Customers Just Want To Be Heard

Sometimes, your biggest customers don’t really need those new features.
They just need to know you’re listening.

That’s the premise of a recent SaaStr article, and I agree with so much of it.

✅ Yes, enterprise customers want to be heard.
When a large customer raises their hand, it’s not always because of missing functionality. More often, it’s because they’re unsure their voice carries weight. They want a relationship, not just some roadmap priority.

✅ Yes, having an exec (or even the CEO) jump on a call can be a game-changer.
A brief conversation can build more trust than a dozen resolved support tickets. In many cases, it’s not about solving a problem today, it’s about showing that someone with authority understands their goals, frustrations, and value to your business.

But here’s where I diverge just a bit.

⚠️ Listening is not a strategy, it’s a tactic.
What enterprise customers really want, even if they don’t say it this way, is to feel progress. Progress toward the outcomes they were promised. Progress toward what they said mattered.

This is where a lot of post-sale CX teams fall short.

I’ve seen quite a few companies who are deeply responsive to customer input: they’re listening, but still losing accounts. Why? Because they can’t demonstrate results.

And that is why your customers start asking for features: they’re trying to do the extrapolation from your product to their value, because you are not doing it for them.

The solution?

➡️ Get proactive.
➡️ Re-center your CX org around business outcomes, not just reacting to feature requests or tech issues.
➡️ Develop a methodology for tracking, reporting, and communicating progress against those outcomes.
➡️ Build a health model that’s not just utilization metrics but actually reflects the customer achieving their goals.

When you do that, your largest customers won’t just feel heard. They’ll feel valued.

And that’s why they’ll stay.

Your largest customers don’t churn suddenly. They churn slowly, silently, and often because you haven’t tied your value to their success in a way that feels measurable and real. Listening is step one. Proving progress is step two.