In a 1999 interview, Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, responded to a question about not being a “pure internet player” by saying, “Internet shminnernet, that doesn’t matter. What matters to me is to provide the best customer service.” In the same interview, Bezos went on to say, “If there’s one thing that Amazon.com is about, it’s obsessive attention to the customer experience end to end.”
Amazon’s acquisition of Zappos, known for its customer-obsessed service, further highlights the success of this approach. Zappos' “try before you buy” model and exceptional service practices exemplify a customer-obsessed culture. Such an obsession with customers is key for any business aspiring to achieve similar results.
But what does customer obsession actually mean? Is it just about implementing customer-centric initiatives? How does it differ from the good customer service most brands strive for?
This guide explores customer obsession. It examines why it’s so effective, provides inspiring examples, and outlines what your organization can do to build a customer-obsessed culture.
What Is Customer Obsession?
Customer obsession means building an improved customer experience (CX) at every step along the buyer’s journey. In doing so, businesses employ a customer-first approach everywhere from sales to the customer service department.
But it goes beyond just leveling up your touchpoints. Customer obsession also means understanding what customers want by assessing behavioral data and customer feedback and delivering on those desires before other business priorities, including ROI and outperforming competitors.
It is important to remember that customer obsession is not a one-time demonstration of good customer service—it is a comprehensive methodology that requires a business’s full commitment to be successful. Customer-obsessed companies build a culture focused on CX. Every process change, marketing campaign, and hiring decision reflects the company’s North Star: the customer.
What Does Customer Obsession Look Like?
Customer obsession is about continually innovating and improving based on customer needs and wants.
That’s a tall order. So what are companies doing to make that happen?
Customer-Obsessed Companies Innovate Based on Customer Needs
Needs. Preferences. How the product can help solve customer problems. A company that’s customer-obsessed has this information documented. But they also continually seek new information to update their knowledge. And they use that information to inform innovation.
Take Amazon Web Services (AWS) for example. This company looks to what customers tell them matters to drive 90% of what they build with AWS. Its SageMaker feature, for instance, was created specifically because customers needed a robust machine learning (ML) development tool.
Customers also expressed a need for easier data preparation with ML. So Amazon responded with SageMaker Data Wrangler, a new tool that helps AWS users prep data for ML quickly.
Customer-Obsessed Companies Invest in CX to Ensure Exceptional Experiences
Using a deep understanding of customer needs to drive new features, process changes, and innovation is one part of customer obsession. Another key part is striving for better and better customer experiences.
How is this one?
Personalization. Better streamlined user interfaces. More customer-friendly shipping. The possibilities are endless.
What your company can do to ensure exceptional experiences depends on your market, their needs, and your industry.
Reinders, a full-service distributor of equipment and supplies for the commercial green industry, boosted CX with a personalized dashboard for B2B clients. They knew their customers needed a streamlined dashboard to easily manage their inventory.
Reinders also switched to a specialized payment gateway provider, allowing customers to choose which warehouse would fulfill their orders.
Sprout Social is another company committed to improving customer experiences. It follows the customer’s concept of what they need, develops new features, tests, and continually iterates.
For example, when they noticed a customer support gap in their Inbox Activity Report, they went all in to fix the problem, creating a ‘tiger team’ to ensure long response times were fixed. Sprout Social improved staffing and training—as a result, they decreased average response times by 55%.
“The customer-obsessed culture says it's okay if your hypothesis was not quite right. You tested and you adjusted. That's what they do in science too. Sprout Social is really good at this,” says Amy Bills, VP and Principal Analyst at Forrester.
Why Customer Obsession Matters
Customer obsession matters because it boosts brand loyalty and makes your company more competitive. It also leads to bottom-line results. Companies that use a customer obsession framework grow revenue 28% and profits 33% faster than their peers.
Ultimately, being obsessed with the customer is more than just a strategy—it is a business model. Companies that put this model into practice are more successful in generating customer trust and commitment. A customer-obsessed culture captures the attention and loyalty of consumers, building a sustainable business model that keeps them coming back.
Companies with a customer-obsessed approach, like Amazon and Zappos, succeed in building customer trust and loyalty, proving the customer obsession meaning in practical terms. Tony Hsieh of Zappos emphasized this in his book, suggesting a company-wide focus on customer service, not just as a department.
Amazon's principle of starting with the customer and working backward illustrates the essence of being customer-obsessed. This approach builds brand loyalty and trust, encouraging customers to return and promote the business.
How to Measure Customer Obsession
Measuring customer obsession is a must for evaluating the impact of your efforts. You can use customer testimonials and feedback to gather qualitative data, but you’ll also analyze the numbers to track your changes and continually improve.
Here are seven metrics you can use to measure customer obsession:
Net Promoter Score (NPS): This tool gauges customer loyalty, asking how likely they'd recommend your products or services.
Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT): This simple metric reveals how satisfied customers are with your product or service.
Customer Effort Score (CES): This score measures the effort needed by a customer to have an issue resolved or a request fulfilled.
Churn Rate: This is the percentage of customers who cancel or don't renew their subscriptions within a certain period. A high churn rate could suggest potential issues.
Retention Rate: Conversely, this is the percentage of customers retained over a period. A high rate suggests customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): This value represents the total a customer is likely to spend during their lifetime, often indicating customer loyalty and satisfaction.
Social Media Sentiment Analysis: This AI-based analysis assesses the sentiment in social media posts about your brand, providing an insight into public opinion and customer satisfaction.
These metrics can drive your customer obsession strategy, guiding improvements and keeping your brand customer-obsessed.
