Cuban: Why You Should Never Listen to Your Customers

The other day I was grazing the web for some interesting insights in the world of business when I came across Mark Cuban’s Blog Maverick blog. I read his latest post, "Why You Should NEVER Listen to Your Customers", because if Mark Cuban is anything besides successful in business, it’s interesting.

When talking about a fast-moving company he is involved with, he explains his thought-process in discounting customer service:

“(The employees) put themselves in a never ending revolving door of trying to respond to customer requests. To make matters worse, resources and brainpower that could be applied to “inventing the future” were instead being used to catch up with features that locked them into the past.”

So, do companies at fast-moving companies have an obligation to stay at arm’s-reach away from customer feedback, or should they just take each customer’s feedback with a grain of salt? Cuban continues,

“Your customers can tell you the things that are broken and how they want to be made happen. Listen to them. Make them happy. But they won’t create the future roadmap for your product or service. That’s your job.”

So, what Cuban is getting at, seemingly, is not to keep your eye of the ball in moving your business forward. Customers or clients can help you patch a few holes, but like anything in any small business, you can’t spend too much time on one thing, or else you will achieve (as we call it here), ‘paralysis by analysis’.

What do you think about the article? To me, at the very least, it's an interesting take on a common issue in small businesses. Let’s hear what you think in the comments.