“You don't move past obsession. I guess what's beyond obsession is more obsession.”

This episode of Be Customer Led with Bill Staikos features Marbue Brown. He is the founder of The Customer Obsession Advantage, an organization devoted to assisting businesses in achieving exceptional business outcomes through customer obsession. He is an experienced executive in the field of customer experience (CX) who has proven his ability to lead by example. Also, Marbue is a well-known speaker and published author on topics such as customer experience, business strategy, and economic policy. In today's episode, he explores in great depth a wide variety of topics pertaining to Customer Obsession and contrasts it with other topics.

[01:49] Introduction – Marbue discusses the ups and downs of his professional life. Furthermore, he talks about his upcoming book and the inspirations behind penning it. 

[09:59 Three Terms – Marbue outlines the distinctions between customer focus, customer-centricity, and customer obsession.

[14:23] Maturity Path - Is there a rung on the ladder of maturity that leads to a focus on the customer?

[28:10] The Next - After Customer Obsession is More Obsession.

[31:36] Inspiration – Marbue mentions the factors that have been an inspiration to him. 

[34:21] Biggest Roadblock - In response to the previous guest's question, Marbue explains why he believes maintaining established franchises is the most prominent hurdle organizations have in delivering customer-obsessed experiences, internally or externally.

[36:41] Marbue's Question – Marbue poses a question to the subsequent guest. In addition, he specifies when he intends to release his book for sale.

Resources:

Connect with Marbue:

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/marbue-brown-43a8a52/

Link to Marbue’s New Book: Blueprint for Customer Obsession

Marbue Brown on Customer Obsession vs Everything Else

[00:00:33] Bill Staikos: Hey everybody. Welcome back to another week of Be Customer led. I'm your host, Bill Staco. I have an amazing guest and a friend and a mentor, on the show this week, and I'm so excited to have this individual and introduce some. Mar Brown is an accomplish, an exceptional leader, frankly, in customer experience, an executive with a track record of thought leader.

Signature business results at some of those, my most iconic brands on the planet, frankly, right? One of them where we work together and where I got to meet Mar and start to learn from him was JP Morgan, Chase Mar has been@amazon.com, Microsoft and Cisco Systems, and in just a, a deep thought leader and veteran in customer experience, and frankly, employee experience as well.

Mar thanks so much for coming a show. Just super excited to have you with us today.

Absolutely,

You've done so much in the customer experience base. Just I think your, your story man is pretty incredible. I'd love for you just to share a

And, I got to work with, some amazing. Folks in terms of analytics and all of that. so we got an opportunity to really break some new ground in terms of measuring customer experience. We got to publish on that, so that was super exciting very early on. But in addition to measuring.

There's also that whole aspect of extracting insert insights and, and turning those insights into actions, right? And so those three things have really been at the core of what I've done, in my work in all of these, different, companies that, that you mentioned. And like I said, I, I got the chance to, to work with some amazing.

I think about, my time at, amazon.com, getting to work with Jre Buck, Buckley Cox, and, Tom Wildland. Tom was like a, a pioneer in, customer obsession, if you will. one of the leaders there. So I have gotten to work with, with some amazing people getting to work with, the sh Brown Duckett at, Chase and.

Like, I'm gonna

Mm-hmm. Customer obsessions is something that you know a little bit about. You're writing another book, you've written,books before you're writing another book on customer obsession. Defining it and talking about organizations. what does it mean to be customer obsess? What, organizations that embody it today.

First, why write a book on the topic? Like what was out there sort of in the space that you wanted to kind of crystallize, for industry at large and maybe. Different relative to other books written on similar topics, whether they're about Amazon around customer obsession or otherwise. I know there aren't, the topic of customer obsession.

I, I don't think there are a lot of books, if any, that are solely, specifically focused on that. But like, why write the book? What was sort of, running around in your head when you're like, I wanna do this, and then here, here's why it's important.

And, soon after, a lot of people began using, the phrase customer obsession to describe what they were looking to do in terms of customer experience in their own companies. they express aspirations to be customer obsessed. The bottom line is that not everybody who says that they wanna be customer obsessed is speaking the same language, didn't have a common, language about.

