Why Your Customers Are Always Right and You Are Always Wrong

Your affiliate relationship is on the rocks. Your customers are screaming about your bad service. Your relationship with a key partner is going south. What's happening?

As marketers, we are trained to focus on customers and learn what makes them tick. We help our organizations respond to the needs of customers. And we do all we can to make them loyal to our products and services.

But our own brains are hardwired in ways that sometimes cause us to miss the mark. To connect and deepen relationships with our best customers, we must recognize that in two fundamental ways our own natural instincts throw us off course:

1. The first error we make is to believe that it's our customers' fault when things go wrong. We have a strong impulse to believe that we are right and our customers are wrong. Of course, that's not always the case.
   
   
2. The second error we make is caused by our drive to satisfy customers. We want to always say "yes" to their needs and what we think are their needs. But good marketing and business requires the ability to say "no."

Let's consider the potential consequences of these errors, which are the result of two biases.

Bias 1. The Fundamental Attribution Error

As I said before, you might find yourself being the recipient of harsh reactions by customers, partners and even co-workers.

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Allen Weiss is the founder and publisher of MarketingProfs.com. He can be reached at amw@marketingprofs.com.