With customers being the cog of an organisation's success, having a customer-obsessed outlook can provide your organisation with a competitive advantage.

Learn how to have a winning customer-obsessed strategy.

In this blog, we outline what it means to be customer-obsessed, it’s importance and 3 tips to get you started on the customer-obsessed journey.

What does it mean to be customer-obsessed?

Customer obsession means constantly listening to your customers and then continuously testing, enhancing and personalising the customer experience.

It's an outside-in approach that enables your organisation to utilise data-driven insights. It also provides opportunities to increase your customer lifetime value as their needs and pain points are better understood. All these factors enhance the opportunity to provide quality and meaningful experiences.

Observing through the customer lens is key to succeed in today’s competitive landscape. As an organisation, prioritising customers at all stages of their purchasing journey is pivotal in retaining their loyalty. Improving the overall customer experience such as incorporating new technologies into your ecosystem can lead to your customers promoting your organisation for you.

Are you a customer-centric or a customer-obsessed organisation?

First things first, let’s understand the difference between a customer-centric organisation and a customer-obsessed one. Customer-centric organisations often focus on customer acquisition and experiment with methods to make acquisition faster, cheaper, and more effective. Customer-obsessed organisations focus more on customer retention, increasing satisfaction and loyalty with the objective to increase customer lifetime value.

According to Gartner, customer-centric organisations often act reactively when customers reach out to the company with needs or pain points. Comparatively, customer-obsessed organisations act proactively to prevent customers from experiencing pain points or gaps in their experience.

Without developing the right strategy, processes, and data insights to adequately serve target audiences, there is a risk of falling behind your competitors, and potentially creating campaigns that are inefficient. This could have a negative impact on your marketing ROI.

3 pillars for every winning customer-obsessed strategy

1. Get to know your customers through data

Collecting data about your customer is not enough on it’s own. Captured data must include relevant information such as their demographics, buying habits and activity status. This allows effective analysis and insights to provide suitable (and improved) business decisions to be made.

As an organisation, take the time to listen to your customers, invest in people, tools and programs to collect feedback and translate it into meaningful insights. Understanding customer experiences from various touch points can help empower your organisation to provide a better experience and promote customer loyalty.

2. Understand the customer journey

To be customer obsessed, a seamless customer experience is imperative. To achieve this, the customer journey should be understood as it can provide a full view of how your organisation interacts with your customers as well as provide insight into how your brand is perceived.  Having alignment across various departments of your organisation i.e sales, marketing etc. enables the customer journey to be mapped out correctly and ensures the customer experience is positive.

3. Anticipating customer needs

Using the customer data that has already been collected, you can drill down further and use this data as a way to predict and anticipate your customer’s buying habits for future interactions with them. Additionally, having insight into their preferred communication channel can be valuable to grab their attention on new products or services that may become available.

Ensure to use collected data effectively. Collected data can give awareness into customer trends and provide an indication into additional services that could be beneficial for their success (as well as yours). 

Customers are open to trying new things, allowing the freedom to trial, experiment and arrange more impactful engagements. Anticipating your customer's needs is the formula for building and strengthening customer relationships.

As today’s customers are more empowered than ever, it means organisations servicing these customers must be equally empowered. If your organisation is properly aligned with your customers, you not only understand what the customer is doing but also the why.  

Knowing your customers means understanding what’s going on in their world and proactively help them navigate the media environment. 

If you would like to learn more about gathering media data and insights or anything media intelligence related, get in touch with us today.

A weekly tracker tracing the stories, figures and policies driving media and social coverage in the 2026 New Zealand General Election across Online News, TV, Radio, Newspaper, Magazine, X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Threads and Forums. This edition covers conversations and coverage from 15th - 21st October, highlighting what’s shaping the election conversation.

1. Election Conversation

Media = news coverage. Social = all public posts across X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Threads - everyone posting, not just media outlets.

2. Media Issue of the Week

Opportunity Party Puts the Kingmaker Question at the Centre of the Campaign

The Opportunity Party, led by Qiulae Wong, was the most covered new story in the news this week. It polled 8% in the 1News Verian poll on 13 October and 5.4% in the Post/Freshwater poll on 19 October, just above the 5% needed to enter Parliament. With National and Labour close together, outlets described it as a possible kingmaker. Christopher Luxon ruled out working with the party at the Herald leaders' debate, then told West Coast voters he would work with "whoever I have to", and campaign chair Simeon Brown ruled it out again. David Seymour said ACT would consider a four-party arrangement that includes Opportunity. Later in the week the focus turned to the party itself, with former board members describing internal problems and Wong saying the party's rules need another look.

