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Customers are smarter than you

All of them.

Together.

Seth Godin seems to suggest that customers think they are smarter than they are, but that they aren’t:

Any time you ask customers to self-segregate, they will put themselves in the best line.

And just about any time you ask a customer to acknowledge that they were wrong, you will fail.

Fair enough. But if you ever fall for the idea that you can pretend to treat your customers as fine and intelligent individuals, but all your actions suggest otherwise, you’ll have a problem.

Even if 90% of your customers are less-than-brilliant, the remaining 10% will raise hell when they are treated like dummies. Don’t ever think you can out-smart the hordes of inter-connected, web-savvy “consumers”.

And why should you, really?

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