I've written several posts lately about my company's recent successful customer advisory group. We learned some valuable lessons (some of them painful) and, as a result, our product roadmap looks much different today than it did the week before the customer meeting. In short, we're glad we asked. Not to mention the advice was free.
Here's another "listen to your customers" success story. This one is courtesy of Chiefmarketer.com. Profiled in this article is the online retailer, Bluefly. Bluefly went to their customer to find out what motivates them to buy from Bluefly. In the article, Bluefly's CEO is quoted as saying,
“It's clear that our customers want to talk with us,” Payner says, “and they felt they had a lot to say to us."
Indeed. Bluefly was overwhelmed with customer responses. The result was a hugely successful marketing campaign, based on what their customers told them they wanted to hear. Bluefly saw a 100% spike in traffic.
Our customers have a lot of valuable things to say. They just need the opportunity to do so.
That's so refreshing. My last employer liked to pretend it listened to its customers... but rarely ever did. It was sad.
Posted by: olivier blanchard | November 04, 2005 at 12:06 AM