We help you get
closer to your customers.

Hating customers for fun and profit

This month’s Harvard Business Review pulls no punches as it profiles Companies and the Customers Who Hate Them. The article takes a refreshingly candid look at short-sighted companies whose outmoded customer strategies destroy loyalty and create market opportunities for more relationship-centric competitors to emerge.

The article highlights four key questions for the anti-Nordstrom set to ask themselves (along with the consequences of not caring about the answers):

1. Are your most profitable customers those who have the most reason to be dissatisfied with you?
2. Do you have rules you want customers to break because doing so generates profits?
3. Do you make it difficult for customers to understand or abide by your rules, and do you actually help customers break them?
4. Do you depend on contracts to prevent customers from defecting?

If you answered ‘yes’ to one or more of these questions, that sucking taking place isn’t just the sound of your customers defecting, it’s your company.