Where Is the Customer?

By Sanya Weathers

I have seen a lot of business plans in the last few years. One thing I’ve noticed is how rarely the planning documents mention customers. Oh, sure, they’re mentioned obliquely. Customer service departments. Contact information for customers to use. We need to plan for X customers and be prepared to scale by Z %.

Okay, I suspect some companies skip that last part.

(Please don’t skip that part. A company like MMS can help you rapidly scale up your number of moderators, customer service representatives, and so forth, but there’s not a lot we can do about your server load.)

Anyway. My point for this lovely Friday is that we all tend to get into this mode where we think of customers as somehow external. Outside of the project we’re building. In fact, outsiders. People who cannot possibly understand what we’re trying to do.

A customer is in actuality the ultimate insider. They are such a part of our business that without them, we have no business. If you don’t meet with the kind of success you expected, go back over your business plan item by item and explicitly ask yourself “How does this affect my customer? How does this benefit my customer?” If you can’t answer those questions quickly and simply, rephrase and redesign your plan until you can.