You Have To Be Your Own Best Customer

What if Tim Cook carried a Galaxy S4? Or Richard Branson booked flights on American Airlines? What if the Ford dealership owner drove a Honda? You'd question their products. You'd think twice about buying an iPhone, flying Virgin, or getting a Ford. To sell, you must use your own product. You have to eat your own dog food.

The term “dogfooding” comes from a 1970s ad campaign. A spokesman claimed Alpo dog food was so good, he ate it himself. The idea is simple: if your product is fantastic, your employees should want it.

Dogfooding isn’t just a marketing stunt. It’s a way to demonstrate confidence and engage your team. It lets employees test your products and services in real-world scenarios. This shifts responsibility for quality to everyone. It also flushes out problems you’d never find before a full-scale launch.

When you use your own product, you uncover issues and needs. These become opportunities for your company. It’s also a powerful marketing strategy. It shows confidence. It tells customers, “We treat you like one of us—because some of us are.” This translates to better sales, stronger support, and tighter quality control. Employees know when things work, and when they don’t.

Both large multinationals and small family businesses see the benefits. In the 90s, Microsoft popularized the idea while developing Windows NT. They made every team member use early builds of their own software.

Today, dogfooding is part of Microsoft’s culture, according to Paul Vick, their tech lead for Visual Basic Development. He points out key benefits:

1. It proves to customers that Microsoft believes in its products.
2. It makes Microsoft employees suffer the same bugs and design flaws they inflict on users. This creates an incentive to fix them.
3. Because Microsoft is so large, dogfooding an enterprise-level product can expose problems. You wouldn't find these before a full-scale rollout.
4. It allows Microsoft developers to learn how their products actually work. This often differs from how developers *think* they work.

Other companies apply this strategy too. 37signals, a software company, runs its business using its own business productivity software. Facebook rolls out most features to employees first. Only then do they go to a subset of external customers. Moz, an SEO business, asks each team member to set up a blog. Then they use the company’s tools to rank it highest weeks later.

To get the best results, you must motivate employees creatively. Run regular contests—weekly or biweekly. This encourages constant thinking about product improvements or new business ideas. Give real prizes and company-wide recognition to the winners.