Love The Customers You Have

24 Aug Love The Customers You Have

You’re a better designer if you love the people you’re designing for.
Fred Dust, IDEO Partner, quoted in Bernadette Jiwa’s Meaningful

I’m surprised how many companies don’t love their customers.

They talk about being customer-centric or even customer-obsessed, but they don’t love the customer they have. Instead, they fall in love with the customer they want.

Their customers aren’t cool enough. They aren’t young enough. They’re too weird.

I’ve heard these comments in the back of interview rooms. I’ve seen the look of disappointment in people’s faces when we’ve delivered presentations, looks that clearly said: “That shouldn’t be my customer; my customer should be….”

These companies are all driven by a faulty line of thinking: focusing on what the people are like instead of what the people need—what tensions in their lives need to be solved.

Great brands solve needs; that’s how they attract customers.

A brand that doesn’t solve a need—a tension in customers’ lives—is a weak brand.

Instead of trying to understand their customers and figure out their tensions, these companies focus on trying to attract the types of customers they want. They attempt to create surface-level appeal instead of the type of appeal that drives customer decision-making: appealing to higher human needs.

I think this is one of the reasons you see companies constantly changing their advertising or trying to reinvent themselves: desperate attempts to attract the types of people they want to love them.

No one falls in love with a desperate person. No customer will love a desperate company.

Love the customer you have, not the one you want. Make it about them. Solve their tensions. That’s the only way they’ll love you back.