News outlets ran 271 items on the party or the kingmaker question in the headline or summary (9.5% of the 2,842 election items), and it was mentioned somewhere in 724 (25.5%). Coverage was highest on 15 October, after Luxon's West Coast comments, Brown's response and Seymour's remarks, and again on 20 and 21 October, with new poll results, the former board members' claims and Wong's comments on coalition deals.

It matters because it affects who can form a government. The Post projected that Opportunity's seven MPs could give either a Labour-led bloc a narrow 61-seat majority or a National-led bloc 66 seats, so every party has had to say whether it would work with Opportunity. On social media it was a smaller conversation, with 325 posts (4.2%), and those posts were less negative than average (44.4% negative against 53.0% overall). The story is about coalition options rather than a policy position, so it is not linked to a party issue below.

3. What's happening across media and social?

2,842 media items · 7,730 social items · share of each channel's own conversation, so the two bars are directly comparable

"Social" is all public posts across X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Threads - not just media organisations' own accounts.

Most frequent bylines and presenters: The most frequent bylines and presenters this week were Sean Plunket (The Platform), Ryan Bridge (Three), Henry Cooke (Waikato Times) and John MacDonald (Newstalk ZB).

Widest-reach accounts: The accounts with the widest reach among election posts were news outlets: the New Zealand Herald, 1News, Radio Tarana, RNZ and Stuff, along with the New Zealand Labour Party account. Party leaders' own accounts posted often but have smaller followings.

Law and order made up 22.1% of the issues discussed on social media but 9.1% in the news, about 2.4 times as much. Part of the gap is the continuing reaction to the Greens' and Te Pāti Māori's visit to a Mongrel Mob event, last week's Media Issue of the Week: 137 of the 791 law and order posts mention it. Across all social posts the visit came up in 291 (3.8%), 70.5% of them negative, and in 257 news items (9.0%).

The Opportunity Party shows the gap the other way round. It was in the headline or summary of 9.5% of news items but only 4.2% of social posts, about 2.3 times as much attention in the news. Among the parties, NZ First, the Greens and ACT had a bigger share of social mentions than news mentions (NZ First 19.6% against 12.7%, Greens 18.2% against 13.7%, ACT 14.1% against 9.9%), while National and Labour had a bigger share in the news (National 25.8% against 21.0%, Labour 23.5% against 17.8%).

4. Party Share of Conversation

Shown for seven parties, including Te Pāti Māori and the Opportunity Party (TOP), which is this week's Media Issue of the Week. Shares add up to 100% of the seven shown. Share of conversation measures attention, not polling, and is not a sign of electoral success.

5. Top candidates this week

Christopher Luxon (1,614 mentions) and Chris Hipkins (1,611) were level at the top. Both were at the centre of the final leaders' debate on 20 October and the questions about working with Opportunity, and each party announced new policy during the week.

Winston Peters (1,133) was third and was mentioned far more on social media (726) than in the news (407). The most shared posts about him covered his comments on diversity, his message to David Seymour on strategic voting and his public meetings. David Seymour (840) drew attention for saying ACT could work with Opportunity.

Chloe Swarbrick (412) was in the news more than on social media (227 against 185), with coverage of the Greens' plan to reverse public service cuts and the Mongrel Mob visit. Mentions measure how much someone is being talked about, not how they are polling.

6. Election Issues

Top 4 themes this week

What's driving conversation about each party?

Each party's top issues this week in social conversation, ranked by how much they were discussed

Issues are ranked from social posts. Counts are not shown because the numbers for a single party and issue are small.

7. Issues to Watch

• The coalition question around the Opportunity Party is likely to stay in the news until election day. Luxon has given two different answers on working with the party, and polls this month have put it between 4.8% and 8%, so a small shift in support could change which parties can form a government. The party's internal problems are also now in the spotlight.
• Voter enrolment is becoming a political issue ahead of the 25 October deadline. New rules mean people cannot enrol at the polling booth, and 112 news items this week covered enrolment or the electoral roll, many focused on young and first-time voters. The number enrolled when the roll closes will show whether these concerns made a difference.
• Social conversation leaned negative this week: 53.0% of posts with a clear tone were negative, 32.6% neutral and 14.4% positive. Cost of living is a top issue for four parties (National, Labour, Greens and ACT). Health is a top issue for two parties (National and Labour). Issues that matter to several parties are the ones most likely to keep shaping the campaign.

If you want to find out more about how Isentia can help you understand the NZ media landscape, please reach out to us here.