May 29, 2025

6 Steps to Building a Customer Insights Program with Shoshana Kordova

54 minutes

#250 Customer Insights | Matt sits down with Shoshana Kordova, a 3x founding product marketer and former journalist who now helps B2B tech startups craft customer-infused messaging through her consultancy, Peel Product Marketing. Shoshana recently launched a customer insights playbook for the PMM Jetpack, equipping marketers with tools and templates to run more effective customer interviews.

Matt and Shoshana cover:

Why a customer insights program is more than “just talking to customers” and how to turn interviews into a repeatable system that drives messaging, positioning, and case studies
How to collaborate across teams (especially with CS and product) to get buy-in and avoid stepping on toes
The most common mistakes B2B marketers make with interviews and how to get the kind of insights you can actually use

Whether you're a product marketer, content strategist, or leading a GTM team, this episode is packed with actionable takeaways to build messaging that resonates.

Timestamps

(00:00) - – Intro

(02:13) - – Meet Shoshana: From Journalism to Product Marketing

(03:23) - – What Is “Customer-Infused Messaging”?

(05:08) - – Why Customer Insights Beat Surface-Level Deliverables

(07:08) - – How to Work with CS and Sales Without Stepping on Toes

(10:08) - – Navigating Competing Priorities Across Teams

(12:28) - – Selling the Value of Customer Interviews Internally

(16:28) - – The 6 Steps to Building a Customer Insights Program

(18:23) - – Step 1: Aligning Goals with Stakeholders

(20:03) - – Step 2: Building a Customer Interview Pipeline

(22:08) - – Step 3: Keeping Stakeholders in the Loop (Hint: Use Slack)

(27:35) - – Step 4: How to Run a Great Customer Interview

(33:05) - – Focus on Problems, Not Just the Product

(35:40) - – Uncovering Real ROI with Better Follow-Ups

(36:50) - – Step 5: Documenting What Actually Matters

(39:10) - – How to Organize Insights into a Shared Database

(42:00) - – Step 6: Putting Insights to Work (Case Studies, Messaging, ICPs)

(44:20) - – Should You Hire an External Interviewer?

(46:35) - – What’s a Realistic Interview Cadence?

(48:05) - – Other Places to Find Customer Insights (When Interviews Aren’t Possible)

(49:40) - – Final Tips: Mining G2 Reviews, Webinars, and Internal Teams

(50:54) - – Wrap-Up and Where to Find Shoshana

Join 50,0000 people who get our Exit Five Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletter
Learn more about Exit Five's private marketing community: https://www.exitfive.com/

***

Today's episode is brought to you by Knak.

Email (in my humble opinion) is the still the greatest marketing channel of all-time.

It’s the only way you can truly “own” your audience.

But when it comes to building the emails - if you’ve ever tried building an email in an enterprise marketing automation platform, you know how painful it can be. Templates are too rigid, editing code can break things and the whole process just takes forever.

That’s why we love Knak here at Exit Five. Knak a no-code email platform that makes it easy to create on-brand, high-performing emails - without the bottlenecks.

Frustrated by clunky email builders? You need Knak.
Tired of ‘hoping’ the email you sent looks good across all devices? Just test in Knak first.
Big team making it hard to collaborate and get approvals? Definitely Knak.

And the best part? Everything takes a fraction of the time.

See Knak in action at knak.com/exit-five. Or just let them know you heard about Knak on Exit Five.

***

Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production.

They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast.
Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest.
Visit hatch.fm to learn more

...more

View all episodes

By Exit Five

4.7

4343 ratings