Amazon.com
CEO Jeff Bezos echoed this priority during the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit last week.
“The core of the company is customer-obsession as opposed to competitor-obsession,” Bezos said. “Customers are always dissatisfied and they always want more. So they pull you along. If you’re trying to serve them, they pull you along.”
In other words, customers force you to evolve. And by definition, they’re also the best source of feedback regarding the customer.
“If you want to be pioneering, if you want to be inventive and if you want a culture that’s experimental, then you want to be customer-obsessed,” he said.
Berkshire Hathaway CEO
Warren Buffett refined this not-so-secret secret to success at Goldman Sachs’ 10,000 Small Businesses event in July.
“Tomorrow morning when you look in the mirror after you’ve gotten up, just write — or just put it in lipstick or whatever you want — ‘delight my customer’ not ‘satisfy my customer.’ ‘Delight my customer,’” he said.
Buffett explained that an investment in delighting a customer can have a lucrative multiplier effect.
“Any business that has delighted customers has a salesforce out there that you don’t have to pay. You don’t see them, but they are talking to people all the time,” he added.