In this livestream, Amanda Northcutt, CEO of Level Up Creators, walks viewers through a practical framework for gathering and leveraging customer feedback to build recurring‑revenue businesses. She first distinguishes quantitative (hard numbers) from qualitative (free‑response, conversation) feedback, emphasizing that regular Voice of Customer (VoC) interviews—3‑5 calls per month, ideally weekly—are a high‑impact lever that can boost top‑line revenue 2‑3×. Northcutt outlines how to segment interview subjects (by product purchase, ticket level, email engagement), schedule calls via Calendly, record and transcribe them with AI note‑takers like Fathom, and then use large‑language‑model tools (Gemini, ChatGPT) to synthesize transcripts, surface trends, and refine messaging, product ladders, and style guides. For businesses with limited time, she recommends semi‑annual 5‑question surveys delivered through platforms such as Google Forms, Typeform, or email automation tools, and suggests batching interview sessions twice a year as a minimum. She warns that the biggest mistake is asking unhelpful questions, and promotes a free October 21 webinar featuring professional interviewer Katherine McGarvey, who will provide a concrete question list and outreach plan. When prioritizing feedback, Northcutt advises a three‑step filter: alignment with long‑term vision, frequency of the request across customers, and weighting toward the most valuable (best) customers. The session closes with a parting reminder that founders and executives must stay close to customers—ideally rotating through customer‑service calls—to continuously make the right offers at the right time, thereby creating rock‑solid recurring revenue.
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Amanda Northcutt is our CEO. Okay, we're gonna give people just a few minutes to jump on, but if you wanna tell us in the chat where you guys are tuning in from or any questions you have for us, we would love to answer those today. Okay, so today we're gonna be talking about customer feedback, and we're so glad that we get to spend a few minutes of our day with you. Again, if you have any questions, feel free to drop them in at any time, and I will just Get those in. Okay. If you haven't met us, there are 2 ways that we help thought leaders build rock-solid recurring revenue businesses. First, we have Level Up Creators, which is our done-for-you white glove consulting firm. And second is Level Up Creator School, where we help a global group of thought leaders build businesses through a done-with-you model. Creator School includes access to all of our consulting team and all of our methodology in a way that used to be reserved for our one-on-one clients, but now we're offering it to you guys. So that is just a little bit about us. So we're going to jump right in. Okay, Amanda, number 1, what's the best way to start collecting customer feedback? And if you— customer— hold on, let me do that again. What's the best way to collect customer feedback if you've never done it before?
That's a great question. There's kind of like 2 buckets of customer feedback just to kind of like level set with everybody. There's quantitative feedback and there's qualitative feedback. So quantitative is hard numbers, definitive statistics, data, percentages, absolute numbers. Whereas qualitative feedback is information that you collect in a free-response, you know, survey form field. It's information you collect in a conversation like this. And we call these Voice of Customer interviews. Like if you are making an intentional effort to have a call with 3 to 5 of your customers every single month and ask them sort of like, ask them sort of similar questions. That is like called a voice of customer collection motion, I would call it. That's a little silly, but it's important. It's important, important part of your marketing motion. And so there's a statistic that I love. I'm going to miss— I'm going to mess it up a little bit. But for companies who— and we're talking about like creator-level companies too— creators and businesses who talk to their customers one-on-one on a regular basis beat their competition like 2 to 3x from a top-line revenue perspective. So you are going to make so much more money if you're talking to your customers, staying close to your customers so you can really empathize, understand exactly what their painful pervasive problems are and the unique solutions that you are positioned to solve as a creator who is a subject matter expert. So I can't encourage you enough to collect voice of customer information because And then use it correctly. Like, that's also a big part of it. Like, if you collect all these transcripts and everything and ask people on calls and then do nothing with it, that's, that's actually not going to move the needle for your business. But what we recommend is a set list of questions. Obviously, rabbit trails are OK, you know, especially if you're onto something really interesting. That's great. 3 to 5 calls per month on a regular basis and record these calls. Use like the Fathom note-taker. I mean, there's a million AI note-takers at this point that will record the video and record— it will take notes for you, summarize action items, and provide the transcript, which is a really important piece of the puzzle we're finding in order for you to be able to easily use a service like Gemini or ChatGPT to synthesize large quantities of information, a.k.a., like 5 transcripts a month, to help you dial in your marketing messaging. So that's That's what voice of, or yeah, that's what that feedback piece is in your business.
Yeah. How often do you think business owners should be doing this? Like on a consistent basis?