Qualities of a Customer Obsession Framework
Companies should focus on understanding customer needs through consumer-obsessed merchandising and building robust customer feedback loops, especially in ecommerce. This focus leads to improved CX, more loyalty, and differentiation from competitors.
To cultivate a customer-obsessed culture, companies that put customers first focus on two main qualities above all else.
Empathy
At its core, true customer obsession is about empathy—understanding your customers through obsessive listening. In his book, Likable Business, Dave Kerpen says, “Listening to prospects enables you to understand what problems and pain points they have so you can solve them [...] Listening to customer insight helps you understand how you can deliver more to them and what changes you need to make.”
Through listening, you understand your customer’s needs well enough to take appropriate action. Create a culture that encourages listening to and understanding their customers so you know how to build the perfect customer experience.
Customer Communication
Listening to customers alone isn’t enough. Most companies dedicate significant energy to listening to customers, but few are happy with the results. In-depth satisfaction surveys can be inaccurate and slow to yield results, and most customers who defect are the ones who report high satisfaction. Companies need to build effective customer feedback loops to truly understand their customers.
Companies have more success gathering feedback on the frontlines, where direct interactions between employees and customers occur, compared to building centralized customer research arms. For ecommerce businesses where competition is fierce and customer data is readily available, effective customer feedback loops are a necessity. These feedback loops make employees on the frontlines more effective and center the customer experience across the company.
Guidance can help you with customized CX solutions. We provide brand audits to pinpoint opportunities to better understand customers' needs and how to implement those changes. Our in-house design team can then transform your site, ensuring everything from the user interface to the look and feel of your call-to-actions resonates with customer needs.
Our web development team can also build custom integrations to help your site gather behavioral data and better understand customer needs so you know exactly how to increase conversions.
How to Build a Customer-Obsessed Culture
Ecommerce businesses, with their wealth of customer data, are uniquely positioned to build a customer-obsessed culture. Here are multiple strategies to achieve this:
- Study Customer Data: Leverage the extensive data available from every transaction to understand customer preferences and behaviors. Tools like AI can significantly enhance this analysis, as seen in the success of Dynamic Yield with Linio.
- Protect Customer Data: Given the high concern for data privacy, ensure your payment systems are secure and transparent. Displaying security certifications and explaining the need for personal data at checkout builds trust.
- Support Customer-Generated Content: Encourage and amplify customer reviews and feedback. Tools like community forums and knowledge bases empower customers and provide valuable insights for businesses.
- Make the Customer Experience Personal: Personalization is key. Focus on one feature at a time to test its effectiveness, as demonstrated by City Chic's success with Nosto in tailoring customer experiences.
- Design Your Site for Everyone: A simple, attractive, and mobile-friendly site design is essential. Optimize the checkout process and overall website usability to reduce cart abandonment and enhance user experience.
- Be Transparent: Honesty and clarity in all your content and transactions are crucial. Ensure that costs are upfront and content is accurate to maintain customer trust and reduce cart abandonment.
- Provide Excellent Customer Service: Invest in customer service as it plays a significant role in customer retention. Engaged employees who are well-trained in customer service will enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty.
- Survey Customers for Feedback: Implement a system to gather customer feedback post-purchase. This direct insight is invaluable for understanding customer satisfaction and areas for improvement.
- Prepare for New Customer Technologies: Stay updated with emerging technologies like voice search and optimize your ecommerce strategies accordingly to meet changing customer behaviors and preferences.
Examples of Customer-Obsessed Companies
Our experience at Guidance has provided us with firsthand insights into the power of customer obsession. Two standout examples are our clients Anastasia Beverly Hills and Drybar, both of which have achieved significant success by prioritizing customer needs.
Anastasia Beverly Hills
Renowned in the cosmetics industry, Anastasia Beverly Hills has become a symbol of customer obsession. This brand's journey began in 1997 and quickly gained fame, particularly for its innovative eyebrow products. Rather than assuming customer preferences, the company engages in intensive customer research. This includes in-person interviews, product try-on sessions, tutorials, and detailed questionnaires.
Their commitment to understanding and responding to customer feedback led them to revamp their online presence. With Guidance's help, they migrated to Magento Commerce, creating an immersive web experience that mirrors their commitment to customer satisfaction. This approach not only refined their product offerings but also revolutionized their online customer experience, contributing significantly to their brand loyalty and success.
View the full Anastasia Beverly Hills case study here.
Drybar
A pioneer in the blowout salon industry, Drybar has expanded from a single salon in 2010 to over 150 locations, evolving into a full-scale haircare brand. The essence of Drybar's success is its customer-centric approach. Recognizing customers' desire to replicate the salon experience at home, Drybar extended its offerings beyond services to include a wide range of hair care products. This strategy was deeply rooted in customer feedback and aimed at fulfilling their unique needs.
Guidance played a pivotal role in transforming Drybar’s digital presence, revamping their website to reflect the brand’s lively and customer-friendly ethos. This shift not only made the online shopping experience more engaging but also aligned it closely with the in-salon experience, thereby enhancing overall customer satisfaction and loyalty.
View the full Drybar case study here.
These examples demonstrate how a deep understanding of customer needs, combined with a willingness to adapt and innovate, can lead to remarkable success in ecommerce. Both Anastasia Beverly Hills and Drybar exemplify the essence of customer obsession, showing how it can transform not just customer relations, but an entire brand’s trajectory.
Build Your Customer-Obsessed Culture with Guidance
At Guidance, we specialize in nurturing this customer-obsessed approach. Our team is dedicated to helping businesses like yours enhance customer engagement, increase retention, and develop strategies that resonate deeply with your audience. Contact us to start your journey towards becoming a customer-obsessed brand.
