From interview to action: How Affinity uses implementation and CX feedback to improve the customer lifecycle

Summary

Market intelligence leader Carolyn Klinger shares what makes her “atypical” in how she uses customer feedback, and how Affinity has expanded the scope of their win-loss program to include customer experience and post-implementation feedback so they can better understand—and improve—the full customer lifecycle.

Expanding their win-loss program

Most companies rely on win-loss interviews to understand why they won or lost a deal—but usually for little else. 

Carolyn Klinger is different. For her, it’s just as important to capture feedback at key touchpoints throughout the entire customer journey.

In addition to traditional win-loss interviews, Carolyn—who’s the Director of Market Intelligence and Research at Affinity—has expanded her program to include in-depth post-implementation and customer experience interviews. That way she can proactively identify pain points and find ways to build loyalty and increase customer satisfaction and retention.

“We're reaching out post-implementation to ask our customers about their experience,” she said. “In that way, we're really capturing the entire customer lifecycle—not only when a customer first joins Affinity, but also in their onboarding and then further into the relationship.”

This holistic approach delivers tangible benefits:

• Identifying friction points early—before they affect renewals
• Providing input to strengthen onboarding and customer success programs
• Surfacing competitive and market insights beyond the initial deal cycle
• Building a feedback loop that improves customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention

“Looking at competitors is an important step, but it’s only one step,” Carolyn said. “Really trying to understand the full spectrum of what’s happening in the market, with our buyers and customers, is critically important.”

Creating a smoother onboarding experience

Implementation is the bridge between the promises made by your sales team and the point where your customers start to experience tangible value. A smooth and well-executed implementation builds trust, ensures early adoption, and sets the tone for the long-term relationship. 

A poor implementation can create frustration, delay results, and put the entire partnership at risk. 

Affinity’s onboarding team leans on honest feedback to make sure their customers are set up for success.

“Our onboarding team makes sure our new customers are up to speed in terms of the workflows and how they can use Affinity effectively,” Carolyn said. “We know from research that implementation is a critical stage in the customer journey, so that's really important for us to get that feedback.”

Making sure they’re not caught off guard during the renewal process

Affinity also gathers structured customer experience feedback six months ahead of renewals. They’ll typically ask their customers about:

• How satisfied they are with Affinity’s products
• Their experience with account support
• Any issues they might be struggling with

“We don’t want to be chasing down issues weeks before a renewal,” Carolyn said. “By checking in early using customer experience interviews, we’re able to address any problems proactively and protect that renewal.”

This approach helps Affinity’s CS team avoid surprises, and it creates a consistent feedback loop that spans from onboarding through renewal. It also provides a richer bank of data that Carolyn’s team can use to better understand their customers.

“It's a continuous loop in terms of always understanding that feedback at different stages in the customer journey,” she said. “And then we can then add in filters—we can look at the information by segment, by the tenure of the customer with Affinity, by geographic region, by vertical—and really focus on the customer.”

Using customer feedback to drive real change

Honest, in-depth customer feedback can be transformational—as long as there’s a process in place to actually use it in meaningful ways. Which leads to a critical question: How are Carolyn and her team using that data to drive actual change at Affinity?

“Change management is so important, and it's so hard,” Carolyn said. “It's hard for us. I think it's hard for many, many people.”

For Carolyn, collecting feedback is only half the equation. Meaningful change requires structured sharing, and her team distributes insights in a number of different ways:

• A Slack channel that automatically publishes new win-loss and CX interviews, as well as integrations with other everyday tools (like Salesforce and Crayon)
• Regular enablement sessions for Affinity’s sales and CS teams
• Biannual executive readouts—cascaded into tailored, cross-functional presentations
• Competitive intelligence office hours to exchange insights and field intel
• Tailored battlecards enriched with up-to-date customer feedback and competitor details

By sharing insights regularly and broadly, Carolyn and her team speak directly to the needs of her internal customers—Affinity’s sales reps, customer success managers, and others—to make sure they’re giving them what they need.

“We have lots of different ways to share those details,” Carolyn said. “We don't put barriers in place. We make sure it’s as easy as possible for everyone to access that information.”

Carolyn also takes time every quarter to interview a handful of AEs and CSMs and get their feedback. Maintaining an open line of communication with other internal teams—and being receptive to their feedback—has been hugely beneficial as she continues to evolve her insights program. 

“It's just a really quick call,” she said. “I'll say: 'I know you're busy. I know you want to be out there selling or servicing your customers. Tell me what's working well? What's working for you? What's not working for you? What should I be doing more of? What should I be doing less of?' I've gotten some really terrific feedback from those sessions that I've then taken back and incorporated.”

From these interviews, Carolyn found that two of Affinity’s top sales reps were having trouble accessing the competitive information, so she made a few simple but impactful changes—taking information from a few different places and organizing it into a single source that was easy for the team to access.

“Now it's a one-stop shop for people to go and find the information,” she said. “In the same way we’re asking AEs and CSMs to be vulnerable and ask customers for feedback, we need to walk the walk as CI professionals and ask our internal customers for feedback too.”

Creating a customer-centric culture that encourages improvement

Another impactful outcome of Affinity’s customer feedback program is cultural. Carolyn has seen firsthand that collecting honest feedback can feel daunting for sales reps.

“Sometimes they actively avoid getting feedback because it feels like everything they do—the good, the bad, and everything in between—will be under a microscope,” she said. “That can be uncomfortable, especially when the feedback is negative. But we make it clear: This isn’t about punishment. It’s about learning collectively as an organization.”

By normalizing this type of feedback and sharing it constructively, Carolyn has helped Affinity create a culture that embraces improvement. The goal is simple: They want to understand what’s working for their customers and what’s not. 

“Our people are stellar,” she said. “But even top performers benefit from understanding things outside of their control—like product feedback. Those kinds of insights make everyone better.”

Get to know: Affinity

Founded in 2014 and headquartered in San Francisco, Affinity provides a relationship intelligence platform used by more than 3,000 investment and dealmaking teams worldwide—including leading venture capital firms, private equity funds, M&A advisors, family offices, and corporate development teams. Their platform helps users manage deal flow, uncover warm introductions, and surface relationship insights across 1.5 billion people and organizations—streamlining workflows for firms across more than 80 countries.