Yeah. I mean, if you could do one call per week, that would be super. And sometimes, you know, you might want to batch these a little bit. Uh, and so I would reach out to specific customers and different customer segments. So people who, who have purchased specific products, but maybe not another product or purchased your high ticket, but not your low ticket. Customers who have been on your email list and engaging with your newsletters and nurture automations and broadcast emails, but have not purchased anything. So these are all different segments, which you should be able to cherry pick and like parse out based on your email marketing software. They should be able to tell you who these people are and email them, reduce friction, say like, hey, I would be so grateful to have 20 minutes of your time so that I can make sure that I am Understanding my customers to the best of my ability. Like, I really value your feedback. Can could you book? Could you click this link and book 20 minutes of time with me and use Calendly or you know some service like that where people can book on their own at their convenience and do it over and over and over again. We take take notion notes in a Google Doc or in Notion and get the information like extract that customer information from whoever you're on the phone with. And then download the transcript and keep a file of transcripts on your computer so that you can use ChatGPT to help you extract like key nuggets and find trends and help you dial in your ideal customer profile. It can help you develop a product ladder, develop a marketing campaign, the style guide you should use for your business, meaning the words you use in your business. So there's, it's like a total goldmine. It's such an, it's an exponential lever. We talk about that a lot in our business. Like, what can we do that's going to make the highest impact, like the smallest effort for the highest impact. And I definitely firmly believe that these voice of customer interviews are that for every single business, if you are leveraging the transcripts in the way that I'm talking about in order to better inform your business operations and how you present yourself to the world with a great degree of empathy and providing the right solutions to the right people in the right way at the right time.
Yeah. What is the biggest mistake you see people making when they're collecting their customer
Asking bad questions that, like, aren't helpful. We're actually hosting a webinar October 21st. Katherine McGarvey, who I've interviewed for the Level Up Creators podcast, she's a treasure trove of knowledge. She is a professional customer interviewer. So she's a third party that will come in and interview your customers and give you amazing output and feedback and information that will drastically move the needle in your business. And so she's gonna give us a question list on that free webinar on October 21st. So y'all should definitely attend that, and you will walk away with a very specific plan of action, like how to do the outreach, what the questions to ask are, and then what you can do with that information.
Yeah, and I don't have that link in front of me, but if you DM Amanda on her profile, we will get you that link to that webinar because it is going to be full of so much good little nuggets that you're not going to want to miss it. And it's totally free. And if you sign up and you can't make it, of course we're going to be sending out a replay. So no worries there. But yes, definitely, definitely, definitely join that. Okay. Next question. How can small business owners gather valuable feedback from customers with limited time and resources?
Yeah. So I would go with a survey. Every 6 months, perhaps to a different segment of your email list. So you're not, you know, banging on the same doors over and over again, bothering people. And you want to ask, you know, even 5-question surveys can give you really, really helpful pieces of information. So I would even attach a survey even through a Google Form or whatever form service you use, Tally, Typeform, whatever, ActiveCampaign, ConvertKit. These all have like forms that integrate into them. In a product onboarding automation and also probably in your newsletter welcome automation, I would put a survey link in there toward the end of that email series. And then you're— that's a one and done, right? Then you're collecting on autopilot. So if you're most restricted on time, that's a one and done thing and then it's on forever. Second layer to that would be batching customer interviews, even if you do this 2 times per year, and if you don't have time to do a batch of customer interviews 2 times a year, you are doing the wrong activities in your business. Bar none, hands down. I will argue that to my grave, like with any business owner in the world. Like if you can't make time for that, you're doing the wrong activities. So ultimately, it's like, make sure that you're making time for it. But if you can't dedicate a couple afternoons a year, What are you even doing?
Yeah, yeah, that's good. So once you do collect feedback, how do you prioritize the feedback that you do receive?
Yeah, that is a really good question, because some people are going to give you answers that are like, and ideas that are way out in left field. And we used to deal with this a lot when I was like a Chief Revenue Officer at a software company. You get requests all the time, from software users. I'm sure we've all made requests, like feature requests. And there's a specific sort of like lens that you have to look through in order to know the right thing or the wrong thing to do. So No. 1, does the request align with your long-term vision and goals, you know, for that year, for that quarter even? No. 2, are you hearing it over and over again? Like, are you hearing the same request over and over again from your best customers. If your, you know, least great customers are asking for the same feature, I'd probably ignore that because you don't really want to attract more of that type of customer. Listen to your best customers. Give them the most— assign to them the most credibility in the suggestions that they make, especially, again, if they align with your goals, and you are sensing trends you're getting asked over and over again. So that's like very, you know, 10,000-foot level of how to at least narrow the consideration set for new products and features.
Cool. Do you have any parting shot, any extra little nugget you want to impart in us before we leave about customer feedback?
Talking to your customers is one of the most important things that you can do as a business owner, period. No matter how big or small your business may be, that's an activity that should be prioritized, and especially by the founders, the executives, because the further you get from the customer, meaning like executives typically are not having customer service kind of conversations, but they should. Executives should be on a customer service rotation where they're taking like those kinds of calls. But that's more like bigger companies. So no matter how big or small you are, stay close to your customer. Listen attentively and then have like that mental model, that lens through which to look to make the right decisions so that you are continuously able to make the right offer at the right time, in the right way, to the right person. That is how you create rock-solid recurring revenue.
Cool. Thank you guys for joining our livestream today and be sure to follow us for more tips and insight on building a successful recurring revenue business. See you next time.
