Customer Obsession: Product Principles for Insight-Driven Innovation

Most Product Teams say they’re customer-obsessed. Few actually are.

“In most cases, the customer doesn't know what they want until we've shown them.” — Steve Jobs

Real customer obsession isn’t about blindly building what customers say they want. It’s about developing the discipline to uncover what they actually need—through conversation, behavioral data, smart pattern recognition, and, sometimes, bold intuition.

In the best cases, customer obsession helps teams simplify complexity, unlock product-market fit, and create step-change growth. But it only works if you make it a repeatable practice. When done right, customer obsession drives innovation. 

Here are four principles I’ve seen which separates teams that say they’re customer-obsessed from those that actually deliver on it:

1. Focus on the real job-to-be-done

Customer input is essential—but it’s not always literal. Great teams decode the intent behind the ask and focus on what truly drives value.

At CreditKarma, users asked for more credit card offers. But our data told a different story: the more choices we showed, the more overwhelmed they felt—and the fewer converted.

The real job wasn’t “give me more.” It was “help me feel confident I’ll be approved.” We curated offers based on approval likelihood, tested rigorously, and saw lifts in both satisfaction and monetization. This didn’t just improve UX—it helped transform how consumers apply for credit.

At Hired, employers said they wanted “more candidates.” But what they really needed were qualified, responsive candidates. We added technical assessments and built better engagement tools to surface the right talent—and yes, we also kept bringing in more active candidates. The combination drove a 250% gain in marketplace efficiency and enhanced our value proposition for both sides of the platform.

2. Use behavior as your north star

Surveys and interviews are helpful, but customer behavior is the ultimate truth-teller. Watch what they do, not just what they say.

At E*TRADE, we had a B2B2E2C business model for equity compensation. Corporate clients licensed our software to manage administration, compliance, and reporting. Their employees—who used our website to exercise stock options—were also our customers, and a major revenue driver.

When we migrated from a standalone site to etrade.com, corporate clients initially raised concerns. But the employees embraced it. They loved being able to seamlessly deposit proceeds into a new brokerage account, keep funds with us, and start investing—all in one place.

The result? A huge boost in engagement and downstream monetization. That year, this shift alone grew revenues by 20%—over $40M. And growth continued in the years that followed.

Words are useful. But behavior tells the real story.

3. Build cross-functional muscle memory around customer truth

Customer obsession scales when it’s not just the PM’s job—it’s a shared habit across Product, Engineering, Design, Sales, Success, Support, Marketing, Data Science, Professional & Advisory Services, and more.

At Twilio-Segment, moving upmarket revealed a new layer of customer expectation: global compliance, reliability, and security weren’t just important—they were existential.

We built an operating rhythm where PMs, engineers, designers, and GTM teams regularly engaged in customer conversations, reviewed product telemetry, and fed insights into roadmap decisions. That shared understanding enabled us to determine the need to shift our roadmap and quickly deliver a new GDPR-compliant data residency platform while also deploying Kubernetes at scale—unlocking major gains in retention and acquisition, while also reducing COGs. 

Customer obsession isn’t the job of one department. It’s a team sport.

4. Sometimes, the smartest move is to say yes—with guardrails

There are moments when a customer has a specific, high-value need—and aligning with them strategically opens a door that moves your whole roadmap forward.

At Moody’s Analytics, we had a best-in-class platform for risk scoring and spreading. After an acquisition, we saw an opportunity to integrate it with a full enterprise risk suite to create a new loan origination solution. One global bank needed exactly that—and was ready to embark on a major transformation.

We struck an eight-figure deal with clear terms: this wouldn’t be custom development. It would be a product we could configure and sell broadly. Our team embedded with theirs, built out the platform, and launched a product that unlocked a new segment and expanded our market footprint.

At Twilio-Segment, we saw a huge opportunity in financial services, but needed to close product gaps to get in the game. A major global bank surfaced those gaps—and we struck a paid development deal. They licensed the platform and funded the development of key features. One year later, the account expanded 5x. And we had a compelling new vertical story.

These co-build deals almost always start in GTM. The discipline is in choosing the right ones—where short-term revenue, strategic alignment, and long-term roadmap leverage intersect. Bring finance in early (rev rec will matter), and make sure you’re not running a custom dev shop. Set the boundaries. Use this lever sparingly—and strategically.

Customer obsession isn’t a soft skill. It’s a rigorous, repeatable practice that blends insight and data, judgment and speed—and occasionally, a well-placed “absolutely” to the right partner at the right time.

Big Thanks

To the incredible teammates who brought these stories to life—you challenged the easy answers, wrestled with ambiguity, and pushed the work to be better at every turn. You were customer obsessed. I'm lucky to have built with you. 💙

Next up: This is the first in a short series on how great product orgs thrive and deliver results. Topics ahead:

🔹 Operational excellence enables scale

🔹 Talent development determines long-term success

🔹 Culture shapes outcomes

What do you think?

When have you uncovered a deeper customer need—one they couldn’t articulate, but you couldn’t ignore? I’d love to hear your story.