’t be an open dialogue between employees and customers. However, after just one meeting, their perspective shifted as they saw firsthand the value of unfiltered customer feedback. This experience reinforced the power of direct customer engagement and helped overcome initial skepticism within the organization.
More importantly, this approach accelerated the team’s ability to think customer-first. The customer became real to them – a human being they had to partner with and develop products for, not just an abstract concept or data point. This personal connection fostered a deeper sense of empathy and responsibility among team members.
Cultural shift: Embracing customer-centricity
Implementing this approach requires a significant cultural shift within the organization. It’s not just about changing a business process; it’s about fostering a culture that is genuinely open to direct customer engagement.
At Intuit, we were encouraged to be curious, to have empathy and to demonstrate vulnerability by being approachable, and all of this was challenging at first. Initially, team members at Intuit hesitated to share incomplete ideas with customers. Others had never really engaged with customers before.
However, once they saw how constructive feedback led to breakthrough features, they embraced the process fully.
This involves:
1. Encouraging vulnerability: Teams must be willing to expose their ideas and processes to customer scrutiny, even when they’re not perfect.
2. Valuing customer perspectives: Ensuring that customer input is treated with the same respect as internal expertise.
3. Promoting adaptability: Cultivating a willingness to pivot quickly based on customer feedback.
4. Rewarding customer-centric behavior: Recognizing and incentivizing employees who excel at incorporating customer insights.
Customer-Driven Innovation at Intuit was guided by three key principles:
• Find an important, unsolved customer problem.
• Ensure your team can solve it well.
• Build durable competitive advantage.
These principles drove innovation that delivered measurable improvements in customers’ lives. But while Intuit’s methodology was groundbreaking, I took it further by breaking the traditional feedback loop and bringing customers directly into staff meetings – be it physical or virtual.
Transforming staff meetings into customer-centric innovation labs
Traditional corporate feedback processes were often managed by one group that filtered customer feedback and condensed it into a Microsoft Word document where it passed through several layers of interpretation, losing nuance along the way. By inviting customers into staff meetings, we ensured:
1. Unfiltered insights: Teams heard customer challenges firsthand, reducing misinterpretation.
2. Faster iteration: Real-time feedback allowed for on-the-spot refinements, accelerating innovation cycles.
3. Deeper empathy: Direct interactions fostered a genuine understanding of customer needs across teams.
These meetings became more than status updates – they evolved into dynamic innovation hubs. Customers actively participated by sharing pain points, testing prototypes and co-designing solutions with the team. It also enabled the team to hear customers talk about their own experiences in their own words.
This kind of work accelerated our customer-first culture, making it easier to incorporate feedback quickly into the product development process.
At Intuit, incorporating real-time customer feedback contributed to a 20 percent faster time-to-market for key product features. This acceleration in development cycles not only improved our competitive position but also ensured that our products were more closely aligned with customer needs.
At Udacity, I also brought customers to my team meetings, resulting in effective programs leading to significantly improved graduation rates. Hearing students’ challenges with our product and their suggestions for our marketing programs firsthand helped us streamline the timing and the paths customers took to complete their courses.
Together, we co-designed a solution with our customers to have mentors, who were like teaching assistants, leverage Slack more effectively, enhancing student support and engagement.
Breaking down silos: Collaboration with customers and internal teams
To amplify the impact, I also invited employees from various departments – marketing, product, support and beyond – to these customer-driven meetings. This cross-pollination ensured:
1. Customer insights flowed freely across the organization.
2. Teams from different functions gained firsthand perspectives.
3. Silos were dismantled, fostering a unified, customer-centric culture.
Crucially, this collaboration extended beyond internal teams. For companies like Intuit and HubSpot, whose products power the livelihoods of their customers, these sessions became opportunities for co-creation. We co-piloted our innovation with our customers. Customers and employees worked together, aligning on solutions that delivered real-world impact.
Potential challenges and solutions
Implementing this approach isn’t without challenges:
• Team discomfort: Initially, team members may feel uncomfortable and not act naturally with customers present. Solution: Start with smaller, low-stakes meetings and gradually increase customer involvement.
• Confidentiality concerns: Companies may hesitate to share sensitive information. Solution: Establish clear guidelines on what can be discussed and consider having customers sign non-disclosure agreements when necessary.
• Expectation management: Customers might expect all their concerns to be addressed immediately. Solution: Clearly communicate the purpose of their involvement and the typical timelines for addressing feedback.
• Customer engagement: Customers might be bored with process-oriented topics often discussed in meetings. Solution: Carefully curate meeting agendas to include topics relevant to customers and brief them beforehand on the meeting’s focus to ensure their input is valuable and they remain engaged.
Maximizing impact through diversity and documentation
To get the most out of this approach:
• Invite diverse customers: Ensure representation from your entire ‘ideal customer profile’. This diversity provides a comprehensive view of your market’s needs.
• Record and transcribe: Document these sessions to capture valuable insights. Use customer language in your self-serve materials to improve relevance and relatability.
• Share insights, learnings and data widely: Distribute key takeaways across the organization to maximize the impact of customer involvement.
Implementing across industries
This approach isn’t limited to tech or B2B companies. Any organization, regardless of size or sector, can benefit from direct customer involvement in decision-making processes. For example:
• Retail: Invite loyal customers to your in-store merchandising and strategy meetings.
• Healthcare: Include patients in your ‘how to keep patients informed’ discussions.
• Financial services: Bring clients into strategy sessions for new offerings.
The key is adapting the format to suit your specific industry and customer base while maintaining the core principle of direct customer involvement.
Getting started: Three steps to implementation
1. Start small: Begin with a pilot program in one department or team. This allows you to refine the process before scaling.
2. Prepare your team: Provide training on how to interact with customers in this new context. Emphasize the importance of open-mindedness and active listening.
3. Select and prepare customers: Choose customers who are engaged with your product or service. Brief them on what to expect and how their input will be used.
The bottom line
Inviting customers to your weekly staff meetings isn’t just about improving products or services – it’s about fundamentally transforming how you do business. This approach creates a continuous, real-time feedback loop that goes beyond traditional VoC programs.
At companies like Intuit, HubSpot and Udacity, this practice strengthened offerings, improved outcomes like graduation and engagement rates, and deepened customer trust and loyalty. It also humanized the company (it’s nice seeing the faces behind a brand or product), which is something increasingly important in today’s digital-first world.
For leaders ready to embrace true customer-led growth, the stakes are clear: businesses that lead with curiosity, empathy and agility will thrive. In fact, companies that use real-time customer feedback are 2.5 times more likely to have significantly higher year-over-year revenue growth. This demonstrates the tangible business impact of implementing systems for immediate customer input.
Remember, being customer-led isn’t a casual endeavor; it’s a journey of continuous engagement and learning.
Remember, being customer-led isn’t a casual endeavor; it’s a journey of continuous engagement and learning. By making customers an integral part of your regular business processes, you ensure customer-centricity isn’t just a slogan but a living, breathing part of your company’s DNA.
By inviting customers into your everyday business practices and decision-making processes, you’re not just building better products – you’re building partnerships that inspire trust, loyalty and long-term success. The future of your business starts with a simple invitation.