And it turns out that really, there's only a handful of companies that have prioritized the customer to the extent that you would call it an obsession. But the thing about those companies is that they all have certain things in common, right? So what I wanted to do was to extract those commonalities, those differentiators.

And, use that to put a clear definition of customer obsession on the table, that when we're talking about it, we can all be talking about the same thing, right? So that's, that's one aspect of it. I'll tell you another reason why I wanted to do it, because another thing about those companies who'd give a batch for customer obsession is that they have extraordinary business results.

That's one of the companies, obviously, like we said, the phrase customer obsession originated with them. And, and so obviously they would be one of the people, that would be on the list. Let me give you another example. Chick-fil-A, if you look at all quick service restaurants, Chick-fil-A ranks number three as behind McDonald's and Starbucks.

Right? But at one point, Chick-fil-A was even still climbing the ladder to get there. If you look at their, per restaurant revenues, their per restaurant revenues were more than McDonald's, Starbucks, and Subway combined. Okay. So if you look at it on a unit basis, right? I'll give you one more company, Costco.

All right. Costco has over 90 million. paid memberships, they have a renewal rate that's over 90%. Bottom line is when you look at some of these companies that you know will fit into this category of customer obsessed, what I call the customer obsession icons, their business results are phenomenal and I could keep going on, but we only got a certain amount of time, so we'll leave it at, at it and we'll pick it up later on.

You've got your food in minutes, their ability to turn over customers is second to none. I mean, way better than anything I've ever seen in McDonald's or Starbucks or anybody else. Mabu, there's, When I think about terms like customer obsession and I get to talk to a lot of companies kind of giving the role I'm in too, they conflate the term a lot with customer focus, customer centric, customer obsess, et cetera.

What are some of the differences for you between the three and why, why should we stop conflating those, those three?

But just for discussion sake, for now, I'm just gonna look at customer obsessed versus the other. Right. Okay. Let me start off by saying that in the customer obsessed category, one of the things that separates them from the other two is this whole notion of consistency, right? Look, all of these companies create wow moments for their customer, customer focus, customer centric, customer obsessed.

But the level of consistency with which the customer obsessed companies do it, far outpaces the others, right? So that's one of the, the big differences that, that you're gonna see. Hmm. I'll tell you another aspect of it and, and that is in terms of when big decisions are being made and you got a tough decision on the table and you got tiebreakers, right.

What breaks the tie when you're in a customer obsess company? You know the interest of the customer breaks the tie, right? When you're in a customer focused or customer centric company, well you might find that something else breaks the tie might be something that has to do with financials or, or, or something along those lines.

Mm-hmm. . But in customer obsessed companies, they take the position that, if it's good for the customer, it's good for business. It will pay off. Mm-hmm. . And, so that's, that's another aspect of it. And then you, you can look at, where do people put their investment? You know? And, that's another place where you're gonna see a difference between customer focus, customer centric, and customer obsessed companies.

You're gonna find that, for example, in the customer focused or customer centric companies, their investments might be around, measur. customer experience, understanding the impacts of customer experience, but maybe not as much in the customer experience itself. Right. sometimes when it's, it's, it's time to make those investments, if you can't, connect the dots directly to roi, then you, you, you might, Not see those investments happen.

So that's, that's another place where you're gonna see a difference, between these companies.

I really love that and appreciate that distinction. And as me now thinking about every company I've worked for or that I talk to and like what, how are they approaching it? it's incredible to me how big brands that we interact with every day are investing in understanding the experience, but may, may or may not really invest in the experience in and of itself.

I think people would be shocked necessarily. But is there sort of a, is there a maturity? To get to customer obsession. Right. I think of it more like, you, you've got your college level one-on one course. Maybe you're investing in understanding the experience, you get to two mm-hmm or maybe 300 level courses.

[00:13:07] Marbue Brown: Well, let me say something about, Whether or not it can be done overnight.

So not overnight per se. but there have been some companies, not a whole lot, but there have been some companies who have been able to make a dramatic turnaround in one year. Okay. But that only happens under certain conditions. Okay. That mandate has to come from the very top. Mm-hmm. and, and, it's not just a matter of a mandate coming down, but it's also a matter of, from the very top, there is a demonstration of this commitment to, to customer obsession.

