The uncomfortable truth about customer feedback "ownership" in most organizations.
Here's a scenario that probably sounds familiar:
You're in a leadership meeting when someone asks, "What are customers saying about our new feature?"
All eyes turn to you—after all, you "own" customer feedback, right?
So you scramble to pull together anecdotes from recent calls, dig through Slack conversations, and reference that spreadsheet your CSM updated last month. You provide what you can, but deep down, you know it's incomplete.
Welcome to what I call the "Ownership Without Empowerment Trap"—and according to our research, 53% of CS teams are stuck in it right now.
The Uncomfortable Truth About Feedback "Ownership"
Our data reveals a striking paradox:
53.7% of companies say Customer Success owns feedback 23.5% have no clear owner at all Only 11.1% assign it to Product teams
But here's the problem: most CS teams inherit this responsibility by accident, not design.
Think about your situation.
Were you hired specifically to manage customer feedback? Are your CSMs measured on insight quality? Do you have dedicated budget for feedback tools?
If you're like most CS leaders, the answer is no.
You ended up owning feedback because you talk to customers most—not because anyone strategically decided you should excel at it.
The Four Pillars of the Trap
This accidental ownership creates a perfect storm:
Informal Responsibility: You acquire feedback ownership by default, with no formal charter or success metrics.
Misaligned Incentives: Your CSMs are measured on retention and expansion—not feedback capture and analysis.
Resource Constraints: No dedicated time or tools allocated specifically for feedback processes.
The Performance Penalty:
Here's the cruel irony—when leadership asks for customer insights, your team drops everything to collect feedback.
But this time comes directly out of the activities they're actually measured on: customer calls, renewal prep, expansion planning.
So doing the job you "own" actively hurts performance on the job you're paid for.
Why This Costs More Than You Think
The consequences create a vicious cycle:
Your team's core metrics suffer. Every hour spent scrambling for feedback is an hour not spent on renewal risk or expansion opportunities.
Your insights lose credibility. Without systematic collection, you're sharing anecdotes, not data.
Critical patterns get missed. That competitive threat brewing across 20% of your base? It slips through the cracks while you're chasing individual requests.
Your team stays tactical. You remain relationship managers instead of strategic partners driving decisions.
The data backs this up: companies with formal feedback ownership systems are nearly 3x more likely to outperform competitors than those with informal ownership.
What Formal Ownership Actually Looks Like
The highest-performing CS teams don't just collect feedback, they own the entire lifecycle—and increasingly, they're using AI for customer success managers to operationalize it:
Informal Ownership Reactive sharing when asked Individual anecdotes Competes with core KPIs Ad-hoc processes
Formal Ownership Proactive, systematic collection Pattern identification with AI context Aligned with team goals Purpose-built workflows powered by customer intelligence AI
Your First Step Out
Ready to escape? Start here: document the current cost.
For two weeks, track how much time your team spends on ad-hoc feedback requests and how this impacts their core responsibilities.
This isn't about blame, it's about building a business case for the resources you need to truly own customer intelligence without sacrificing team performance.
With AI for revenue teams, you can align CS goals with company-wide growth—without falling into the empowerment trap.
Want to go deeper?
Access the full whitepaper here.
