Imagine compiling a list of marketing clichés. It wouldn’t be complete without the immortal „the customer is always right,” coined in 1909 by Harry Selfridge, the founder of Selfridge’s department store in London. And here we are, 100 years later, repeating the same mantra.
Bret Larson, CEO eVisit.com, calls this philosophy „one of the most dangerous business models.” (source) Steve Jobs, on the other hand, was famous for his skepticism towards consumers’ ability to understand their needs: „You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new”. (source)
Both point out the same fact: that attempting to embrace and please all your customers doesn’t always pay. Below we describe 3 situations that should raise a flag.
Inbound Marketing doesn’t work in your business? Download free ebook and learn why
1. Customers insult your reps
What happens: Ironically, Apple delivers a stunning example of “consumers are always right” mentality. Once a customer came into the store, demanding her broken iPhone to be fixed immediately. Although the device was out of warranty, her screams and insults finally forced reps to give her a new iPhone on the spot.
Why customer is wrong: Nobody has right to offend your staff. It lowers team’s morale and attracts the audience you don’t want: demanding individuals who will eat up your time and energy without giving much in return. You won’t miss them.
Another problem is that such model favors aggressive and impolite people over civilized ones. Do you really want to do it?
How to react: Don’t let audience cross the line and don’t expect your employees to take the beating and turn the other cheek. Your top priority should be to serve the good, promising customers on the highest possible level.
2. Actual customer behavior differs from survey declarations
What happens: When Jobs criticizes the results of surveys and focus groups, he means that people are no good at assessing and predicting their own behavior. Simply put, we tend to overestimate our engagement, altruism or hard-working. As a result, surveys show participants’ self-images, not their readiness to buy a product or opinions on it.
Why customer is wrong: It’s humane to see ourselves as better than we actually are. It occurs unintentionally, with no evil intent. In the survey, when you pay with nothing more than a couple of minutes and a few mouse clicks, it’s easy to declare anything.
Not to mention that your group might not be representative if respondents were tempted with an incentive or possible reward.
How to react: When you search for product development inspirations, don’t limit yourself to surveys but use behavioral and transactional data and analytics, or resort to A/B testing.
Marketing Automation platform, which collects all customer data in one place so that you can see both: big, global trends regarding your whole base and individual user’s behavior.
It doesn’t mean you should abandon surveys. Just know their pros and cons.
3. Customers aren’t experts
What happens: Often your customers won’t agree for your offer and keep on thinking up new options or stick to their own disputable concepts (of which you’re sure they’ll backfire).
Why customer is wrong: After years in your business you probably just know what works best. And some people simply are suspicious and want to manifest their opinions and stand.
How to react: Firstly, respect customers’ feelings and don’t belittle their concerns. Even if they are wrong, there’s no need to ignore them. Rather try to understand what disturbs them to prepare a better argumentation.
A good idea is also to educate your customer – produce content that helps understand your niche and make a purchase decision. Also, introduce Lead Nurturing campaigns.
Learn more about Lead Nurturing
It works both in B2B, B2C, and ecommerce.
The „customer is always right” cliché is founded on the wrong assumption that the more customers, the merrier, and that there are no bad consumers. But they exist. They’ll eat up your time and energy, spoil the atmosphere in the team and make you neglect customers about whom you should care.
Being customer-centric doesn’t mean worshipping every single person that appears in your store. Manage your resources to address the most promising customers first, and don’t try to make everyone love you – it leads to neurosis and lowering the service quality.
Share your experience now: do bad customers happen to you? Do you remember the most unpleasant situation?
Follow
