Why you should ignore your loudest customers

When you’re in product management, one of the toughest challenges is figuring out what to build next. If your feedback loop is working well, you’ll have a steady stream of insights coming from customers—so much so that it can feel overwhelming to decide what to prioritize. In moments like these, the easiest thing to do is to listen to your loudest customers.

These customers tend to stand out because they’re vocal, persistent, or bring in significant revenue. Maybe they’re always in touch with your customer success team, highlighting gaps in your product. Or maybe they’re the ones who dominate feedback calls, making their voices hard to ignore.

It’s tempting to cater to these customers because they feel urgent. But here’s the truth: if you focus all your attention on the loudest customers, you’re probably missing the bigger picture.

I get why the loudest customers are hard to ignore. They might be your biggest accounts, contributing a disproportionate share of revenue. Their issues might be raised repeatedly, which can make them feel like the most pressing problems to solve. Internally, their pain points are often amplified by customer success or sales teams who see these customers as critical to retention.

But here’s the problem: the loudest customers don’t always represent the customers who are best for your business in the long run.

Let me explain. When you give too much weight to your loudest customers, you risk falling into some dangerous traps.

For example, we once had a customer that didn’t meet our criteria for who we want to focus on. They were extremely vocal about a feature they claimed was critical for their business. In fact, they even said they would leave if we didn’t prioritize it. The feature they requested was highly specific to their workflow and had only been brought up by one other customer, also not meeting our criteria for our ideal customer profile.

Their demands put significant pressure on our customer success and support teams, who worked hard to make the customer happy. Still, I ultimately decided not to jump on the request. It didn’t align with our broader product strategy, and investing resources in this bespoke feature would have taken time away from solving problems that affected a much larger group of customers. In the end, the customer left anyway. The reality was, they weren’t an ideal customer to begin with.

Here’s the interesting thing: most of your ideal customers are quietly using your product as intended. They’re finding value without requiring significant hand-holding, and they rarely raise their voices unless something truly important comes up. That’s why, when an ideal customer does become vocal—and their feedback aligns with challenges faced by your broader audience, it’s much easier to know what to work on. Their insights tend to validate patterns you’re already seeing across your user base, providing clarity and confidence about prioritizing those issues.

This distinction is critical. Not all loud customers are worth listening to, but when a vocal customer matches your criteria for profitable and repeatable users, their input is often gold. These customers give you a clear path forward, helping you focus on improvements that benefit not just them but the majority of your ideal customers.

By focusing on quietly successful customers and paying close attention when they become vocal, you ensure your product evolves in ways that scale and deliver value where it matters most.

So, how do you know who you should focus on? The goal is to optimize for profitable and repeatable customers.

These are the customers who:

At Grow, for example, I look for customers with 10 or more users, where at least 70% of them are active. That’s a simple metric that tells me this customer is not only engaged but also getting value across their team—not just from one power user. We’ve found that these types of customers stay twice as long.

Every business will have its own unique indicators for identifying these customers. The key is to make it measurable, simple, and tied to what makes your business scalable.

Once you’ve identified your profitable and repeatable customers, the next step is to talk to them—regularly. These conversations are gold mines for understanding what’s working, what’s not, and what opportunities you might be missing.

When I interview customers, I always start by getting to know their role and the context of their work. What are their responsibilities? How did they hear about Grow? Why did they choose us in the first place? This gives me a clear picture of how they view our product and what led them to us.

From there, I dive into their problems and workflows. What were they trying to solve when they signed up? Are they using Grow daily, or just occasionally? And if they’re measuring something in the product, how do they decide what’s worth tracking?

I also ask them about usability, which is core to our value as a no-code BI platform. I want to know, “Is Grow easy to use?” But more importantly, “What does easy to use mean to you?” The answers to that second question are incredibly revealing because everyone defines simplicity differently.

Finally, I ask about strategic importance. Is Grow just a nice-to-have, or is it central to their business? Do they see themselves using it five years from now? This is an area we’re actively working to improve, so understanding where we stand today helps us shape the product for tomorrow.

I always leave time for them to give me any requests for features or issues they have if we haven’t already discussed them.

The last step is to take all this feedback and make sense of it. Not every piece of input is equal. The key is to segment it by persona and use case, then look for patterns. Are certain issues coming up repeatedly? Are there feature requests that align with the needs of your target customers?

This kind of analysis helps you prioritize the changes that will have the greatest impact—on the right customers.

Listening to feedback is critical, but you have to be intentional about whose feedback you’re prioritizing. Loud customers might seem urgent, but they can pull you off course if they don’t align with your product’s long-term vision.

Instead, focus on the customers who truly represent your target market. These are the ones who validate your product’s core value and drive sustainable growth. When you do that, you’re not just building a product that meets today’s demands—you’re creating something that scales and lasts.

The loudest voices might grab your attention, but it’s the quiet majority that will determine your success.