Branch · 2025 to 2026
Building a customer signal engine.
A structured customer engagement program designed to deepen product feedback loops, strengthen trust, and support adoption during a major product transformation. The EMEA pilot reached 7 enterprise accounts across 4 verticals and influenced 8 roadmap items. North America launched in 2026 on an annual cadence with cross-functional ownership.
Role
Sr. Director, Product Experience
Duration
Pilot to global rollout
Partners
PX, CX, Product, GTM
EMEA pilot
8 roadmap items influenced
The problem
Customer feedback existed. A feedback system did not.
Signals came in through support tickets, sales calls, executive meetings, roadmap discussions, one-off customer requests, and relationships with assigned PMs. The signals were valuable. They weren't synthesized in a way that product teams could act on consistently.
At the same time, Branch was entering a major product transformation across modernization, AI, analytics, and customer migration. Customers needed more than a feedback collection mechanism. They needed a way to feel close to the direction Branch was heading, not surprised by it. The work needed a customer trust and adoption mechanism, not just a listening one.
The approach
From customer event to customer infrastructure.
The first strategic shift was treating the program as more than a customer gathering. A great event focuses on attendance and satisfaction. A great program builds a durable system for customer education, roadmap visibility, product feedback, executive listening, adoption support, and product trust.
The program was placed inside the broader PX strategy: make the product easier to understand, easier to adopt, and harder to leave. Strategic placement matters. Programs that live inside a strategy get funded, owned, and improved. Orphaned initiatives quietly disappear.
"Programs need a strategic home."
The most important operational work was designing the feedback loop itself. Conversations had to become themes. Themes had to be routed to product owners. Decisions had to be documented. Customers had to see something come back. The common trap of customer programs is great conversations that change nothing.
The feedback loop
How a conversation becomes a product decision.
01
Conversation
Customer feedback captured in structured settings.
02
Theme capture
Quotes, patterns, and asks documented.
03
Synthesis
Themes clustered and prioritized across customers.
04
Ownership
Routed to the right PM, PX lead, or CX owner.
05
Decision
Roadmap, education, or adoption implication named.
06
Return
Customer sees what happened with their input.
The loop matters. Without explicit routing and a feedback-to-customer step, the program becomes extractive. With both, the program builds trust each time it runs.
The loop in practice
One conversation through six stations.
Process diagrams describe what is supposed to happen. The test of the model is whether a single customer comment can travel from the conversation it started in to a roadmap decision and back to the customer who raised it. Here is one journey, anonymized.
01
Conversation
London cohort
02
Theme
Export velocity
03
Synthesis
6 customers
04
Ownership
Data platform PM
05
Decision
P1 next quarter
06
Return
Customer hears back
One conversation. Six stations. One roadmap commitment in a single planning cycle.
Anonymized example. The mechanism, not the exact customer or product detail.
The rollout
Pilot first. Expand intentionally.
Phase 01
EMEA pilot.
London
The first program launched in London as a regional pilot. The format was intimate: a small group of customers, roadmap visibility, AI and product demos, structured conversation, and real time for feedback. Charcuterie included.
The pilot validated customer appetite for closer engagement with Branch's product direction, surfaced which formats customers valued most (roadmap visibility and AI demos outperformed feature voting), and proved the model could produce structured product signal, not just qualitative reception.
Phase 02
North America rollout.
Annual cadence · cross-functional ownership
North America expansion launched in 2026 with an annual cadence: a full-day kickoff event, quarterly virtual meetups, semi-annual surprise touchpoints, and a continuous Slack channel between sessions. Target profile: power users and high-risk churn customers, recruited across verticals and regions.
Cross-functional ownership defined from day one. Product Experience owns participant relationships and is the face of the program. Product Management supports relationships. ProductOps owns framework and logistics. Marketing, Docs, and CX consult and recruit. The program moved from "PX initiative" to "company-wide customer engagement system."
Phase 03
Formalization.
Strategic placement
The program was formalized as part of the Product Experience strategy. It connected directly to the Product Mastery & Community pillar, joining customer education, advisory programs, and community-led learning under one strategic identity.
Formalization is what turns a successful pilot into durable infrastructure. Without it, programs survive at the pace of individual champion energy. With it, the program survives leadership transitions, funding cycles, and reorgs.
Pilot results · EMEA
The model produced structured product signal.
Reach
7
Enterprise accounts attended the London cohort. Travel, Food, FinTech, Retail & Tech. The cohort skewed toward high-value, high-influence customers across verticals.
Influence
8
Roadmap items directly influenced by pilot feedback. Including Dynamic Landing Pages, Attribution Simulator, and Bulk Link Enhancements. Customer signal became product direction.
Reach by vertical
4
Industry verticals represented in a single cohort. Broad enough to surface platform-level themes. Concentrated enough to keep the conversation specific.
Themes from the feedback session
Keep. Kill. Improve. Create.
A structured workshop format turned open conversation into prioritized signal. Customers told us what to protect, what to retire, what to fix, and what was missing. Real artifact from the London session, anonymized below.
Keep
What's working.
Core link generation, scan flows, foundational analytics.
Kill
What to retire.
Duplicate analytics surfaces, legacy UI patterns customers had outgrown.
Improve
What to fix.
Cohort views, real-time performance, export velocity at scale.
Create
What was missing.
Debug source visibility, suspicious link alerts, attribution simulation.
What customers said
Trust scaled when customers felt heard.
"The first inner circle was a great experience. Having people from different companies and different business environments meant everyone could speak freely without being afraid of competition stealing ideas."
Product owner
Major European retail platform
"Honestly, one of the best provider events I've ever attended. Everything from the organization to the atmosphere to the content was spot on. You could really tell how much effort went into it."
Marketing data analyst
Fintech platform
"Loved the initiative. A fun way to get feedback and customers' voice on developing a product. A truly customer-driven approach is so good to see in a time where everyone's trying to sell."
Performance specialist
Global food delivery platform
Customer quotes from the EMEA London cohort. Roles and verticals retained. Names and companies anonymized.
What I learned
Three lessons for anyone building a customer signal system.
Roadmap visibility beat feature voting.
Customers wanted to see where the product was going more than they wanted to vote on individual features. The format that scaled trust was transparency about direction, not democracy about details.
Cross-functional ownership is the multiplier.
A program owned only by PX is a PX program. A program co-owned with CX, supported by Product, and connected to GTM becomes company infrastructure. The advocacy from the VP of CX was a turning point.
The loop has to actually close.
Customers can tell when programs are extractive. The single biggest determinant of program credibility is whether customers see something come back. Without the return step, trust erodes faster than it built.
The meta-point
Customer experience isn't just what happens inside the product.
It's how customers are brought into the evolution of the product.
During major transformation, trust is built through visibility, listening, education, and follow-through. The London pilot reached 7 enterprise accounts across 4 verticals and directly influenced 8 roadmap items. The North America program built on the same model with a defined annual cadence and cross-functional ownership. The program design isn't a calendar of events. It's an operating contract between the company and its customers about how change happens. That's what makes it a system instead of an initiative.