“Yesterday I pointed to five dangerous myths about Steve Jobs,” Steve Denning writes for Forbes. “Here’s another one. Apple doesn’t listen to its customers.”
“Thus Alan Deutschman said yesterday in the New York Times about Steve Jobs: ‘He doesn’t market-test anything. It’s all his own judgment and perfectionism and gut…. Again and again, Mr. Jobs has gambled that he knew what the customer would want, and again and again he has been right.”
Denning wonders, “Gambling? Instinct? Gut?”
“Bullshit,” Denning states flatly.
“The reality is that Apple listens very closely and systematically to its customers. Apple is one of the premier exponents of the Net Promoter Score for systematically listening to customers and managing its business in response to what they hear,” Denning reports. “Fortunately, with the wonderful new book being published in September 2011, The Ultimate Question 2.0 (Revised and Expanded Edition): How Net Promoter Companies Thrive in a Customer-Driven World by Fred Reichheld with Rob Markey, we have a blow-by-blow account of exactly how Apple does listen to its customers. Listening to customers is at the center of Apple’s business processes.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Dale S.” and “Arline M.” for the heads up.]