The Customer is Not Always Right

03 Sep 2010 – Thomas Singer

To date, successful companies have been those which have been best able to meet and predict customer demands, delivering products that satisfy the desires of their consumers. This benchmark for success is reinforced by the business mantra of “the customer is always right”.

Increasingly, however, the realization is that leadership requires companies to play a more active role in shaping customer behavior. What if the customer is not always right?

A few days ago I had dinner at a fast-food burger chain. Throughout my dinner I couldn’t help but question the nutrition value of my dinner choice. I thought about the value meal I had purchased and the fact that the sides that came with my burger were pre-determined to be a soda and fries. Sure, I could have ordered a la carte and replaced the soda with juice and perhaps the fries with apples – but the pre-set meal was just so easy, so appealing. Somebody had already done the deciding for me. I knew there were healthier options, but why bother when I could just utter the words “a number two, please.” As I ate my meal, I wondered whether I would have opted for the healthier choice if it had been offered as a value meal package. Surely the reason this alternative version of a value meal didn’t exist was because it’s not what consumers want. The customer knows best, and success for the fast-food chain means making sure the customer is satisfied.

This seems like basic business sense. Build, market, and sell what your customers want – or even better, predict what they will want. The unfortunate reality is that the customer is rarely this savvy when it comes to matters of sustainability (environmental or social, including nutrition). A business designed to follow customer desires, rather than shape those desires, runs the risk of addressing only the economic piece of the triple bottom line. Too often consumers make choices based on external inputs (marketing, product positioning, etc.) that reinforce those choices, thus consumer demand can become a mere reflection of what companies are already feeding consumers.

Several companies are beginning to address sustainability issues beyond their four walls, particularly upstream in the supply chain. However, few examples exist of companies that have begun to act upon the realization that their sustainability impact also extends downstream to their customers. The next frontier is likely to be about addressing this downstream impact, and companies that take this leap will find themselves well positioned for sustainability leadership. The first challenge, however, will be coming to terms with the notion that the customer may not always be right.