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Don’t Forget! You Saw it in the
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September 2020 #12254 Page #92
Stop Asking Your Customers What They Want By Omer Abdullah
I
n business today, we are told to believe that the customer is always right.
So surely it makes sense to ask their opinion, listen to them, and actively respond to their advice with new products, adjustments, and enhancements. This makes sense, broadly, for incremental changes. Changes that develop a new product that is one or two steps forward from what is available today. Or when an existing product is tweaked or enhanced to eliminate a flaw or produce a refined benefit. But if you’re looking to disrupt the market, to change the game, this premise doesn’t hold. Customers know what they know. They know what is currently on offer and they know how that product solves a specific problem (or doesn’t). They know the other competing products and what they do or don’t do. But they don’t think in terms of disruptions, new models, new delivery capabilities, etc. They don’t know what kind of product could make their life better, simpler, or more efficient. Why would they? That’s not their job. It’s yours. Steve Jobs was famous for saying, among other things, that it’s not the customer’s job to know what they want. He was (and still is) right. The arts offers a great analogy. Bowie didn’t survey his fans before he changed personas. He had a sense of different styles that intrigued and resonated with him, that were prevailing in the world around him and concocted his characters, his styles, and his music accordingly, leading the way for his “consumers.” Continued next page
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