Contrary to the myth, the customer is not always right.
However, the customer should always be heard.
You learn a lot from customers, particularly the ones who leave, are dissatisfied and complain, or who exist at the fringes of your market, or even in a market you had not considered.
As a marketer I have always advocated the notion that the good stuff happens on the fringes. As the saying goes, ‘every good idea starts as a heresy’, so hearing the heresy is a core part of being able to respond to new stuff.
There are a lot of tools the hear what is being said on the fringes, tools to track every interaction with your brands, good and bad, and everyone should be heard.
Years ago, I tried to persuade the people in the pork industry’s peak body that they should be spending some time and marketing resources engaging with those growing organic, and heritage breeds of pigs, and got laughed out of the place. They noted that 99.9% of the pork grown was the result of intensive farming, where cost was the absolute driver.
The real competition to the domestic industry was located in those well-known cheap labour countries of Denmark and Canada, and these fringe Australian organic and heritage growers were irrelevant. Besides, the existing major Australian producers were contributing most of the industry marketing funding via matched levy.
Those few loonies with different ideas out on the fringes with tiny volumes only contributed a dribble to the kitty funding advertising and a nice lifestyle for employees in Canberra. This is close to the sources of part of their funding, and political power, but totally removed from growers and the markets they served, but very comfortable.
As a result, an opportunity for growth and profitability has been missed.
Or has it?
