Seth Godin: Pleasing

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Salaam and Greetings,

Some years ago, I was working in Singapore as Customer Service / Service Excellence Trainer and Consultant. It was an eye opener for me.

The approach was, “the customer is never always right”. Yes, it is important for us to listen to our customers (hence, the reason God, in His Omniscient, gave us two ears and one mouth). Yet, there are many instances, customers demands are very unreasonable. That is when the service provider can say, No. It took me awhile to understand that concept.

Reading this article reminded me of seeing a lot of businesses, and some of them belonging to friends, trying to please everybody. I believe, that in their fear of losing customers, they go out of their way to please as many as possible. At first glance, it looks great. But, by doing that, we are merely deluding ourselves.

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Pleasing

A motto for those doing work that matters:
"We can't please everyone, in fact, we're not even going to try."

Or perhaps:
"Pleasing everyone with our work is impossible. It wastes the time of our best customers and annoys our staff. Forgive us for focusing on those we're trying to delight."

The math here is simple. As soon as you work hard to please everyone, you have no choice but to sand off the edges, pleasing some people less in order to please others a bit more. And it drives you crazy at the same time.


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