How Customer Obsession is Killing Brand Love

Imagine yourself having walked into your favorite coffee shop… the one where baristas know your name and your usual order. But today, something different happened. Before you could even place your order, you were bombarded with loyalty card sign-ups, up-sell offers for pastries, and a push notification about their new premium membership. What was once your warm, personal experience, all of a sudden had become a calculated extraction machine.

Wake up to the unfortunate reality of modern brand-customer relationships—where genuine connection has been replaced by obsessive monetization.

The business world today has fallen into a dangerous trap. In boardrooms across the globe, executives proudly declare their companies to be « customer obsessed » – wielding the phrase like a battle cry. But the uncomfortable truth which no one seems to recognize, is that customer obsession is not the same thing as customer centricity. They are not just different approaches – they’re fundamentally opposite philosophies that lead to vastly different outcomes.

The Great Divide

In marketing and business conversations, « customer centricity » is increasingly being overshadowed by its shinier, louder cousin – « customer obsession. » The former suggests empathy, listening, understanding, and co-creating. The latter? It often disguises itself as being customer-first but is usually rooted in metrics like average revenue per user (ARPU), upsell ratios, and cross-sell matrices.

Understanding Customer Obsession

Customer obsession is not inherently wrong. But the problem begins when obsession is driven by internal goals, not external needs. When the focus is on what more we can get from customers rather than what more we can do for them, the brand begins a slow march away from relevance.

When brands become too focused – to an extreme, obsessed – with customers, they’re actually obsessed with themselves. The customer then becomes a means to an end – a source of revenue to be maximized, a lifetime value to be extracted, a conversion rate to be optimized. This inward-looking approach treats customers as resources to be mined rather than people to be served. Somewhat similar to school teachers or doctors tasked with revenue generation as a part of their KPI.

Understanding Customer Centricity

True customer centricity flips this equation entirely. It doesn’t ask « How can we get more from our customers? » Instead it asks « How can we make our customers’ lives genuinely better? » The difference is profound and it creates entirely different business ecosystems.

Customer centricity is not about doing everything the customer asks for. It’s about doing everything on behalf of the customer, in a way that balances both value creation and business sustainability.

Who’s Driving Whom?

Let’s flip the narrative. Brands don’t drive customers. Customers drive brands. They shape brand behavior, personality, and future growth. A brand’s only job is to listen intently, decode meaningfully, and act authentically.

When brands start thinking from the inside out, i.e. « What can we do with our brand that resonates with our customers? », they build enduring relationships. When they work from the outside in, i.e. « What more can we squeeze out of our customers for our brand? », they risk commoditization, customer fatigue, and even backlash.

Tales of the Two Approaches:

1. The Extractive Path

Indian Telecom Operators – Several Indian telecom providers have mastered customer acquisition through low pricing and high-volume offers. But post-acquisition, customers are bombarded with up-sells, data packs, bundled OTTs, and auto-renewals that are hard to cancel. Service transparency is often low, and grievance redressal remains clunky. The brand is obsessed with retaining customers through locking mechanisms, not genuine service excellence.

Digital Payments Platform – One major digital payments platform has become notorious for its aggressive push notifications, constant promotional bombardment, and feature creep that makes simple transactions cumbersome. Users frequently complain about being unable to complete basic tasks without being diverted to promotional offers. This is customer obsession in action, because the platform’s success metrics revolve around engagement time, cross-selling success, and revenue per user.

Indian Banking Apps – Many Indian banking apps showcase this paradox perfectly. While they boast of AI-powered personalization and seamless digital experiences, users often find themselves trapped in endless promotional loops, unable to complete simple transactions without being offered loans, insurance, or investment products they don’t need. The technology that could enhance customer experience is instead being used to enhance revenue extraction.

Traditional Retail Giants – Many traditional retail giants, faced with digital disruption, doubled down on customer obsession tactics – aggressive email marketing, complex loyalty programs, and intrusive personalization that felt more like surveillance than service. Many of these companies are now struggling to maintain relevance.

2. The Value-Creation Path

Apple‘s Accessibility Features – From VoiceOver for the visually impaired to haptic feedback for the hearing-impaired, Apple designs with empathy, not as a PR checkbox. These features are not sold as separate services. They’re integrated into the core offering.

IKEA India’s Home Visits – Before launching in India, IKEA conducted thousands of home visits to understand how Indian families’ use space. This translated into product choices (more storage, smaller furniture) and retail decisions (in-store food that suits Indian palates), creating local relevance rather than global standardization.

Zerodha‘s Transparent Approach – Zerodha didn’t grow to become India’s largest stockbroking platform by extracting more from its users. It did so by creating value: simplifying investing, offering educational resources for free, maintaining transparent pricing (no hidden fees), and building trust through reliability. They focused on solving real investor pain points, and their loyal customer base followed.

Jio‘s Market Disruption – Jio’s entry into the telecom market also exemplifies this approach. Instead of following the industry’s extraction playbook of complex tariff structures and hidden charges, Jio simplified pricing, improved network quality, and bundled services in ways that genuinely added value to customers’ digital lives. The brand disrupted the market by genuinely satisfying their customers.

Zomato‘s Evolution – Zomato’s evolution from a restaurant discovery platform to a comprehensive food ecosystem happened because they continuously asked, « What else can we do to make food ordering better for customers? » rather than « How can we extract more revenue from our existing user base? »

Swiggy Instamart’s Innovation – Swiggy Instamart redefined the convenience of groceries—not by asking customers what they wanted, but by observing what frustrated them about traditional grocery delivery (long delivery windows, stock-outs, no real-time tracking).

