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

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.

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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.

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“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

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Episode Timestamps:

‍*(02:50) - Marbue’s career journey

*(04:41) - Marbue digs into his book, Blueprint for Customer Obsession

*(08:44) - Industry trends in customer experience

*(15:21) - How AI will impact customer obsession

*(22:46) - How Marbue defines “good data”

*(25:58) - How data influences customer obsession

*(37:16) - Changes in the next 6-12 months in customer obsession

*(40:03) - Marbue’s recommendations for upleveling customer obsession

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Links:

Visit The Customer Obsession Advantage

Connect with Marbue on LinkedIn

Buy Marbue’s book Blueprint for Customer Obsession

Connect with Kailey on LinkedIn

Learn more about Caspian Studios

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