Sham Harga had run a succesful eatery for many years by always smiling, never extending credit, and realizing that most of his customers wanted meals properly balanced between the four food groups: sugar, starch, grease, and burnt crunchy bits.
If you are out there, you have fans. You have a champion. Organize these champions. You probably know who your best customers are. Make them a star on your site. Make those people your superheroes.
You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new.
I think we're having fun. I think our customers really like our products. And we're always trying to do better.
A lot of companies have chosen to downsize, and maybe that was the right thing for them. We chose a different path. Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets.
Letting your customers set your standards is a dangerous game, because the race to the bottom is pretty easy to win. Setting your own standards--and living up to them--is a better way to profit. Not to mention a better way to make your day worth all the effort you put into it.
The idea of selling out is not so much a dollar amount, but are you sacrificing the service to the customers. You have to ask yourself, 'Are you betraying your users?'
Quality in a product or service is not what the supplier puts in. It is what the customer gets out and is willing to pay for. A product is not quality because it is hard to make and costs a lot of money, as manufacturers typically believe. This is incompetence. Customers pay only for what is of use to them and gives them value. Nothing else constitutes quality.
Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.