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Should you actually listen to your customers? - Basic Arts

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Barely a day goes by without somebody sagely remarking to me just how important it is to “listen to your customers”. Generally they do it because they think I’ll agree.  It’s not really advice so much as it is an act of solidarity.  The message is that we’re in the customer-centric club, and that we know how good strategy is really done, and woe betide those businesses foolish enough to ignore them. Of course I always nod and agree, “yes yes, gotta listen to those customers”. But in truth? I’m actually not so sure. You see although the goal here is explicitly to serve customers as best we can, I actually don’t believe that the customers themselves are the best inspiration for how we can do that. In fact, I’d take it one step further: customers are deeply misleading creatures. There are a couple of reasons for this: Let me address each of these in turn. This is a bit over-simplistic, but speaking broadly if you ask a customer what they want, their answer will be for you to become more l

Should you actually listen to your customers? – BasicArts Skip to content Back to Contents Should you actually listen to your customers? Written by Alex M H Smith | Strategy Barely a day goes by without somebody sagely remarking to me just how important it is to “listen to your customers”. Generally they do it because they think I’ll agree. It’s not really advice so much as it is an act of solidarity. The message is that we’re in the customer-centric club, and that we know how good strategy is really done, and woe betide those businesses foolish enough to ignore them. Of course I always

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