The Customer Obsession Advantage’s Marbue Brown: How to Become Customer-Obsessed

Guest speaker: Marbue Brown

Marbue Brown is a leader in customer experience and has dedicated his career to companies like JP Morgan Chase, Amazon, Microsoft, and Cisco Systems. He is also the author of Blueprint for Customer Obsession, which outlines the eight habits and practices that make customer-obsessed companies stand out from their counterparts. Currently, Marbue is the founder of The Customer Obsession Advantage, a consulting firm helping companies accomplish business results through customer obsession.

Episode summary

This episode features an interview with Marbue Brown, Founder of The Customer Obsession Advantage, a consulting firm helping companies accomplish business results through customer obsession. Marbue is a leader in customer experience and has dedicated his career to companies like JP Morgan Chase, Amazon, Microsoft, and Cisco Systems. He is also the author of Blueprint for Customer Obsession, which outlines the eight habits and practices that make customer-obsessed companies stand out from their counterparts.

In this episode, Kailey and Marbue discuss the difference between being customer-driven and customer-obsessed, how AI is affecting customer experience, and anticipating customer needs.

Key takeaways

Getting your customer experience right starts with getting your employee experience right. Employees are interacting with your customers daily, they can’t be bogged down with systems that are slow or difficult to navigate. If your employees can do their job seamlessly and happily, your customers will feel that in their experience.
The hallmark of customer obsession is to engage personally and give customers what they want before they know they need it. By anticipating your customers’ needs, they know that you understand them and they will become rabid fans of your business.
If you’re wanting to become customer-obsessed, start by looking at your policies. If you have policies that make you do a double take because they’re so customer-friendly, you’re headed in the right direction. On the flip side, if you have policies that are objectionable, figure out where you can adjust so your customers won’t find a better alternative.

Speaker quotes

“Customer-obsessed companies, they take actions. They adopt policies and they make investments in the customer's favor, even when they cannot immediately connect the dots to their own financial benefit because they know that, in the end, it always pans out. Their customers are not casual consumers, they're rabid fans. If nothing else, recognize that when you invest in that, you can save some money on the other end because you're going to have people who are out there evangelizing your message for you.” – Marbue Brown