How to listen to Customers: The overlooked skill every Brand Manager should master

Why Listening is Critical for Brand Optimisation

When you take time to listen to your audience, you gain clarity. You’re no longer guessing or relying on assumptions. Instead, you’re able to:

• Refine your messaging based on real language customers use
• Prioritise the right problems to solve with your products or services
• Strengthen trust by showing that you care what people think and feel
• Improve the customer journey with more meaningful touchpoints
  

In short, listening helps you make better decisions and create more authentic connections. It’s a core ingredient of brand optimisation because it ensures your efforts are aligned with real needs, not internal opinions.

7 Effective Ways to Listen to Customers

Listening isn’t one-size-fits-all. Different channels and tools can help you hear your customers from different angles. Here are some of the most valuable:

1. Social listening

Monitor what people are saying about your brand, industry or competitors across social media platforms. Tools like Brandwatch, Sprout Social or even LinkedIn/Facebook comments can give you raw, unfiltered feedback.

Why it matters: It reveals emerging trends and attitudes you might not hear in formal settings.

2. Customer surveys and feedback forms

Use structured surveys to capture both quantitative ratings and open-ended responses. Don’t just ask what they like, ask what could be better.

Why it matters: It gives you a broad view across your audience and helps measure satisfaction over time. Including a Net Promoter Score (NPS) question can also help benchmark customer loyalty and track improvements or declines in satisfaction over time.

3. In-depth interviews and focus groups

Nothing beats a real conversation. Sitting down with customers (in person or online) allows you to explore emotions, expectations and deeper motivations.

Why it matters: It uncovers the “why” behind the data, providing context that’s often missing in numbers.

4. Customer service insights

Frontline teams are often the first to hear what’s not working. Set up regular feedback loops with them to spot patterns in questions, complaints or compliments.

Why it matters: These day-to-day touchpoints often highlight friction you can fix before it grows.

5. Review platforms and forums

From Google reviews to industry-specific platforms like ProductReview.com.au, customers leave a trail of thoughts in public places. Read them.

Why it matters: These candid opinions often reflect what people are really saying when you’re not in the room.

6. Website behaviour and analytics

Listening doesn’t have to be verbal. How people move through your website, what they click or ignore, can tell you just as much.

Why it matters: It shows you what’s working and where attention is dropping off, helping optimise digital touchpoints.

7. Listening with AI Tools 

Forward-thinking Brand Managers are turning to AI tools such as ChatGPT to gather and interpret customer insights at scale. These tools help identify patterns in feedback, detect sentiment shifts and even simulate customer conversations.

Why it matters: By using AI to listen more deeply and frequently, Brand Managers can respond faster and more personally, helping customers feel seen, heard and genuinely understood.

Brands that listen to create belonging

Nike – Listening to Underserved Voices in Sport

How they listen:
Nike invests in grassroots programs, partners with community athletes, and uses social listening to understand barriers in sport—especially among marginalised groups like women, people of colour, and the LGBTQIA+ community.

How it creates belonging:
By acting on these insights, Nike launches inclusive campaigns (You Can’t Stop Us), gender-neutral apparel, and community-focused initiatives that make underrepresented groups feel they belong in sport.

Airbnb – Listening to Hosts and Travellers to Shape Inclusive Travel

How they listen:
Airbnb regularly surveys users, hosts, and guests globally. They also use their Community Center to gather ongoing feedback.

How it creates belonging:
Their tagline “Belong Anywhere” is rooted in listening. They’ve used feedback to create inclusive policies (e.g. anti-discrimination policy, accessibility features), ensuring all users feel safe and welcome.

LEGO – Listening to Kids and Parents to Shape Play

How they listen:
LEGO co-creates with children and families through surveys, playtesting, and their LEGO Ideas platform, where fans submit and vote on new product ideas.

How it creates belonging:
This two-way engagement makes fans feel heard and valued. LEGO also promotes diversity in characters and storytelling, ensuring more children see themselves represented.

Ben & Jerry’s – Listening to Social Movements and Activists

How they listen:
Ben & Jerry’s actively listens to activists and grassroots organisations to inform their advocacy on racial justice, climate change, and LGBTQIA+ rights.

How it creates belonging:
By turning feedback into action—through flavours, campaigns, and funding—they build community alignment and show they stand with their audience’s values.

What happens when brands don’t listen?

Listening is powerful, but ignoring your audience? That can be costly.

Take Pepsi’s 2017 ad with Kendall Jenner. The campaign tried to align the brand with social justice movements, but it backfired instantly. Why? Because it came off as tone deaf and trivialised serious issues. Rather than connecting with their audience, Pepsi alienated them. All because they didn’t pause to understand how people might feel about it.

The lesson: When brands don’t listen, they risk losing relevance, credibility and trust.

Listening creates connection. Connection builds belonging.

At Belong Creative, we believe listening is the first step to creating belonging. It helps your audience feel seen, understood and valued. And when people feel that, they’re far more likely to choose your brand.

Great listening is more than a research tactic. It’s a mindset. One that keeps your brand curious, responsive and human.