Amul During Covid-19 – While many brands were cutting budgets, Amul invested in clear, empathetic, informative messaging and community support – building customer goodwill, not just brand impressions.

Tanishq‘s Trust-Building – Tanishq has built lasting relationships by consistently prioritizing customer trust and product quality over aggressive sales tactics. Their approach to jewelry retail – focusing on education, transparency, and customer comfort – has created a loyal customer base that now spans generations.

Some Global Examples

Amazon‘s Early Years were focused on customer centricity. They were obsessed over delivery times, product selection, and user experience, often at the expense of short-term profits. Jeff Bezos famously said they wanted to be « Earth’s most customer-centric company. » They demonstrated this by prioritizing customer convenience over immediate revenue extraction.

Tesla‘s Rise can be attributed to genuine customer centricity. They identified real pain points in the car-buying experience (e.g., dealership hassles, charging infrastructure, software updates) and built solutions around these problems. Meanwhile, traditional automakers spent years focused on incremental improvements and feature additions that served their engineering teams’ preferences more than customer needs.

Patagonia‘s « Don’t Buy This Jacket » Campaign encouraged customers to repair and reuse their products rather than buying new ones. This is how the brand demonstrated genuine care for both customers and the environment. This seemingly revenue-negative approach actually strengthened brand loyalty and drove long-term growth.

The Technology Trap

The digital age has made customer obsession easier and more tempting than ever. With access to vast amounts of customer data, companies now micro-target, personalize, and optimize their extraction strategies with surgical precision. But this technological capability has become a double-edged sword.

Many companies believe they’re customer-centric because they run surveys, track NPS scores, or crowdsource feature ideas. But asking customers what they want isn’t the same as understanding what they need.

Brands often make the mistake of putting the burden of ideation on the customer – expecting them to tell you what to build. That’s not their job. Their job is to live, feel friction, experience delight – or the lack of it. A brand’s job (or more aptly, a brand custodian’s job) is to study those moments and innovate meaningfully.

The Loyalty Factor

One of the most pernicious aspects of customer obsession is how it masquerades as customer care through loyalty programs and retention strategies. These programs often create artificial switching costs and behavioral lock-ins rather than genuine value.

Consider the difference between a loyalty program that rewards customers for their spending with increasingly complex tier systems and point accumulation mechanisms, versus one that simply makes the core product experience better for frequent users. The former creates dependency; the latter creates advocacy.

Building Genuine Brand Love

Brands that inspire genuine customer love share common characteristics. They solve real problems, they simplify rather than complicate, they surprise and delight without expecting immediate returns, and they consistently choose customer benefit over short-term profit optimization.

Genuine Care – a strategic advantage

In an increasingly noisy marketplace, genuine customer care becomes a sustainable competitive advantage. While extraction-focused strategies can drive short-term metrics, they rarely create the kind of customer advocacy that drives organic growth and market leadership.

Companies that master customer centricity don’t just retain customers – they turn them into evangelists. These customers become the most effective marketing channel, driving referrals, positive reviews, and word-of-mouth recommendations that no amount of paid advertising can replicate.

Principles for Customer-Centric Growth

• Start with Problems, Not Products: Instead of asking « How can we sell more? » ask « What problems can we solve better? » This shift in perspective leads to innovation that customers actually value.

• Embrace Simplicity: In a world of feature creep and complex offerings, simplicity becomes a competitive advantage. Customers often prefer fewer options that work perfectly over many options that work adequately.

• Measure What Matters: Replace vanity metrics like engagement time and click-through rates with meaningful measures of customer progress and satisfaction. If customers are achieving their goals faster and easier, business success will follow.

• Design for Respect: Every customer interaction should respect their time, intelligence, and autonomy. This means clear communication, transparent pricing, and genuine choice rather than manipulation.

• Think in Ecosystems: Instead of optimizing individual touchpoints for extraction, design entire customer journeys that create cumulative value over time.

The Right Choice

The choice between customer obsession and customer centricity is ultimately a choice between extraction and creation, between short-term optimization and long-term value building, between treating customers as resources and treating them as the reason for existence.

The brands that will thrive over the next decades are those that choose creation over extraction, that build genuine value rather than sophisticated extraction mechanisms, and that understand that the best way to build a valuable brand is to make customers’ lives genuinely better.

The question for every brand custodian is simple: Are you obsessed with your customers, or are you centered on them? The answer will determine not just your immediate success, but your long-term survival in an increasingly customer-empowered world.

In Conclusion…

1. Customer obsession focuses on extracting maximum value from customers, while customer centricity focuses on creating maximum value for customers.

2. True customer centricity asks « How can we make our customers’ lives genuinely better? » rather than « How can we get more from our customers? »

3. Brands that practice customer centricity don’t just retain customers; they turn them into evangelists who drive organic growth.

4. Technology should enhance customer experience, not optimize revenue extraction.

5. Genuine customer care becomes a sustainable competitive advantage in today’s marketplace.

Let’s not forget that customers don’t just buy products or services; they buy better versions of themselves. Brands that help them achieve this transformation, rather than simply extracting value from the relationship, will find themselves at the center of genuine customer love that translates into sustainable business success.