Terms of Use

CustomerThink is a global community of business professionals. The information on this site, along with interaction with other members, can help you create a more successful, customer-centric business.

Please keep in mind that when you contribute content to CustomerThink, it affects our community. By adding content of any kind, you are agreeing to these Terms of Use.

Always be meaningful and professional in your interactions on this site. Personal attacks, inappropriate language, or commercial promotions are not permitted. Company and solution news items may be submitted, provided such news is relevant to our site’s mission and audience.

Publishing Guidelines for Blog Posts

CustomerThink has over 5,000 registered authors and publishes several thousand blog posts each year. All authors must follow these guidelines.

Editorial Policy: Human Authorship in the Age of AI

CustomerThink publishes perspectives on customer-centric strategy, leadership, and execution. As AI makes fluent content easier to produce, our editorial standard emphasizes human judgment, original thinking, and evidence over polish alone.

CustomerThink’s core requirements are a foundation. In summary, submissions must be non-promotional, relevant to at least one of the site’s topics, and between 500 and 2,000 words in length. See Blogging Policy below for details of the review process.

Effective January 2026, submitted content will also be evaluated on three key factors: Insight, Clarity, and Evidence.

Insight: Does the post add value?
Content should reflect the author’s own thought process, drawing from personal or company experiences. Avoid generic statements that readers could easily generate with an AI chatbot. Offer actionable takeaways or suggested next steps for the reader.
Clarity: Is the content easy to understand?
When recommending a course of action, explain the reasoning clearly and logically. Skip overused buzzwords and jargon. Write as if speaking directly with an executive audience — professionals who want to know what matters, why it matters, and how to act on it.
Evidence: Is the author’s advice supported?
Simply compiling research from public sources is not sufficient. While CustomerThink offers some latitude for recognized industry thought leaders to share their personal insights, content must otherwise be backed by concrete evidence such as case studies, metrics, research, and credible references.

Use of AI Tools

AI tools may assist authors with research, outlining, and editing. However, the drafting — the actual writing of the post — must be substantially the author’s own work. Supplying ideas or an outline to an AI tool and publishing the resulting text does not meet this standard. Neither does editing an AI draft to add personal commentary. In both cases, AI is the author and the author is the assistant. Authors are fully accountable for all claims, examples, and conclusions. Posts that appear primarily AI-generated will be declined.

Evaluation Process

Content that does not meet these standards will be held for revision if the editor believes changes can make the post compliant. The author will receive an Editor’s Note outlining what changes are needed. Authors have 30 days to revise and resubmit before the post is removed. Policy issues that cannot be fixed via editing, including primarily AI-generated or promotional content, will be declined without a revision opportunity.

Blogging Policy

All CustomerThink authors must blog under their real names. We do not allow accounts under pseudonyms, anonymous, group, or company names. Authors must register with their own business email address and be approved by the site manager before posting any content.

Blog posts on CustomerThink should be:

relevant to CustomerThink’s mission and its community of business managers.
educational, not containing excessive promotional content, inappropriate language, or personal attacks.

“Relevant” means appropriate for a business audience and can be categorized on the site in one of our key topics.

“Excessive promotional content” means the blog post content is primarily intended to:

directly market products, services, programs, etc. for the author’s company or an affiliated business partner, or
redirect the user to another site to access content, without providing substantial educational content within the body of the post.

Promotional Content

Minor promotional content (such as “call to action”) in text format (images or graphic content not permitted) is allowed, provided it is related to the post and is a relatively small portion (lesser of 50 words or 10% of the post) of the post content which otherwise qualifies. Posts may include a reasonable number of:

objective references to the author’s company, products, services, methodologies, etc. (text, links, or graphics)
links to other web resources for additional information (including free, paid, or registration-required resources)

Posts will not be published if they appear designed to generate clicks or leads, such as:

“How to pick a solution or service provider,” when the author of the post provides the products/services discussed in the post. Such content is likely to be viewed as self-serving or promotional by readers.
Teaser content or a list of questions, followed by a “click to learn more.” Posts should deliver substantial educational content without requiring the reader to click or register to get important details.
Content is primarily a list of features, functions, and benefits of a solution provided by the author’s company, regardless of whether the author’s company is specifically listed or linked in the content.

Moderation Process

All submitted blog posts are “moderated” — held in an unpublished status for review by the CustomerThink community moderator or manager. Each post is reviewed for compliance with our publishing standards. Un-credited images, advertising, and header/footer information are removed (see below for details). Qualifying images may be resized and repositioned to fit the site design. Finally, posts are categorized and published on a first-in, first-out basis.

