We recently spoke with Vahritch Kharmendjian, Staff Product Manager at Qonto, about how his team utilizes Chattermill's Observations to pinpoint specific customer issues and respond to customer needs more efficiently.
With nearly a decade of experience in Product & Tech, Vahritch spent 6+ years in FinTech. As Staff Product Manager at Qonto, he led high-impact initiatives including the company's first in-house financing solution, a complete redesign of the transfer experience with instant SEPA, and the initial rollout of Qonto's remuneration offering.
In this conversation, Vahritch reveals:
- How Observations helped uncover specific gaps just days after a major product launch, leading to concrete solutions.
- His systematic approach to feedback analysis: reviewing the top comments in detail, using Highlights to understand customer verbatims, and leveraging Observations to quickly spot key issues.
- How product designers, product marketing, and their entire team collaborate in Chattermill to decide between immediate quick wins and longer roadmap initiatives.
- How product managers can become more effective by using the right solution for customer feedback analysis.
Product feedback analysis at Qonto
Q: Can you tell us about your role at Qonto?
Vahritch: I'm Vahritch, a Staff Product Manager at Qonto. As a product manager, my primary responsibility is to identify customer pain points and transform them into opportunities - both from a business perspective and in terms of addressing real customer problems.
Q: How has Chattermill been helping you in your role?
Vahritch: Chattermill has been one of our key tools for getting real-time, qualified feedback. It helps us identify what to fix next based on the volume and nature of qualitative insights we receive. The platform handles everything from high-level strategic information to specific feature requests, helping me and other teams prioritize effectively and track the impact on metrics such as NPS and customer sentiment.
Working with Observations and Highlights
Q: Chattermill recently released Observations to help our customers get more granular, precise insights. How has your experience been with these so far?
Vahritch: Recently, I transitioned to a new product where we're investing in innovative solutions. We launched a new feature (Account Remuneration) just a few days ago, and I leveraged Chattermill's Observations and Highlights to understand what customers were expecting regarding remuneration, savings, and investment features.
The insights were invaluable for mapping user preferences. Observations helped drive our initial investigation, providing granular feedback that led to detailed customer conversations and stronger relationships, which in turn allowed us to explore concrete solutions to their pain points.
What I appreciate about Observations is the ability to get really granular - I can define specific Themes I'm working on, then quickly see the volume of feedback related to them. When I want to explore what's happening with our latest features or opportunities we've shipped, Observations allow us to be much more reactive.
Q: Themes are designed to monitor strategic trends, while Observations add another layer of intelligence with much more precise insights. How do you use Themes versus Observations in your workflow?
Vahritch: I use Themes when I want to explore the overall product landscape, but when I need that granular, detailed view of feedback - especially for recent releases - that's where Observations really shine.
Q: We also released Highlights alongside Observations, which provide quick and trustworthy summaries of customer feedback. How do you use these Highlights when analyzing feedback?
Vahritch: My approach is straightforward: I want to understand pain points, so I look at the top feedback items and dive into the Highlights to understand different use cases and actual customer verbatims.
I typically review the top five comments in detail, going through each one individually. This helps me build a comprehensive understanding and often leads to direct customer conversations. The Highlights give me an immediate sense of customer reality and help me decide whether to investigate further.
Q: What's the biggest benefit you've found from using Observations and Highlights?
Vahritch: The most useful aspect is being able to quickly surface feedback at a granular level. The side panel with Highlights helps me understand context better. I particularly value the visual indicators like thumbs up and thumbs down next to Observations - they help me quickly identify what's most important. The filtering options are also great - I can view feedback from the past days, weeks, or months depending on my research needs.
Impact across teams: collaboration and efficiency
Q: How does your team collaborate using these tools?
Vahritch: Product designers and product marketing managers also have access to Observations and Highlights, and we collaborate to build dashboards together. The entire team can then access customer insights, which sparks discussions about what to build next. If we spot a quick win, we try to fit it in immediately. For bigger initiatives, we incorporate them into our roadmap planning. Sharing these insights helps the team understand Chattermill's value and see the real impact.
Q: How does this help you be more effective as a PM?
Vahritch: As a PM, you're constantly pulled in many different directions. The challenge is being extremely effective with your time while gathering the insights you need. Having this granular view from Observations helps me navigate complexity - I can quickly see feedback volume, understand whether it's positive or indicates improvement areas, and then make informed decisions. Whether that means reaching out to a customer directly or shipping a quick fix immediately, it helps me navigate my priorities effectively and react faster to what customers are telling us about our latest releases.
Get started with Observations, Highlights, and Ask Lyra
Ready to surface granular customer insights like Vahritch and the Qonto team? See how Observations can help you spot critical issues, how Highlights turn thousands of comments into actionable summaries, and how our AI copilot Ask Lyra brings it all together - so you can move from insight to action in minutes, not days.
Watch our product walkthrough to see these features in action, delivered by the team who built them. You'll also get an exclusive preview of how Observations, Highlights, and Ask Lyra work together to revolutionize how companies understand their customers.
Prefer a conversation? Book a personalized demo and we'll show you exactly how these features can work for your specific use case.
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