232 - Reinventing Voice of the Customer with AI - Eli Portnoy's Leadership Playbook

Eli Portnoy, CEO and co-founder of BackEngine, joins Craig Andrews to expose the flaws in traditional customer feedback systems—and why leadership demands better data. A seasoned entrepreneur and Harvard Business School Executive Fellow, Eli dives into how B2B companies often make strategic decisions using flawed insights from biased surveys.

Eli unpacks how leadership in the AI era means throwing out broken instruments like opinion surveys and adopting tools that capture real, unfiltered customer conversations. He explains how BackEngine uses large language models to surface actionable feedback from client interactions—email threads, Zoom calls, and more—giving leaders a fuller, more accurate picture.

His leadership philosophy? You can’t solve the right problems if you’re asking the wrong questions. Eli makes a compelling case for empowering decision-makers with authentic customer sentiment—without the distortion of surveys or false memories.

Want to learn more about Eli Portnoy's work? Check out their website at https://backengine.ai.

Connect with Eli Portnoy on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/eliportnoy/.

Think you'd be a great guest on the show? Apply at https://podcast.allies4me.com/podcast-guest/.

Want to learn more about Craig Andrew's work at allies4me? Check out his website at https://allies4me.com/.