There are a succession of, of decisions. Mm-hmm. that back it up. Okay. Things like that, that, that, that people can see, and, and they can relate to and, and they can say, Hey, this is a bandwagon that I need to jump on. Mm-hmm. , and, and they can follow along on, on that. So there have been some companies who have been able to make a dramatic turnaround in a relatively short space of time.

The, the, the thing I would say though is that for anybody, first of all, they need to get a good assessment of where they are and what the gaps are. Mm-hmm. . And so, I mentioned about the customer obsession continuum. And, and, I, I, I, one of the things that, I, I deal with in the book is that whole continuum.

There's a couple of more categories besides customer focused, customer centric, and customer. Right. And it's a good thing for people to get an assessment of where they are and identify what are some of the gaps. Mm-hmm. , Let me give an example. If you wanna have a customer obsessed company, you need to mobilize the company around customer obsession.

So what does your communications, strategy look like? Mm-hmm. our top down communications, mobilizing the company. This a prominent topic, in, in your communications, or let's take decision making forums. Mm-hmm. like business reviews, like, offsite, like all hands meeting. All of those kinds of, of, of, scenarios.

All hands meetings may not always be, decision making forums, but it, it's where you communicate to people and you rally their troops and, and, and all like that. Does the voice of the customer have. a, a position in, in, in that, in those forums, if you will. And is it more than a check the box activity?

Does it get a real hearing? Does it get real consideration? Does it translate to any follow ups that happen afterward? that's another thing, that, that, folks, need to, to look at in, in, in terms of gaps, right? you have to, you have to first of all make an assessment of where you are, right?

And then you can begin to build on those, those types of things. And, and frankly, customer obsession, the movement towards it works best when it can be integrated into the rhythm of the business. Right. And, so, there's some, some very specific, Pieces that, I I'll refer to as we get into this a little bit further, but you gotta get those pieces incorporated into the rhythm of the business.

So really

What are the other types of business outcomes you see or proof points that an organization would expect to see when they sort of quote unquote arrive, assuming it's a destination versus a journey. what are some of those other proof points that you see, organizations start to deliver on or start to see?

I remember back when I was living in the Seattle area, Chick-fil-A opened a restaurant in Bellevue, Washington. Okay. And when they opened that restaurant, it became like a, a traffic issue. There were cars from Chick-fil-A, coming out of their parking lot. Going onto the street they were on backing up into another side street and going all the way into, the highway ramp.

Right. And they basically, there were so many people trying to get in that they had to bring, police in, for, for crowd control. Incredible. people who were going to Chick-fil-A were parking in the whole Foods across the street. They were parking in the gas station across the street.

They were parking in the parking lot of the hotel next door. I mean, That's the kind of thing that I would call raving fans. Yeah. Now, if that went on for two weeks, you'd say, Wow, it's new. Right? But the thing went on for months. Right. I mean, so that to me is like, it's a level of commitment to going there and getting that.

Yeah. That's beyond normal. Right. Look, Costco. Costco shoppers, some of them have been so fanatical that they've coined a term called Costco Hols, right? I mean, there's people who have held weddings in Costco, . there's people who have gotten the, the, Kirkland inland tattooed on them.

I mean, like, now some of this is kind of extreme, but the bottom line that I'm saying is that when your customers get to that level, they're, they're not ordinary customers anymore. They, they become raving fans, rabbit fans, I mean, these are a little bit different now, but think about when every time Apple would release a new, iPhone or something.

People be camped out in front of the stores for days, right? I mean, now, most everything can, can be online. And frankly, even, before the pandemic, you could still order the stuff online, but people would be ordering the stuff online and still camping out to go to the store, to to, to get it like, like the first day, right?

So, this is one of the kinds of things where the level of commitment that your customers have will be extremely tangible. people are gonna be posting about this stuff. They're gonna be, tweeting about it. All, all of these kinds of things when you're there, okay, you're gonna see that kind of, rabid loyalty, to your brand and that kind of emotional connection to your brand.

other brands just, just don't have

Like, you know what and what factors are driving

And so we pull out those things from the, the 10 icons. And, use them to, to show what the definition of customer obsession is right now we've mentioned some of those icons, and, so,I'll mention some of them and, and add a few o additional ones. But, Amazon gets it right.

