In a video post at the Church of the Customer Blog, Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell use the example of a goat-milk carton (that's right: a goat-milk carton!) to underscore the importance of listening to your customers.

"One thing you have to know about goat's milk," explains Huba," is that the milk solids do go to the bottom and every time you drink it you've got to shake it up." There was, for Huba, only one problem with this procedure—her favored brand used old-fashioned cartons without a screw top, and vigorous shaking sometimes sent milk spraying all over the kitchen. On her last visit to the supermarket, however, she discovered that the dairy not only updated its cartons to the screw top style, it added two words to the packaging: Customer Requested.

"They are basically saying, 'Hey, we heard you,'" says Huba. "The key is to take those two words, put in on the packaging, and [send the message that] this is a company that really listens to customers.”

According to Huba, there are two ways to listen:

• Passively. This means providing customers with easy ways to give you feedback.
• Actively, by paying attention to what they say in online venues like blogs, forums and tweets.

"Listening is a risk-free strategy overall," says McConnell in a neat summation of this Marketing Inspiration. "I mean, nothing can harm you by actively listening to what people are saying and feeding that back into the company.”

More Inspiration:
Gwyneth Dwyer: Who's Taking Care of the Content?
Ann Handley: What's a Dry Cleaner Doing on Twitter?
Stephen Denny: Oscars, Advertising and GoDaddy

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