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SPECIMEN No. 030 · Commercial doctrine
The Customer Is Always Right
A principle stating that the customer is right about the problem and, occasionally and expensively, about the solution.
🌱 Institutional- 🏠 Habitat
- Sales calls and enterprise renewals
- 🦈 Natural predator
- The second customer, who wants the opposite
- 🤒 Common symptom
- They're our biggest account
THE DEBATE
The room is split
If the whole team walked into the review, who would reach for The Customer Is Always Right, and who would push back.
💖 Deliver the ask
PatThe Enterprise Adult“A fifth of revenue renews in May; delivering exactly what they asked is how we prove we're reliable.”
GregThe Hedger“Ship the smallest version of the ask; keeping the biggest account keeps every other option open.”
JoThe Cowboy“They asked for an Export button. She can ship an Export button by Friday.”
🛑 Find the job behind it
NoraThe User Advocate“Find the job behind the ask: nobody wants a spreadsheet, they want what happens after it.”
MayaThe Visionary“Building the biggest customer's roadmap turns the company into their consultancy, and kills the bet.”
AlexThe Architect“One customer's special case shipped today becomes three customers' incompatible cases tomorrow.”
FIELD REPORTS
No field report yet
This species has been catalogued but not yet observed in a comic. It is on the story backlog.
TAKES
Everyone's take on it