Is Your Company Customer Obsessed?

In 2016, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos described the concept of “true customer obsession” in his annual letter to shareholders.

But what does that mean?

Bezos explained, “Even when they don’t yet know it, customers want something better. Your desire to delight customers will drive you to invent on their behalf. No customer ever asked Amazon to create the Prime membership program. But it sure turns out they wanted it.”

That’s the real difference between being customer focused and customer obsessed. To really be customer obsessed, a company’s approach to its relationship with the customer should be proactive, not reactive. It’s the difference between simply responding to a customer’s request versus giving that person something of value that they didn’t even know they wanted yet.

You can’t rely on Gut instinct

If a company is going to put its customers at the center of its business, it needs to stop relying on “gut instinct” when it comes to understanding who its customers are and what they care about. It must instead seek out and cultivate accurate, up-to-date sources of data and insights that reveal the reality of its customer base, its prospects, and how those change over time.

In other words, before you can become customer-obsessed, you must become data-driven.

Everyone in the company needs to understand who their customers are and what they want from your organization. You might start by exploring their purchase journey. Learning what the first they do when they interact with your company. And then learning what they do next.

It’s not using fancy or cool language to tell them what you’re doing for them. It’s watching what they do what they interact with your organization.

Anticipate Your Customer’s Needs

Your goal is to anticipate the needs of your customers.

At Dataman Group, we try to be customer obsessed. After years in business, we know that our customers love to call our office between 5-7pm, especially on Fridays. While that is typically not our favorite working hours, we try to have a live presence for our customers to talk to, even though it’s not a good time for us. That’s because we care about our customers.

And, how many of our customers have needed data at the last minute or over a holiday weekend? More than I’d like to think. And, we have stepped up to make sure that our customers get what they want, when they want it.

But that’s not the bottom line of customer obsession. The goal is to provide something that the customer doesn’t even know they want.

So, how have we tried to anticipate our customer’s needs?

The COVID pandemic has shown us that consumers are relying more on their mobile devices than ever before. That meant that we needed to bring a product to our customers to help them connect with prospects in a digital setting. Hence, we are now offering digital advertising options – both in conjunction with a direct mail list and as a standalone.

And, that’s because at Dataman Group, we are customer obsessed.