According to Mark Cuban, you should never listen to your customers. Does he really mean this?

No, what he is saying is that marketers must take matters into their own hands when it comes to creating a new product or improving an old one. Says Cuban,

I'm working with a company that at one point had a product that was not only best in class, but also technically far ahead of its competition. It created a better way of offering its service and customers loved it and paid for it. Then it made a fatal mistake. It asked its customers what features they wanted to see in the product and they delivered on those features. Unfortunately for this company, its competitors didn't ask customers what they wanted. Instead, they had a vision of ways that business could be done differently and as a result better. Customers didn't really see the value or need, until they saw the product. When they tried it , they loved it.

He is right, as we have explained here before,

Here's the truth: Your customers don't know what they want. And to assume otherwise is folly. When you begin relying totally on customers to be your product development department, you are asking for serious trouble.

I'm not advocating that you stop listening to customer concerns. Au contraire. Like Cuban, I'm saying that you must ask the right questions of your customers and then figure out what it is that they are really saying. Your customers are smart and can provide some excellent input. It's our job as marketers to ferret out the true meaning of that input.