Before You Launch, Listen

A case study featuring what 1:1 Voice of the Customer conversations uncovered before a major product launch and how those findings transformed the team's thinking.

A growing brand with a loyal, engaged customer base came to ElucidCX with a high-stakes question: We're about to launch something new, but will our audience use and like what it is?

They had strong signals of product-market fit in their existing offering. Their audience loves the current deliverable, but the product launch would be a change in platforms. The launch required understanding around not just what their audience loved about the brand and the product they currently interacted with, but what would actually compel them to change a habit, try something new, and then stay.

They had real, strategic questions that survey and usage data couldn't answer:

• Would existing users adopt the new product or stick with what they already knew?

• Was their planned pricing and support language creating confusion instead of conversion?

• Were they investing in the right features, or building things users would ignore?

• What would actually make someone recommend the new product to a friend?

I was over the moon that this company paused before the launch to truly understand their audience. Remember, it takes courage to ask for feedback in this way, knowing full well that the insights revealed in the one-on-one conversations could upend everything you think is working about the product. But it also means the brand is committed to excellence, listening, and delivering a world-class product that their audience would actually use.

What ElucidCX Did

I conducted one-on-one, 40+ minute Voice of the Customer conversations with a deliberate cross-section of their audience, which included: active users, lapsed users, and people who had never encountered the product at all. The cross-section of audience was intentional.

After the conversations were analyzed, a sentiment score landed at .650 out of 1.0, indicating meaningful enthusiasm, but also meaningful room to grow. Clear themes emerged across all the audience segments.

What We Found

1. The existing product was beloved. The new one had something to prove.

The audience built a real habit around the brand's original format; it arrived, they engaged, they trusted it. The new product requires a behavioral shift, which also means it requires a compelling reason for that behavioral shift.

Across the conversations, a consistent message emerged: if the new product is simply a repackaged version of what they already have, there's no reason to make the switch.

2. The pricing language was confusing and caused unnecessary friction.

The brand's pricing language around the product used a single word that, in virtually every other context, means you're getting something more. The audience expected to unlock new content or features, but when they realized the experience was the same regardless of contribution level, the responses ranged from confusion to frustration.

The research also surfaced an untapped revenue opportunity. The available price points felt arbitrary to users. Multiple respondents raised the idea of a lower entry option, suggesting that flexible giving tiers could meaningfully increase conversion volume simply by lowering the barrier to participate.

The brand had a clear path forward for a part of the product they were hungry for feedback around: change one word, delay the ask until users had time to build a connection to the product, and give people the ability to contribute at whatever level felt right to them.

3. The planned differentiator wasn't actually differentiating.

The brand invested in a specific feature as the marquee reason to adopt the new product. Users appreciated the concept but were clear it wasn't compelling enough on its own to change habits or drive adoption.

Why? Because established competitors already offered similar functionality, and users were content staying with those brands.

The actual differentiator — the thing respondents genuinely couldn't find anywhere else — was the brand's core format and voice! The thing that made their original product beloved in the first place was what users echoed time and time again as being the differentiating factor the brand should heavily lean into.

4. Community was missing and users were craving it.

One of the most consistent and unexpected themes across interviews was that users didn't just love the product, but that they also felt a kinship with others who used it. The problem was that they had nowhere to express that.

"Where are the people who think like me? I feel alone. This brand is so primed to facilitate that."

Users were already sharing, referring, and talking about the brand in their own circles. But there was no gathering place. No faces behind the brand. No way to find each other.

This revealed both a gap and an enormous opportunity (seriously, enormous). Brands that build community create loyalty that competitors cannot easily replicate.

5. Credibility was borrowed from referrers, not built into the brand itself.

Every single respondent (yes, every single one) discovered the product because someone they trusted told them about it. That's a powerful word-of-mouth engine. But it also means the brand has almost no independent credibility. If a well-resourced competitor entered the space tomorrow, the brand might not have enough equity of its own to hold its audience.

The solution is to start building owned credibility now through team introductions, sharing of the origin story, transparency behind their process, and thoughtful partnerships.

What Happened Next

The organization received a prioritized set of recommendations, each with a clear problem statement, specific action steps, and OKRs or KPIs to track progress. Those priorities were also broken into short-term and long-term priorities. At the end of the call, the executive leaders and the new product developer had time to ask strategy questions and brainstorm ideas moving forward. The organization is actively implementing recommendations and further brainstorming ideas around the insights they received. Because of their willingness to hear directly from their audience before launch, they will provide a better end-to-end experience that aligns with the product users already love.

What This Illustrates About VoC

A survey would have told this brand that users were happy. The Net Promoter Score (NPS) would have most likely been high. Usage data would have confirmed that the original product was working.

But none of that would have surfaced how one word was confusing users around the pricing tiers; none of it would have revealed that the planned differentiator wasn't actually differentiating; none of it would have captured the emotional language users used to describe the product.

One-on-one conversations do something other feedback mechanisms can't: they surface the why behind the what, the feeling behind the rating, and the rich language customers use unprompted to describe your brand.

"I had no idea" is the most common thing clients say after I share the findings.

Friends, that's exactly the point.

Want to Know What Your Customers Are Really Thinking?

ElucidCX conducts 1:1 Voice of the Customer research that goes beyond what surveys can capture and turns what we hear into data, strategy, and action steps your team can use to make better decisions for growth.

Let's talk: jessica@elucidcx.com