Turn Your Customer Complaints Into Revenue – With Sandra Cruz

Before you introduce a new process, launch a tool, or rework your onboarding playbook, ask this: Have you listened to your customers deeply enough to lead meaningful change?

In this conversation with Sandra Cruz (ex LinkedIn, Docusign), we unpack what it actually takes to lead change through the lens of customer conversations. Not surface level feedback, but urgency, emotion, and real business value.

Here are the key takeaways:

1. Change Doesn’t Start with Process. It Starts with People.

Change leadership isn’t just about frameworks, it’s about trust. Sandra combines formal project management with human psychology to unlock transformation. That means understanding what motivates teams to change, and modeling it yourself.

She shared an example: when her team piloted Microsoft Copilot internally, she volunteered to be in the early group—using it, failing with it, learning from it. Only then did she advocate for wider adoption.

Because leadership isn’t telling. It’s showing.

2. Customer Conversations Are Your Fastest Path to Influence

Sandra led a Voice of the Customer program across two products. She didn’t just collect feedback—she turned it into data points, patterns, and business cases.

Instead of “this customer is frustrated,” it became: “Four of our top five customers say this feature is blocking expansion. Reducing onboarding time by 2 weeks could unlock $4M in potential growth.”

Urgency and impact, not just emotion.

3. Emotion and Context Shouldn’t Get Lost in Translation

A quote, a pause, a sense of frustration, these signals are often lost when feedback gets reduced to Jira tickets or OKRs. Sandra builds systems that keep context alive:

• Start every QBR by asking: “What’s most pressing for you right now?”

• Pay attention to behavior, not just product usage, but email responsiveness, overdue payments, and tone.

• Get cross functional teams to hear customer voices directly, not filtered through summaries.

Context creates clarity. And clarity drives action.

4. The Real Risk? Only Listening to Validate Your Assumptions

Sandra warns against the trap of only hearing what confirms your roadmap. To avoid this:

• Get product and support teams to join real calls.

• Show trends over time, not isolated quotes.

• Share the good alongside the gaps, celebrating progress builds trust and momentum.

Listening isn’t just about confirming ideas. It’s about evolving them.

Final Thought
Change leadership isn’t a role. It’s a responsibility. And it starts with how you listen, and what you do next.

Watch the full conversation here

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