Is this heresy or…..

As a marketer, at first blush, the idea of customers you don’t want just sounds BAD.

But then, I stepped back and agreed that customers who aren’t right for your product may be customers you don’t want.    If they try Honey Chipotle Peanuts in the grocery aisle and reject them, that is one thing.   But in the service sector, trying to make your offering work for a customer may cause lots of cost while the customer figures out the product is wrong for them.

The Low Value/High Cost customer…..you hope they will go away.   Before they drive the President’s Special Customer Care line insane.

And customers who don’t pay…..those you don’t need.

Public utilities take all comers subject to the rules that the state PUC mandates or the FCC or other regulatory bodies.   The common carrier rules in telecom.

In the olden days, a customer for wired telephony way out in the hinterlands might be a customer you end up rejecting due to the cost you quote them for service.    They wouldn’t be happy.

But that wired telephone service was deemed a utility.

What is a utility today?    FaceBook because of its near ubiquity around the world?

Twitter so people can see what Important People are saying?

YouTube as a platform for folks to see videos on how to fix a toilet?   Or show videos of fringe political groups?

Here the marketers may be pushed aside and the lawyers may say there are customers we don’t want.

A newspaper never had to publish an article they did not care for.    Is that the relevant analogy?

Fascinating!