I mean, we, we, we kind of started there, but again, if you think about some of the things that Amazon has put on the table, whether it's, it started with two day prime delivery, which is being moved back into one day prime delivery. You can think in terms of how they status your order. you're getting, constant updates on, on what's going on.

If your order, with, with your order or where it is and all of those kinds of things. you think about the whole notion of cashier less stores, they're, they're constantly, Doing things that will, just improve the experience, for the customer. We have, we've talked about Costco a little bit.

Think in terms of their returns policy. Mm-hmm. , right? I mean, a lot of times people go to Costco and buy things just because a return policy is what is what it is. But also think about what I might refer to as the Costco treasure. Right, Because you can get in the store and you can see screaming deals on things that you think these things have no business.

Even being in Costco, because this is like some really high end stuff and, and you're getting a screaming deal on it and you, you may not have gone to the store that day to buy that thing. You take a look at it and you say, You know what? This is a screaming deal. I'm gonna buy it. Right. I've been, I've been there.

You get those, of kind of options or even just like some of the cash back opportunities mm-hmm. that, that you might have. And, and so, hey, maybe you wanna install floors in your house or something like that, and you can go somewhere and buy, Maybe you can buy for the same price, but you're not gonna get that cash back.

So, there there's a number of different things like that, that they have done, on behalf of their customers that that makes it, a great experience for them. Rich Carlton gets it. Yep. and, you can just, you, you can think in terms of how they anticipate, they can anticipate what, your needs are, even though you may not have explicitly expressed them.

Mm-hmm. . and then they, they find a way to meet that. So, we have a number of these, these companies, that, that get it. Southwest Airlines. So the. Pet supplies, company, Chewy. they get it, the organization, there's a number of these companies out there that, that get it. And I won't say, look, the, the 10 companies that I use in the book definitely are not all that.

There is there, there, there's, many more than those. But I need to keep it to a manageable number, to, to have the book outta manageable dive so people can actually read it. Right. So , Yeah, that's.

What is after that? What's after obsession? Like, how do you evolve from that? Right? Like you can say, Okay, we've tripled our stock price over the last three years. From the previous three years. We've done that now a couple of times. All the business metrics show. Customers love us. They keep on coming back and keep on buying the product.

We're investing in constantly improving ourselves, not necessarily looking in the rear mirror or the front windshield, right? We're really focused on improving our own operations and how are we getting better every day training our people. What's after that? Because you can't, well, you can't necessarily just sit on your hands, right?

Like business change is fast. People start to copy, replicate what you're doing. Like what, How do, how do you kind of move past obsession?

Yeah. And so, just like I was saying just a minute ago that, Amazon's been doing, two day prime delivery. Yeah. I, I don't know if you ever got to experience what's called Prime now, but that was two hour delivery. Yep. Right. And, and of course Prime Now is limited to, to a certain geographies and, and whatnot.

But, but in between, Prime two day delivery and Prime Now is Amazon kind of moving that needle. like, let's go to one day delivery. Yeah. Right. And, and, so the thing is that, you know what wild customers before it's gonna become yesterday's news. So when you reach that point where you can say, Okay, I, I kind of achieved the customer obsession ideal.

You, you gotta follow that with more obsession. Mm-hmm. , right. And, and then here's the other thing. Look, there's a lot of unexpected things that can challenge the foundations of customer obsession, right? Challenge your foundations. So, think about the pandemic we've been through that have, that has really, put some pressure on companies.

that have, are striving to, to deliver, a customer obsessed experience for their customers, right? Think about the airline industry and, and things that, external factors that have been able to really pressure them, whether it's masking rules. Or it's, ma vaccine mandates that, that may have had an impact on, on, the size of their workforce.

And, in those types of scenarios now that's, a type of pressures that may have been brought on by the pandemic, but bottom line is these unexpected things are always gonna be there. Mm-hmm. . And, and so, the company always has to be prepared. for those types of disruptions, any kinds of disruptions, right?

