Article · · By Innam Dustgir
Stop Guessing What Customers Value
Most founders believe they know what their customers value. We talk to customers, read reviews, watch competitors and track the numbers. With that much input, confidence feels earned.
But being close to customers is not the same as knowing what drives their decisions. A lot of what passes for customer insight is really a mix of instinct, the last few conversations, and whatever a competitor did last month.
Confidence Is Not Evidence
Think about how customer priorities usually get set. A big client complains about response times, so speed becomes the focus. A competitor launches a new feature, so the roadmap shifts to match it. A founder has a strong feeling about why the early customers bought, and that feeling quietly becomes strategy.
None of these are bad signals. The problem is treating them as proof. One loud complaint can hide what the quieter majority cares about. A competitor's move tells you what they believe, not what your customers want. And the reasons customers bought in year one are often not the reasons they stay in year three.
Shifting Priorities Create Clutter
Guessing has a second cost that is easy to miss. When priorities are based on the latest signal, they keep changing. Every quarter brings a new focus, and the old ones rarely get switched off.
Over time, the business fills up with initiatives that each made sense on the day they started. The team spreads its effort across too many things. Customers get a confusing experience. Money goes into activities nobody can connect to results. From the inside it looks like hard work. From the outside it looks like a company that isn't sure what it stands for.
Measure What Moves Customers
The better approach is to treat customer value as something to test, not assume. Start by listing what you believe matters to customers: price, speed, quality, support, ease of use, trust. Then look at your own data to see which of those actually connect to buying, renewing and referring.
You do not need a research department to begin. Compare the customers who stayed with the ones who left. Look at what your best accounts have in common. Ask customers to rank what matters to them instead of asking whether they are satisfied. Sales records, churn and repeat orders are usually more honest than opinions.
The answers are often humbling. Something the team has invested heavily in may barely register, while something treated as basic turns out to be the main reason people stay.
Do Fewer Things Better
Once you know which few drivers matter most, the hard part is discipline. Put the team's attention on two or three priorities and keep them long enough to see results. Then cut the work that doesn't support them, even when it has a long history or a champion inside the company.
That is uncomfortable, but it is also freeing. A team that knows exactly what customers value makes faster decisions, explains its choices clearly and stops chasing every new signal.
This piece was prompted by a Harvard Business Review article by Vikas Mittal, Alessandro Piazza, Sonam Singh and Ashwin Malshe, whose seven-year study of 72 companies found that leaders routinely misidentify what drives customer value. I think the most expensive assumptions in a business are the ones nobody thinks to question.
Originally published on LinkedIn