How Voice of the Customer drives TMS innovation

The best technology doesn’t come from a development team working in isolation. It comes from listening and then acting on what you hear. 

At Infios, customer feedback isn’t an afterthought. It's hardwired into how we build. Voice of the Customer (VOC) drives new capabilities, workflows and product enhancements. That's why our Transportation Management System (TMS) keeps improving—because our customers tell us where it needs to go. 

This article explains what Voice of the Customer means in practice, why it matters for supply chain technology and how Infios uses it to continuously improve your transportation operations. 

What is the Voice of the Customer (VOC)? 

In transportation management, the gap between what technology can do and what operations need is where inefficiency grows. 

Voice of the Customer is a continuous process of capturing and applying customer feedback to shape product development and business outcomes. It creates an ongoing dialogue between users and technology providers—one that reflects how supply chains operate, not how they are assumed to operate.  

This is not about collecting feedback for validation. It’s about using that insight to guide decisions. When done well, VOC turns users into co-developers: buyers and operators become the focus of feature and capability planning, which produces the technology that solves real business problems rather than ones that exist on paper. 

What does Voice of the Customer actually do? 

The Voice of the Customer: 

• Aligns product development with real operational needs 
• Prioritizes improvements based on measurable business impact 
• Enables continuous adaptation as supply chain conditions change 
• Reduces friction across workflows and decision-making 
• Drives return on investment (ROI) beyond initial implementation 

VOC only delivers value when a company genuinely understands its customers, treats their feedback as strategic input and incorporates it consistently into product decisions. Otherwise it’s just noise, collected and ignored. 

Why is the Voice of the Customer important? 

Supply chains don’t stand still. Disruption, volatility and shifting business priorities mean that transportation technology must evolve continuously—not on a two-year release cycle, but in response to what’s happening in your operations right now. 

Listening to the Voice of the Customer is not optional. It's how companies stay relevant. And in environments defined by uncertainty and rapid change, it’s how technology providers like Infios maintain focus on what actually matters to the people using the platform. 

VOC also creates accountability. When customers share feedback in public forums like Gartner Peer Insights, it reinforces that relationship and signals to the market that Infios doesn’t just claim to be customer-driven, it proves it through the capabilities it ships. 

The result is a technology investment that compounds in value over time. Updates that streamline workflows, expand information visibility or improve user experience ensure that Infios TM continues delivering new value—not just at go-live, but throughout the lifecycle of the platform.  

Traditional vs. VOC-driven development 

Traditional product development relies on internal assumptions and periodic updates. Enhancements are often based on what teams believe users need. 

VOC-driven development takes a different approach. It continuously evolves based on real user input, shared operational challenges and validated demand across the customer base. 

The difference is not incremental, it’s structural. One reacts slowly, the other adapts in real time. 

At Infios, customer insight is not filtered or delayed. It is surfaced, shared and used to hold the organization accountable through direct engagement channels and external validation platforms like Gartner Peer Insights. The result is a platform that continues to deliver value long after implementation. 

How does Voice of the Customer drive innovation for Infios? 

Customer input is not one signal in the Infios roadmap, it’s a primary driver. 

Over the past 25 years, Infios TM has been built in collaboration with the customers who use it. That isn’t a positioning statement; it’s the actual mechanism behind our product roadmap. We operate a dedicated customer portal where buyers and users submit development ideas, track the progress of those submissions and vote on suggestions from across our customer base. 

That voting data directly influences development priorities. Ideas don’t sit in a backlog, they move through a transparent pipeline from ideation to development to public launch, with progress visible to customers throughout. 

Infios has received and incorporated hundreds of customer-submitted ideas into our strategic roadmap. Each one sparks creative and meaningful dialogue across our diverse customer base—connecting shippers, operators and supply chain leaders who face similar challenges and benefit from shared innovation. 

This is purposeful innovation: capability building grounded in the real-world needs of the people running transportation operations every day, not feature development for its own sake. 

How does Infios TM gather and apply customer input? 

Capturing feedback is only valuable if it leads to action. Infios has built multiple pathways to ensure customer insight translates into measurable improvements.  

Direct customer input 

Infios TM users contribute ideas in a dedicated portal where they can submit enhancement requests, view and vote on peer suggestions and track development progress from concept through release. This transparency ensures product direction reflects real demand instead of internal assumptions. 

Customer Success as a strategic channel 

Our Customer Success organization here at Infios plays a critical role in bridging operations and product development. By working closely with clients, this team understands how transportation processes function day to day, identifies friction points and translates operational challenges into scalable improvements. It's a feedback loop grounded in execution, not theory.  

Roadmap visibility and execution planning 

Customers don’t just contribute ideas, they gain visibility into what’s coming next. With foresight into the product roadmap, operations teams can plan for upcoming capabilities and accelerate adoption after release. 

Recent Infios TM innovations based on customer input 

Customer-driven development isn’t abstract. Here's where it has delivered tangible improvements in recent Infios TM releases: 

• Unifying information visibility – New data views reduce process time by surfacing information across workflows in one place 
• Configurable daily views – Users control how they prioritize their workload, creating flexibility that reflects individual roles 
• Improving governance and role-relevant dashboards – Accelerates execution for different team functions with context-appropriate insight 
• Increased transportation management capabilities – Reduced vehicle miles and driver time through smarter planning and execution 

Every one of these updates traces back to a customer conversation. That's the difference between a roadmap built on assumptions and one built on evidence. 

What to look for when evaluating vendors on VOC and innovation 

When evaluating a TMS provider, features matter, but innovation philosophy matters more. A platform that meets your needs today but doesn’t evolve will become a liability as your business grows. 

The right questions to ask 

1. How does customer feedback fit into development priorities? 
   Look for dedicated customer engagement channels, transparent roadmaps and documented examples of customer-driven capability development. If a vendor can’t point to specific features built in direct response to customer input, that’s a signal. 
2. What is the release cadence for technology updates? 
   Vendors committed to continuous innovation implement regular releases informed by customer input, not just internal priorities. Annual updates driven by the vendor’s own roadmap rarely reflect what operators actually need. 
3. How has customer feedback shaped new capabilities?  
   Request specific examples. What was the customer need? What feature was built? What business outcome did it enable? The ability to answer that question concretely distinguishes vendors who practice VOC from those who only claim to. 
4. Will your investment remain relevant as your business evolves? 
   The answer should reflect a track record of platform evolution, not just a promise of future development. Look for ongoing collaboration, strategic roadmap alignment and a history of meeting customers where they are. If those signals are missing, innovation is likely disconnected from real-world operations.