And, and our environment is constantly, being touched by disruptions of every kind, right? Mm-hmm. . And so, I would say that after customer obsession is more obsession, right? Because that is essentially, how you stay at that elite level.

I know it's Friday afternoon. I'm sure you want, I'm sure you got work to do one, but number two is get, you want to get sort of, get out of your day too. So again, thanks so much for coming on the show. We ask every guest, Mar is where they go for inspiration.

I know if you, I

[00:27:59] Marbue Brown: so, But, hey, in terms of going places for inspiration, First of all, I, I would like to, to go to folks who have lived the journey, right? And so when you think in terms of, of, of living the journey, I, I think in terms of Joe Collo who, started Trader Joe's and, looking at, his journey and, and understanding that, I think about some of the folks who have, installed stuff at.

At Ritz Carlton. Mm-hmm. and, reading some of their material because they have lived, lived the journey. Right. So I, I think in, in terms of, of those folks. But, but I also go back to, some of the folks that I mentioned early on that I've gotten to work with over the years. I think about, somebody like uht, Shonda Duckett, who is super inspirational and, she disseminates culture in, in an extraordinary way.

Mm-hmm. , I think about somebody like Mike Wach, so I, I draw inspiration on those folks, and, I think it helps me to, keep going. So people that I mentioned at the top are, are definitely, folks that I go to for inspiration. Cool.

I'll give you an opportunity to a, ask this as well. I started asking questions of my previous guests, What is the one question I should ask my next guest? Okay, now I won't say, I'll tell you off, off sort of recording who asked this, but she works for a major brand. She heads up experience, design and insight for that brand.

senior vice president there. And her question to you okay was what are the roadblocks? Maybe we'll keep it in the context of customer obsession here, but what are the roadblocks that you see organizations, teams facing that, that don't allow them to deliver the types of experiences that drive sort of that obsession internally or even externally from, from a

Well, look, I think the, the biggest roadblock is protecting existing franchises. When a company has achieved a measure of success and they've achieved the me a measure of success, based on a certain, product that they've delivered based on a, a certain service that they de delivered or a certain business model, and then comes along, something like a business strategy, like customer obsession and it, and, and it asked them to do something different than they've been doing.

And they think that there's a possibility that it could threaten the franchise. Okay. I think that's the biggest roadblock because, people are hard pressed to, to take the risk unless they can see all the dots connected. Right. But, but I'll tell you, I, I, I'll give you an example of, of something Apple first introduce the iPhone.

Okay. The iPhone was not compatible with Mac Os. Yeah, that's right. Okay. And when folks were given that mandate to build the iPhone, it, it didn't have a constraint that it needed to be compatible with Mac Os. And so that stuff came on the back end. But the bottom line is that it gave them a chance to create in a way that built a great other franchise and then the franchises got connected together.

Right. But that's the biggest roadblock that I see. that, would stop people from doing some of the things that they need to do.

I think that's a great example. I think the corporate fear behind the unknowns, not being able to collect all the dots to connect them is a great example in a, a really big roadblock that I've even seen myself in past lives.

[00:32:11] Marbue Brown: question? I'm wondering if my question is fair or not, because what comes to mind for me is does your company have one policy that would make your customers or your competitors do a double take because it's so favorable to the.

So, and, I think that's, that's, a question for people to reflect on. have they achieved a level of customer experience excellence, that they have a policy that would, would fit into that category.

Mar, I know that, you're still trying to work out a date for publishing the book, Any idea on when, or what's your hope for, for getting it out there for sale? What's your, what's your target date

But, it'll be able, it'll be available for preorder before then. And I, I'll circle back with you and, and, I'll give you, give you like, an update on, when is available for pre-ordering and stuff like that. So,

But, I will be on that pre-order list for sure, and I'll make sure that,we're talking about it on the show and we're talking about there out in our social, social media. Maroo, it's one, wonderful to see you. Two. Thank you again for coming on the show, talking about your book, talking about customer obsession and the differentiators there.

You really are an inspiration in this space. I'm grateful for your time.

[00:34:20] Bill Staikos: Absolutely. Absolutely. All right everyone, that's a great show for us this week.

We're out. Talk to you soon everyone. Thanks for