Confusing Your Customer? Good Work!

It's your job to educate the customer, right?

Maybe not.

A truly educated customer might know more about your business than you know yourself. By contrast, a confused customer always needs your help to sort things out.

So it may be in your interest to keep your customers a little bit confused.

A while back, Dilbert creator Scott Adams predicted the rise of "confusopolies" which he defined as "companies with similar products who intentionally confuse customers instead of competing on price." Well, Scott was right. There's no question that, today, many industries are involved in an implicit (if not complicit) conspiracy to keep customers in a constant state of confusion.

Take the cell phone industry, for instance. Cell phone plans are made intentionally confusing in order to ensure that users can't easily find out how much they will pay. There's no way to figure out whether the "free" phone is worth the extra cost folded into the subscription fee, and with variable roaming fees and other charges, customers are unable to do the kind of apples-to-apples comparison that might spark a real price war.

Same thing with Internet services. For example, Charter Communication's web site gives its introductory price in HUGE letters, but you have to dig into the actual contract to find out what the plan will really cost after the first six months. And hidden in a gigantic paragraph of teeny tiny type is a disclaimer that you might have to pay an additional $60, even to get the introductory price. Charter is obviously being obscure and confusing, hoping that you won't be able to compare their prices with other alternatives.

Now, as a buyer, this stuff drives me batty.

But, as a seller, some customer confusion is definitely to my advantage.

For example, suppose you're selling a B2B solution. If the solution is so simple that a customer understands it thoroughly, then it's likely that there are twenty different companies offering the exact same thing. And that means that you're probably going to end up competing on price. Sure, there are other ways to differentiate yourself (see "Six Ways to Counter a Lower Price"), but you've got much more leverage if you don't get into a price war in the first place.

Essentially, you want your customers to be just educated enough to know that you'll take care of their needs. If they get much smarter than that, you're risking a margin-killing price war. Of course,you can't be the only company in your industry doing this. If your offering is confusing and everybody else's isn't, there will still be a price war, but you won't be in the running.

But as long as there's plenty of confusion floating around, it's in your interest as a sales professional to ensure that your customers remain confused as long as possible.

Otherwise, why would they need YOU?

UPDATE (12/11): I apologize for the misleading title of this post in: "Confusing the Customer: I Was Wrong!"