Editorial
The Gist
- Empower voices. Equip your customers to become brand advocates, enhancing organic reach and credibility.
- Foster engagement. Build deep connections through personalized experiences, turning satisfaction into passionate customer advocacy.
- Measure impact. Utilize metrics to track customer advocacy efforts, refining strategies for sustained brand growth.
Reputations are made or broken by the experiences customers have with companies and especially by what they have to say about those experiences. This is a cornerstone of customer obsession — when customers are "obsessed" with a brand. Customer advocacy becomes your best friend.
That’s one of the reasons the Net Promoter Score (NPS) has become one of the most widely used metrics in corporate America and around the globe.
Why Net Promoter Score (NPS) Matters for Customer Advocacy
NPS divides customers into three groups (Promoters, Detractors and Passives) based on their answers to “The Ultimate Question” — “How likely is it that you would recommend this company to a friend or colleague?”
Promoters are customers who are extremely likely to recommend the company. In the world of customer advocacy, they are your best bets. Detractors are customers who are not at all likely to recommend the company. Passives are customers who fall in the middle between these two groups. The percentage of detractors is subtracted from the percentage of promoters to get Net Promoter Score.
Companies that measure their performance using NPS strive to maximize promoters and minimize detractors because promoters are believed to be vocal ambassadors for their brands while detractors are presumed to be vocal saboteurs of their brands. However, there is new evidence that suggests that promoters aren’t nearly as vocal as supposed.
Related Article: Companies Are Misusing Net Promoter Scores: Here’s How to Fix That
Why True Customer Advocacy Outperforms NPS Promoters
My company interviewed 1200+ customers who rated 22 companies on nine customer obsession differentiators defined in my book "Blueprint for Customer Obsession." They found that in comparison to customers classified as NPS Promoters, only about half as many customers said they had already repeatedly recommended a brand in the past 12 months.
In other words, promoters don’t necessarily translate to vocal brand ambassadors, and maybe brands should consider anchoring to an alternative standard that takes into account whether customers have already repeatedly recommended a brand vs. whether they are likely to do so.
Related Article: Are You Overvaluing Quantitative CX Research?
Obsessed Customers as the Heart of Customer Advocacy
The study also identified a group of customers who more closely align to vocal brand ambassadors. They are referred to as obsessed customers, and they are collectively defined by five behaviors:
- 82% of obsessed customers say they will recommend you to others.
- 42% report they have already recommended you five-plus times in the past year
- 44% say they always/usually share their feelings about the company with others when given the opportunity.
- 26% say they have placed online reviews.
- 88% say they will "absolutely" repurchase in the next 12 months.
Related Article: Skewed Metrics: How CX Leaders Should Rethink NPS, CSAT and CES
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The Stark Divide Between Obsessed and Indifferent Customers
These behaviors represent a sharp contrast with indifferent customers who are at the opposite end of the spectrum. Eighty-two percent of indifferent customers say they never/rarely share their feelings about a lowly-esteemed company when given an opportunity, and only 8% say they have placed an online review in the last 12 months.
Moreover, only 19% say they will "absolutely" repurchase in the next 12 months if they are indifferent about a company.
Obsessed customers and indifferent customers were identified by using an index built from customers’ responses on the nine differentiators found in "Blueprint for Customer Obsession." Customers’ index scores for companies were classified into four groups: 1) Customer Obsessed, 2) Customer Centric/Focused, 3) Customer Aware, and 4) Customer Indifferent.
Related Article: How Generative AI Improves Customer Experience Metrics
How Obsessed Customers Distinguish Themselves
The sharp contrast between obsessed customers and indifferent customers persists in their responses for the customer obsession differentiators. For example, 98% of obsessed customers say the company empowers employees to make things right for customers when there is a problem vs. 10% for indifferent customers.
Also, 75% of obsessed customers say their favored company minimizes customer effort vs. 1% for indifferent customers. The table below shows how obsessed customers differ from indifferent customers for all nine differentiators.
| Customer Obsession Differentiator | Customer Obsessed | Customer Indifferent |
| Deliver excellently and in the moment | 99% | 1% |
| Empower employees to make it right when things go wrong | 98% | 10% |
| Enable customers to engage when, where and how they want | 89% | 18% |
| Fix problems at the source | 78% | 1% |
| Minimize Customer Effort | 75% | 1% |
| Raise the bar and innovate relentlessly | 67% | 2% |
| Create wow moments and connections | 58% | 3% |
| Personalize touchpoints with customers | 56% | 4% |
| Give customers what they want before they know they need it | 54% | 4% |
Impact of Obsessed Customers, Indifferent Customers on Brand Reputation
To sum up, obsessed customers have been on the receiving end of exceptional experiences while doing business with their favored company, can’t wait to tell others about them, and are locked in for future business.
Companies with a large share of these customers are positioned for supercharged financials and have a reputation for customer obsession. Of the 22 companies included in the COA study, Chewy, Chick-fil-A, Amazon, Apple and Trader Joe’s top the list with the largest shares of obsessed customers.
Meanwhile, indifferent customers have typically experienced “cringe” moments, but hardly ever talk about them, and are highly likely to cut ties with the company. Companies with a big share of these customers are in danger of significant customer churn. In the COA study, DoorDash, Uber Eats, Verizon, United Airlines and FedEx check in with the largest shares of indifferent customers.
Additionally, contrary to popular belief, while indifferent customers do talk about their poor experiences and sometimes very loudly, they do so on a much smaller scale than obsessed customers who talk about their amazing experiences prolifically. That suggests there’s more to be gained by cultivating larger shares of obsessed customers than reducing shares of indifferent customers. The good news is that the business culture, policies and behaviors that cultivate obsessed customers simultaneously reduces indifferent customers.
Obsessed Customers: The New Standard for Customer Advocacy
Its not a big leap to recognize that customers who have already recommended your brand are more valuable than those who say they are likely to; for customer advocacy, they've proven their worth.
Also, it’s not a stretch for companies to see that they need to reach for a higher bar to gain obsessed customers vs. those that are simply likely to recommend. This is the essence of customer obsession. If your goal is to mint vocal advocates for your brand, now’s time to raise your bar to a new standard — obsessed customers!
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