We’re back from an energizing three-day run at TMRE 2025, held October 28–30 at The Paris Hotel in Las Vegas. What a powerhouse experience it was! The Canvs team joined the brightest minds in the insights world: research leaders, insights teams, Voice of Customer teams, and emerging AI innovators. Across the sessions, one truth was clear: the future of insights belongs to those who can move from collecting feedback to acting on it with intelligence and speed.
Here are six themes that stood out on the TMRE floor including a few inspired by our session with Panera Bread.
1. Feedback Is No Longer Passive. It’s Strategic
For years, collecting feedback meant sending surveys and filing away scores. That story is changing. Voice of the Customer, and Voice of the Employee, are now strategic assets that directly influence business outcomes. Brands are asking: What is feedback telling us? and What should we do about it?
In our joint session, Panera and Canvs showed what this looks like in practice: moving from “we listen” to “we act on what guests are saying and how they’re saying it.”
Takeaway: Make your feedback program more than a metric. Connect it to decision-making, operations, and measurable business results.
2. AI Isn’t a Buzzword
AI was everywhere at TMRE, but the most exciting conversations weren’t about the technology itself but about how it’s being used right now.
Panera shared how Canvs’ AI-powered feedback analytics platform helps automate analysis and surface high-impact themes and patterns from open-ended guest comments, reviews, and social mentions. Instead of being overwhelmed by thousands of responses, Panera focuses on what truly drives satisfaction and loyalty.
For your team: Use AI not as a gimmick, but as a thought partner helping you reduce noise, reveal patterns, and turn customer feedback into business insight that drives growth.
3. Qual + Quant = The Perfect Combination
The debate between qualitative and quantitative research is fading fast. The new reality is and, not or. Teams are layering open-ended feedback with structured data and operational KPIs to create a complete picture of the customer experience.
Panera’s case brought this to life, combining qualitative feedback analytics with quantitative business data to identify opportunities and track the impact of change.
Action point: Build pipelines that connect feedback insights directly to business outcomes. Decision-making accelerates when data flows freely.
4. Insight-to-Impact Must Happen Faster
Brands can’t afford to wait months for reports when consumer expectations evolve daily.
Panera demonstrated how real-time feedback analytics can drive immediate improvements in operations, marketing, and experience design. By transforming raw input into timely insight, Panera optimized store performance, inspired product innovation, and fine-tuned ad testing, leading to smarter spend and stronger message resonance.
Your move: Map your feedback-to-decision lifecycle. How long does it take for insight to influence action? Cut that timeline in half and watch impact compound.
5. Predictive Intelligence Is the Next Horizon
Beyond reacting to feedback, leading brands are beginning to anticipate it. Feedback analytics is helping teams see sentiment trends, detect anomalies, and forecast potential experience issues before they surface.
Forward thinkers are integrating customer feedback with operational and transactional data, so action happens before impact is lost.
Consider this: What would it look like if your organization could see shifts in sentiment days or weeks before they affect loyalty or sales?
6. Employee and Guest Voice Share the Same DNA
The connection between customer and employee feedback has never been clearer. The same approach that helps brands understand guests, open comments, emotional analysis, actionable themes, can help HR and People Analytics teams strengthen engagement and culture.
Panera’s use case resonated deeply here. The power of listening, at scale, applies just as much to employees as to customers.
Key reminder: Your audiences, both internal and external, want to be heard. The mechanism is the same. The impact multiplies when both voices inform how you grow.
Bringing It Back to Canvs and You
Our session with Panera showcased these themes in action: a national brand with hundreds of touchpoints using feedback analytics to bridge experience and execution. Here’s what that means for teams across your organization:
For Executives: Customer feedback intelligence isn’t a reporting line—it’s a growth engine. When guest and employee voices become strategic insight, they shape smarter decisions, stronger operations, and lasting differentiation.
For Research & Insights Teams: The work is evolving. It’s no longer about asking “What did they say?” but about proving what we learned, what we did, and what changed. AI-powered feedback analytics helps you uncover patterns faster, connect insights to outcomes, and craft stories that inspire action.
For HR & People Analytics: Employee voice deserves the same focus as customer voice. By listening deeply, analyzing open feedback, and linking insights to engagement, retention, and culture, you build teams that perform better because they feel heard and valued.
Final Word
TMRE 2025 reinforced a simple truth: feedback, whether from customers or employees, is the most powerful driver of transformation when combined with human curiosity and AI intelligence. The brands leading this next era aren’t just listening. They balance of human + AI to learn faster, innovate smarter, and grow stronger.
Panera’s story proved it. When insights from feedback analytics is scaled across the business, it sharpens decisions, optimizes operations, and creates more meaningful human experiences.
If you’re ready to explore how customer feedback can become part of your growth engine, learn how Canvs helps the world’s most customer-obsessed brands turn everyday VoC into strategic advantage.
See how it works at canvs.ai/demo
