Learning from online comments about your product

Thank you for the week off.  I left some of my disposable income in Vegas with other tourists for a few days, and visited my family in St. Louis before the arrival of my next child.

Today's lesson is simple: The Internet provides instant and free feedback on the products and services your company sells.  People like to talk about products they like, and complain online about those they don't.  All you have to do is read what they write, work their feedback into your product, and you're golden.

To that end, take a look at this video which is about a problem I had with a Chef'n pepper grinder in 2005:



Then look at this one I made last night, about two Chef'n pepper grinders I purchased yesterday:



You're not going to make this same mistake, are you?  Just look online at what people are saying about you and your products and then fix it.  You don't even need fancy consultants like me.  (But if that's what it takes to convince the rest of your company to not make boneheaded mistakes like this, I'll happily send you invoices.)

Disclosure: Neither I nor my firm work for Chef'n or their competitors in the lucrative pepper grinder products market.