Voice of the Customer
What is the voice of the customer?
The voice of the customer is a traditional role designation where one person—often a designer or product manager—is responsible for representing customer needs and perspectives to the team. In the Scrum framework, the product owner was explicitly designated as the voice of the customer, responsible for gathering requirements from customers and representing customer needs to the development team.
However, modern product discovery practices challenge this approach. Designating one person as the voice of the customer gives that person too much power in team decision-making because they can simply claim "this is what the customer wants" without other team members having the knowledge to evaluate that claim.
Why is designating one person as the voice of the customer problematic?
When one person does all the customer interviewing and represents what customers want, it creates power imbalances on the team. For example, if a product manager and designer disagree on how to proceed, and the designer has done all the interviewing, the designer can easily argue "this is what the customer wants." The product manager has no response to that, regardless of whether the claim is true.
This model prevents true collaboration because it doesn't leverage everyone's expertise. Instead of one person filtering customer insights through their interpretation, all team members need direct exposure to customers to build shared understanding.
What's the alternative to having one voice of the customer?
The goal is for all team members—product manager, designer, and engineer—to collectively be the voice of the customer. This means the whole product trio should engage with customers together, participate in interviews, and build shared understanding of customer needs.
When everyone on the team has direct customer exposure, they can all contribute their unique perspectives (business viability, usability, and technical feasibility) while being collectively responsible for desirability and understanding customer needs.
Learn more:
- Why Product Trios Should Interview Customers Together
- Why There’s No Single “Right” Way to Do Discovery: Part 1
Related terms:
- Product Trio
- Customer Interview
- Collaboration
Last Updated: October 25, 2025