How customer-obsessed companies come out on top: insights from Marbue Brown, CX Manager

You could say that your business puts the needs of your customers first. You could even say that your customer service is customer-centric. But do you have what it takes to earn the title of customer obsessed?

The terms customer-obsessed, customer-centric, and customer-focused sound pretty similar. In fact, they are often used interchangeably, describing companies that develop a culture that continuously puts the customer at the heart of the business. But according to Marbue Brown, founder of consulting firm The Customer Obsession Advantage and a longtime CX executive who has worked at companies such as JP Morgan Chase, Amazon and Microsoft, they are not the same at all. In his recent book, Blueprint for Customer Obsession, Marbue describes what he calls the customer obsession continuum, which places companies on a scale from customer indifferent to customer focused. , customer-centric and customer-obsessed. However, notes Marbue, companies rarely reach the final level.

What does “customer obsessed” mean?

Customer Obsessed describes an extreme approach to customer service, an obsessive attention to customer needs. Companies with this mindset make continuous investments in favor of customers, even when they cannot immediately tie this to financial benefit and even when these policies seem extreme or even foolish to the outside world. And why do they do it? Because they know that in the long run, what's good for the customer will ultimately be good for the business. And according to market research firm Forrester, it really pays off: Their research suggests customer obsession can drive a 700% return on investment over 12 years.

In today's episode, we sat down with Marbue Brown to talk about what sets companies that are truly customer-obsessed apart from their customer-centric or customer-centric colleagues and how that obsession has led to the success of brands such as Amazon, Costco, Ritz, etc.

Lack of time? Here are some key points:

Customer-obsessed companies invest in customer experience because when you deliver great experiences, customers become advocates and do the marketing for you. If this customer-obsessed mindset is endorsed by senior management, it sets an example for everyone in the organization to follow. These companies personalize the experience by personally engaging with customers, anticipating their needs, and tailoring interactions to create a sense of being understood. Businesses can take advantage of the latest advancements in AI to improve their capabilities to provide better automated service to their customers.

If you like the discussion, watch more episodes of our podcast. You can follow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or grab the RSS feed in your player of choice. The following is a slightly edited transcript of the episode.

The customer obsession continuum

Liam Geraghty: Marbue, welcome to Inside Intercom. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Marbue Brown: And Liam, it's a pleasure to be with you. I look forward to our discussion.

Liam: You've had such an interesting career so far. I would like you to tell us a bit about your journey so far.

Marbue: Since finishing graduate school, I've been working in the customer experience field. Whether it was my main job or my side job, I had some form of connection to the customer experience. I developed a passion for it after being involved, as I said, right out of graduate school. I had the opportunity to work with very special people in the field. In the beginning, there was a model called the SERVQUAL model. My team made a lot of innovations on that. We published it. It actually became an entire issue of a marketing research magazine. And the journey continued from there.

"We rarely have evidence to put on the table when we talk about customer-obsessed companies"

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