The Startup Chat with Steli and Hiten podcast.

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about why some entrepreneurs treat some of their worst customers the best.

This comes after Steli’s observation that oftentimes, large startups give special treatment to demanding and unreasonable customers while ignoring customers that don't complain.

In this week’s episode of The Startup Chat Steli and Hiten talk about why you shouldn't give in to demanding customers and what a fair system for customers looks like.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:32 Why this topic was chosen.

03:25 Hiten’s thoughts on the issue.

05:27 One way to better approach this situation.

05:59 Why you shouldn’t always give in to loud and aggressive customers.

06:50 How Basecamp approaches this issue.

07:07 How employees that negotiate better get better pay packages.

08:21 How to design a fairer system for customers.

10:04 Why you should address customer issues according to outcome you’re trying to achieve.

3 Key Points:

I think it’s important to treat customers equally, regardless of how they are treating you.

Your most vocal customers are not necessarily your best or worst customers.

Just because a customer is loud and aggressive doesn't mean you have to give in and give them what they want.

[0:00:02]

Steli Efti: All right everybody, this is Steli Efti.

[0:00:07]

Hiten Shah: This is Hiten Shah.

[0:00:07]

Steli Efti: Today on The Start Up Chat I want to talk about why do we treat some of our worst customers the best, right? So here's the concept, here's the thought or the idea I want to throw out there and have a conversation with you about this. I have observed this over the last few years. In my company but also in many other people's start ups and companies. And this has bothered me for a while, it's been in the back of my mind as an idea that's been marinating and I want to understand it better. I want to think about it more clearly so I want to talk to you about this today. What I've noticed is that often times, if you think about- let's take a company that's 1,000 customers- some customers will be very loud, very aggressive, very demanding, the squeaky wheel that gets the grease. They will demand certain features and they will send you emails constantly, they will tweet to you constantly, comment on your blog, they will be very loud, they will create a lot of noise. And with that they will create influence, it's going to be top of mind for you. So all of the sudden now because one customer's very, very passionate, champions very aggressively the start up will think this is something really important maybe we should do this sooner than later. Or another example is a customer will come back and very aggressively negotiate with you and go back and forth. And push and constantly come back again and renegotiate. Usually these customers they will push your team to the limit and get the ultimately absolutely best price for your product. There's many other examples like that. And then there are these other customers, these beautiful souls and creatures that also have features they'd like you to have and they also would like a better price if that's plausible but they are a bit more "reasonable". They're nice, they're quiet, they're just silently and patiently waiting for you to build these features they hope to see one day or they're hoping at some point maybe the price gets more affordable or maybe they are richer or wealthier and they can afford it more. But they're just not as aggressively coming to you and pushing you and demanding. And so they pay full price and they don't get the features they want immediately although they might be super loyal and really positive and really empowering and really championing customers. And I've seen this model in many things in life and in the world but especially in the business ...