Your customer doesn’t care about you

Sorry to be the one to break it to you, but your customer couldn't give a toss about:

  1. Your qualifications
  2. Your code
  3. Your back-office systems
  4. Your team
  5. Your customer support
  6. Your business plan
  7. Your awards

Of course, I'm generalising here for effect. What I should say is that ‘these things are not the most important thing to the customer'.

The most important thing to a customer is this: “Can you solve my problem, within the time I've allowed, for the budget I've allocated, and without unnecessary fuss?”

Example: I need a new training lead for my puppy.

I could stove 7 miles to the local pet shop, where I'd spend some time browsing the leads, asking the pet shop owner for her advice and can walk away with it this afternoon.

Or, I can go on the Amazon app on my iPhone, choose one based on reviews in 6 minutes, and have it delivered to my house by courier the very next day (or even that evening in some cases).

The pet shop could run hundreds of outlets, could have won awards for customer service, be in the news every week and even be number 1 on Google for ‘puppy training lead' – it doesn't matter. I'm still going to buy from Amazon because they solve my problem the fastest.