Moderator will edit post as follows:

Remove Extraneous header/footer information, such as share links, author bio, related content, or any other standard content automatically inserted by the author’s blogging system.
Remove images if the image owner has not been given explicit credit in the blog post. This is to protect the author and CustomerThink from potential copyright infringement claims.
Remove advertising, including graphic images, lead generation widgets, blocks of text, etc. that promote products, services, or content. A call-to-action in text format is allowed, provided it’s a natural part of the post content, to enable the reader to explore the post topic more deeply.
Remove embedded videos if they are decorative, duplicate information already present in the post, or do not directly and substantively support the post topic. Due to large file sizes, videos can degrade the reader experience.
Add “nofollow” status to links when needed to comply with Google guidelines. Direct links to companies, products, or services are nofollowed because Google may flag them as “unnatural” links intended to influence the search engine. Links to educational content, such as blog posts and articles, are generally ok if they help the reader dig deeper into a topic. Posts with an excessive number of links (more than 10) will have all links set to nofollow.

Link Policy

CustomerThink actively manages link equity (the search engine value passed through links) to protect search visibility for the benefit of all contributors. Educational links to blog posts, articles, and research are generally acceptable and are a legitimate benefit of publishing on CustomerThink.

Links to companies, products, or services will be nofollowed (rel=”nofollow”), as Google may treat them as unnatural links intended to influence search rankings.

Posts containing an excessive number of links (more than 10) will have all links nofollowed. High link volume can trigger search engine quality concerns that may affect the site and its contributors.

Paid backlinks are strictly prohibited. Any author found selling or placing paid links on CustomerThink will be permanently suspended, and all associated content may be removed.

Blog Guidelines and Approval Process

Again, as a general guideline, posts will not be published if they lack substantial educational value that is relevant for our community mission: customer-centric business. All posts are reviewed in a two-step process:

1. Moderator reviews to ensure post meets our minimum standards.

Content must be relevant to our community and not contain excessive promotional content. Posts will NOT be approved under these conditions:

appears to be primarily AI-generated rather than substantially written by the registered author
doesn’t fit one of our major site topics
length is not between 500 and 2,000 words
too technical, not suitable for a business audience
uses marketing language like “best,” “leading,” etc.
includes graphics or illustrations to promote the author’s company or its products/services
compares the author’s products or services to competitors
designed to manipulate search engines by keyword stuffing or inappropriate backlinks
violates CustomerThink’s minimum terms of use (e.g., personal attacks, bad language)
authored under a pseudonym, group, or anonymous account; each post must be published for an individual author with a valid profile
written by a “guest” author; each post must belong to the registered author

Note: republishing content is allowed if a) the author wrote the original content, b) it was published under the author’s byline on the author’s own blog, website, or affiliated organization, and c) a link to the original post is included. Republishing content from third-party publications is not permitted.

2. Moderator-approved posts are then candidates for consideration by the Managing Editor.

As noted above in more detail, posts will be evaluated on three key factors:

Insight: Does the post add value?
Clarity: Is the content easy to understand?
Evidence: Is the author’s advice supported?

Copyright Policy

CustomerThink respects the intellectual property rights of others. Don’t post content that is the copyrighted property of others unless you have their written permission. If copyright infringement is reported to CustomerThink (see below), the alleged infringement will be promptly removed pending resolution per the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Accordingly, we have a policy of removing user submissions that violate copyright, trademark, or other intellectual property law, suspending access to all or any portion of CustomerThink.com (the Site) to any user who uses the Site in violation of any such law, and/or terminating in appropriate circumstances the account (if any) of any user who uses the Site in violation of any such law.

How to Notify CustomerThink of Copyright Infringement

Pursuant to Title 17 of the United States Code, Section 512, we have implemented procedures for receiving written notification of claimed copyright infringement and for processing such claims in accordance with such law.

If you believe your copyright, trademark, or other intellectual property right is being infringed by a user of CustomerThink.com, please provide written notice to the following agent for notice of claims of infringement:

CustomerThink
4629 Cass Street, #286
San Diego, CA 92109
United States
619-880-1208
copyright@customerthink.com

Your written notice must:
(i) contain your physical or electronic signature;
(ii) identify the copyrighted work, trademark, or other intellectual property alleged to have been infringed;
(iii) identify the allegedly infringing material in a sufficiently precise manner to allow us to locate that material;
(iv) contain adequate information by which we can contact you (including postal address, telephone number, and e-mail address);
(v) contain a statement that you have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted material, trademark, or other intellectual property is not authorized by the owner, the owner’s agent, or the law;
(vi) contain a statement that the information in the written notice is accurate; and
(vii) contain a statement, under penalty of perjury, that you are authorized to act on behalf of the copyright, trademark, or other intellectual property right owner.

The CustomerThink editorial staff reserves the right to decline and delete contributed content that violates our Terms of Use. Repeated offenses of Terms of Use may lead to actions deemed necessary by CustomerThink management to maintain the culture, quality, and integrity of the site. Authors whose posts are declined three or more times will have their posting privileges suspended.

User Feedback

Contact Bob Thompson, CustomerThink’s Founder and Community Manager, if you have questions about Terms of Use, blog post guidelines, or concerns about a specific post or blogger. Please do not contact authors directly or add public comments to the site.