John Lydgate was right, “you can’t please all of the people all of the time.”

And yet a huge part of our job as business leaders, entrepreneurs and product creators is to meet a standard that pleases most of the people we serve, most of the time.

Feedback—the information and reactions we receive about our products or performance is the basis for improvement, but feedback comes in different forms. It’s often what’s unsaid, the complaint that isn’t voiced or the praise that isn’t overt that’s most valuable to our businesses. The clean plate, the return visit, the website address scribbled on a lunch companion’s napkin, leave valuable clues about what’s working and what’s not.

Customer satisfaction and customer support are very different from customer awareness and customer care.
Your business needs both.

You can wear yourself down by constantly reacting to the noisy bell, or you can find more ways to pay attention to the people who think you are napkin-worthy, then work harder to create more of them.

Image by C.Foulger.