To truly understand customer needs, the most reliable source is always the customer themselves. Actively gather feedback through surveys, interviews, and customer support channels to ensure you have an accurate picture of their needs and pain points. Once you have this insight, it’s crucial to communicate it clearly within your organization. Create structured processes for sharing customer feedback across teams—whether through regular meetings, dedicated feedback platforms, or visual dashboards. This ensures that all departments are aligned and focused on what matters most to the customer. And never assume you know what your customers want—if in doubt, ask them directly. This approach builds trust.

The most important perspective in assessing customer needs is your customers’! Use their feedback to gain an accurate understanding of their needs, and ensure this insight is clearly voiced in business discussions and channeled across your organisation. Never assume—if you're unsure, ask your customers!

Understanding customer needs is always a top priority if you want to give a wow customer experience and those priorities always needs to be obtained from the customer's mouth. You can include various options to gather those feedbacks. In my experience, I have used techniques such as customer interviews and surveys which translates the actual need of the customers. Once identified then create a structured process map and align metrics to ensure the entire team is working on One goal. Seeking common ground and collection of customer feedbacks helps you to revisit your goals and metrics to avoid any new challenges popping that impacts Customer Experience.

Very good question I must say! You first need to understand that it's a ''two-way understanding''. Not sure what I mean? Allow me to explain it: Knowing not only your customers, their cultures, and expectations... but also deeply appreciating the unique perspectives each team member brings. (Yes, you also need to think of your Employee and of Employee Experience). When you ''really'' value both Customer and Employee Experiences, you can then ''really'' actually win. Last year, in a consulting project, we focused on this very principle, ensuring that Employee Experience was nurtured through tailored training and development, especially for Emotional Intelligence Training.

Focus on continuous feedback and making incremental improvements, instead of relying on one-time assessments. Ongoing feedback helps teams understand the customer’s subjective experience in real time and changes over time. This approach captures the nuanced insights that generic scores can miss, aligning team members on actionable, shared goals. Small, steady adjustments based on real feedback foster a unified, evolving approach, ensuring the team stays responsive and in sync with actual customer needs over time. This commitment to continuous improvement bridges the gap and creates a more cohesive customer experience.

I’d facilitate an open and inclusive dialogue, encouraging each team member to share their unique insights and experiences. We would illustrate our collective understanding using visual tools like customer journey maps, empathy maps, or personas. To further align our perspectives, we can invite our customers – to join the conversation. Through surveys, focus groups, or user testing, we’d gather firsthand feedback and validate our assumptions. Regular workshops and feedback sessions would ensure our team remains in sync, adapting to changing customer landscapes and refining our solutions.

Encourage Open Dialogue and Structured Debates: Cultivate an environment where team members feel comfortable expressing differing viewpoints. Establish rules for respectful and constructive debate. Use structured formats, like “pros and cons” lists or SWOT analysis, to evaluate different perspectives and find common ground.

Understanding the customers' needs and expectations and how we can help them achieve their business goals. Within a single B2B business relationship you can have multiple stakeholders on the client side, each with their own needs, wants and expectations. Your team needs to understand how these needs differ and how to meet those expectations. The only way to do this is by systematically asking for actionable feedback that lead to an improved experience. Too often CSMs are focused on the vendor's success and not the success of the customer based on their business objectives.

Sometimes, what we think our customers want and need is based on our history, backgrounds, etc. That's biased thinking. Sometimes we are right, and sometimes we are wrong. In the end, it's the customer who gets to determine if we've met those wants and needs. They are the "judge and jury."

Bridging diverse team perspectives on customer needs requires alignment and empathy. Start by creating a shared vision of the customer journey that all teams can rally behind. Encourage open dialogue to understand each team's goals, and use data to focus discussions objectively. Building cross-functional teams for customer-focused projects helps foster collaboration and empathy. Align on customer success metrics like CSAT or NPS to keep everyone focused on shared goals. When teams work in harmony, customers benefit from a seamless experience that builds loyalty and trust.