Customer Obsession & Customer Circumspection: Moving from Creepy to Responsible

Have you ever approached a stranger and exclaimed, “I’m obsessed with you!” as you continued to move closer? No? I’m not surprised, and you likely aren’t either. Even if it’s your favorite famous movie star, that kind of behavior will label you a stalker pretty fast. And from there comes stigma, restraining orders, and scaling property walls with a rose clinched in your teeth.

Why haven’t you done any of those things? From a social standpoint, obsession with people is creepy. We often avoid those individuals due to that stigma and concern for our own safety. So why do companies believe they should have carte blanche approval to announce their “obsession” with their customers? Where did companies–which are led by people–go wrong?

Customer Obsession Origins

The concept of customer obsession is at least 30 years old, and Google Scholar’s earliest articles mentioning “customer obsession” date to 1988-89. You can literally see the evolution through the number of hits in a series of Google searches:

Google Search Term	Number of Results
“Customer Experience”	93,000,000
“Customer Centric”	8,840,000
“Customer Obsession”	559,000

We’ve moved from one customer lily pad to the next, and the increasing prevalence of data science has helped propel our lily pad-movement forward. Taking greater and greater advantage of that data, marketers have disrupted normal social boundaries that usually prevent obsessive behaviors. Amazon is a key example, featuring “customer obsession” as it’s top leadership principle. Normally, I’m a fan of disruption. However, this is an instance of opposition for me; and a growing number of legislative bodies seem to agree.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) are both reactions to the current digital marketing world that seeks to understand and track everything about a “customer” or “potential customer.” They bolster privacy rights and consumer protections against companies tracking anything and everything, giving some power back to individuals. Is this the first wave of a larger trend? Likely so. Nevada enacted recent data legislation through Senate Bill 220. In 2019, New York passed the Stop Hacks and Improve Electronic Data Security Act (SHIELD). A national and international patchwork quilt of laws is emerging, and marketing and customer experience professionals should heed the genesis–a reaction against personal data being tracked.

Why would their data be tracked? Could it be an increasing focus on (gasp!) customer obsession? I think so (among other things).

What is Customer Circumspection?

The concept of customer circumspection is possibly a new concept. I haven’t heard of it previously; and, apparently, neither has Google. (Or perhaps it’s known under a different name.) Regardless, I am hopeful that it is the next evolution of company customer strategy; and it comes from an old source.

Do to others as you would have them do to you.

Luke 6:31. New International Version. Bible Gateway. Accessed 7 September 2020.

That’s right! The Bible’s Golden Rule pokes its nose directly into foundational 2020 customer experience. Many people are not comfortable with the idea of a company obsessed with them. Customer circumspection invites that viewpoint into the holistic customer experience puzzle. Part of a customer’s current experience with a company is the discomforting knowledge that they monitor behavior in both visible and invisible ways. That knowledge tarnishes reputation and actually can drive one additional wedge between a customer’s passing purchase and active loyalty.

In contrast, customer circumspection accounts for customer concerns in addition to their needs and uses those concerns to refine how the company interacts with and presents itself to the customer. Customer circumspection respects the customer’s full desires as opposed to obsessing only over the items that will result in revenue and profit.

Imagine a world where your customers are not experiencing the standard data monitoring discomfort. That’s an improved customer experience and brand experience. For better or worse, marketers are being forced into this direction anyway by the aforementioned privacy legislation.

An Injection of Ethics

Forrester reports that 68% of companies are merely in the beginner phase of customer obsession despite 73% of marketers rating “their companies as ‘mature’ in meeting customer-obsessed business needs.” The same report indicates that half of U.S. consumers actively limit personal data collection!

Half!

Wariness of how data is used–how company customer obsession will be pursued–causes that kind of behavior. At the same time, having 7 out of 10 companies in a beginner phase of customer obsession is a huge opportunity to shift the still-forming narrative and create an ethical core in this arena through customer circumspection. Several strategies can redirect obsessive energies to this more ethical and productive evolution:

• To redirect corporate culture, change cultural verbiage to “customer circumspection”​ and include all customer perspectives, not just some.
• To entrench cultural change, hire ethics experts to guide and contribute to customer, data, and privacy endeavors (or at least individuals attentive to ethics).​
• To maintain customer trust, provide greater transparency through plain language about how all customer data (whether directly provided by customers or acquired by other means) is used to serve them​.
• To grow customer trust, empower customers to set rules of engagement and develop customer advisory boards that provide key customers and customer groups the opportunity to guide the course of the business decisions.
• To foster this new customer dynamic, create agile corporate structures that use customer circumspection as their key pillar and quickly act upon internal and external feedback in this arena.

Customer Circumspection Conclusions

Customer circumspection, as new (or not) of a concept as it is, is coming. If you want one more strategic imperative as a tip, start working with federal, state, and local legislators. More laws will be drafted; the sooner your business leaders work with customers and legislators to create meaningful and workable solutions, the better. Facebook and some of the larger Silicon Valley technology giants have changed their data and customer experience tunes over the past five years. However, as stated previously, Amazon still has customer obsession as its top leadership focus. Will Amazon and other companies take that next evolutionary step forward?

The answer is yes. The true question is will that step be willingly or not?