Other articles by Dale Dauten:

Dale Dauten: It's not just a new job, but a chance to succeedDale Dauten: Worrywarts assure success for 'Doomsday Channel'Dale Dauten: Here's why 'What, me worry?' is a slogan with some substanceDale Dauten: It is better to try and fail than to marry the status quoDale Dauten: A lack of experience can lead to asking a brilliant questionDale Dauten: It's time for employee liberationDale Dauten: If you feel like you're too busy, maybe you're lazyDale Dauten: Use criticism as an opportunity to improveDale Dauten: Firm's success with mergers rests on simple ideaDale Dauten: Taking the first step to make your point

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That comment is from a young woman who was asked in a videotaped interview for her preferences in retail customer service. The question was asked by the folks at the Ideo design firm, and it illustrated this point made by one of its executives, Beth Viner: "About 50 percent of customers want help 50 percent of the time."

That leaves customer-service people with a dilemma: To help or not to help? Weary retail clerks grow frustrated with trying to be service psychics, guessing at what customers want or mean. It's easy to understand how many simply grow annoyed with customers and start to assume the worst.

But here's my formula for business success, and it rates as an IBP, an Important Business Principle: If you don't love your customer, get another customer. If you can't find a customer to love, get another business.

What got me thinking about customer service was visiting with Viner and Fred Dust from Ideo. I asked them what sort of clients bring out their best work. Dust started on the dark side, saying, "The worst clients are those who already have an idea in mind and who hire us in the expectation that we'll justify what they've already decided, or those who are not organized to get to market."

The latter, he explained, tend to be companies with a lot of "silos," resulting in an idea running the gantlet of specialties.

Dust also opined: "The best clients are the ones who fall in love with their customers. Those are the clients we fall in love with." Then Dust offered this simple formula for working with consultants and with suppliers in general: "You do better things for people you like."

However, while it's easy to understand the notion of loving clients who love customers, it's not so simple a formula with ideas. With new ideas, one must be more cautious, even a tad standoffish. Innovation would seem to be a two-step process: Come up with a good idea, then implement it. But when you talk with professional idea people, you start to notice other steps. In the case of Ideo, it adds two phases of experimenting: prototyping and field experimentation, which Ideo refers to as "piloting."

The idea of building a prototype is certainly nothing remarkable when it comes to product design, but Dust and Viner are with a division of Ideo called Smart Space, which does designs of customer spaces, including retail and medical. So, for instance, when designing a new hotel lobby for one of the chains, Ideo rented warehouse space and created a lobby made out of white foam-core boards (similar to sheets of Styrofoam). Then Ideo invited its clients and its clients' customers to experience it. When I suggested to Dust that the all-white interior would be a bit like one of those ice hotels, he remarked that "designers don't want to work with it, but we do because it's not so precious that we can't change it."

Notice that "not so precious." There's that standoffishness of the creative mind with a purpose. It's as if to say, "I'll love the idea when the customer buys it."

So let's summarize: Love your customers, or get some you do. If your business can't get customers to love, get a new business. Then, when it comes time to design spaces or products for those customers, give them a chance to see, try and love the ideas before you do. If so, you've got a chance at an innovation that can skip through the gantlet, laughing.