I spent most of my career in product management, obsessing over feature priorities, roadmap planning, and trying to ship things that mattered. Like many PMs, I wanted to stay close to the customer. I wanted my decisions to reflect real user needs. I didn’t want to live in a bubble.
But even then, it was hard.
We had product analytics tools. We had dashboards showing user behaviors. But interpreting that data always felt like a puzzle. I would squint at heatmaps, conversion flows, and event funnels, hoping to understand what users were actually trying to do. It felt more like reverse-engineering intent from scattered clues than actually knowing.
And then there were the internal conversations. When I met with Customer Success or Sales, I listened. But I often listened with caution.
I worried their feedback might be too narrow. What if the request only came from a single customer or two? What if the issue seemed urgent but wasn’t widespread? I didn’t want to derail the roadmap for something that might be an edge case. That fear made me skeptical. And sometimes, that skepticism made it harder to act on what they were saying.
That was the mindset I had while sitting on the product side of the table.
Now, I find myself on the other side. Talking to CS leaders and practitioners every week. Building for them. Thinking like them. Working to amplify their voice while still wearing a product-thinking hat.
It’s been a strange and eye-opening shift.
One thing that stands out to me again and again is how CS and Product often speak different languages. Even when they care about the same outcomes like product adoption, retention, successful users - the way they frame problems, the data they look at, and the words they use are different.
That difference creates friction. It creates translation gaps. It means that valuable insights often get lost, because they are not delivered in a way that the other side can immediately use.
Why This Gap Matters
The disconnect between CS and Product is not just a communication issue. It affects how products evolve and how customers experience them.
When CS teams raise red flags or request changes, they are usually trying to help. They are on the front lines, hearing the pain points in real time. But if their input is dismissed as anecdotal or not grounded in "data," it gets sidelined.
On the other hand, product teams are flooded with inputs. They want clarity and confidence before making tradeoffs. If the feedback they receive feels unstructured or emotionally driven, it is easy to tune out.
The result is mutual frustration. CS feels unheard. Product feels overwhelmed. And customers lose in the end.
What Needs to Change
We don’t fix this by telling people to "collaborate more." We fix it by creating shared language, shared tools, and shared context.
We need systems that help CS capture and structure customer signals in ways that make sense to product teams. And we need tools that help product managers explore those signals in ways that feel grounded, not anecdotal.
That’s one of the driving ideas behind Actioner. We’re building a system that takes the fragmented, raw, and scattered customer signals from across support tickets, CRM notes, product usage, and conversations and distills them into something structured and usable.
It’s not just about visibility. It’s about translation.
CS should be able to speak up confidently about customer needs, knowing that their voice carries weight. And product teams should be able to see the big picture and the specific edge cases, all in one place.
Because at the end of the day, we’re all trying to serve the same customer. But we can’t do that if we are operating in silos.
Final Thought
If I had to start somewhere, I’d start with language. The words we use matter. The way we frame problems matters. Before we talk about new processes or tools, maybe we just need to make sure we’re truly hearing each other.
Because when Product and CS speak the same language, amazing things happen.
