Just shut up and listen

Your customers will tell you what they think

Today, the CEO of Littlewoods Home Shopping, Mark Newton-Jones, was being interviewed by a BBC reporter on the 'Today' programme about his business.

The interviewer, at one point, asked him about why he let his customers leave comments about the products for sale on his website, and he said it in such a way that the tone was incredulous. 'Why on earth would you do that?'

Newton-Jones, quite coolly, said that his customers would provide them feedback on whether the products they had for sale were any good or not. His customers would also help other customers with advice on how to use the products for sale in the correct manner. It's simple, really. Don't be scared of what your customers say. Embrace it and listen to what they have to say.

Again today, I heard about 'another meeting' that was happening about using the Twitter-esque tool within our company which is part of our customer relationship management system used by the sales team. There seem to be a lot of meetings about what we can broadcast to the sales team, rather than balancing any messages, thoughts or ideas we want to share with the sales team with listening to what they are saying and what they need.

It just illustrated to me just how far we have to go before businesses and many of the people within them truly understand social media and the two-way nature of the internet and communications these days. People are still stuck in 'broadcast-mode'.

Businesses out there! Just shut up and listen. You are allowed to do that and your customers will respect you for it.