#137 - Practical Strategies to Foster Customer Obsession with Prayag Narula, CEO and Co-Founder of Marvin

#137 - Practical Strategies to Foster Customer Obsession with Prayag Narula, CEO and Co-Founder of Marvin

Author: User Interviews September 27, 2023 Duration: 41:23

What company isn’t “customer obsessed”? Well, a lot, as it turns out. 

That’s not for lack of caring—but building a customer-centric culture is easier said than done. And how you do this depends on whether you’re starting from square one or trying to change a company’s culture from the inside.

According to Prayag Narula, CEO and Co-Founder of Marvin, changing a culture towards customer centricity requires starting from the bottom-up. Building something new? Leaders should be obsessing over customer feedback, actively placing research and customer insights front and center from the very beginning. 

In this episode of Awkward Silences, Prayag sits down with Erin and Carol to discuss his strategies for building a customer-centric product culture at Marvin. Tune in to learn more about what it means to obsess over customers, doing research versus using research, how customer centricity is put into practice at Marvin, and more. 👇


Highlights: 

[00:00:31] The origins of Marvin

[00:04:40] Building a culture around customer centricity

[00:08:35] Why leaders should obsess over a customer centric culture

[00:13:59] How the rest of the team can keep customers front and center

[00:18:04] Balancing doing research and using research

[00:21:46] “Capital R” versus “lower case r” researchers 

[00:28:21] Getting researchers more involved in strategic conversations

[00:30:35] Practicing customer centricity at Marvin

[00:39:36] The Marvin repository

[00:46:53] Prayag’s parting words of wisdom: talk to your market


Sources mentioned in the episode:

About Our Guest

Prayag Narula is an entrepreneur and trained researcher with a passion for building technology he always wished for when conducting user research. He is currently the Co-Founder and CEO of Marvin, a qualitative data analysis platform and research repository for user-centric teams across the globe. He is further the Co-Founder and a Board Member for LeadGenius, a demand generation automation company automating and accelerating outbound sales and marketing for mid-marketing and enterprise companies across the world. 


Awkward Silences is a conversation about the human side of building things. Hosts Erin May and Carol Guest, both VPs at User Interviews, don't just talk about theory-they get into the messy, real-world practice of talking to users and making sense of what they say. Each episode pulls back the curtain on the craft of user research, featuring candid chats with the practitioners who do this work every day. You'll hear stories about navigating tricky interviews, the weight of interpreting qualitative data, and how genuine understanding directly shapes better products and smarter business decisions. This isn't a dry lecture; it's a geeky, relatable dive into the questions and quiet moments that define UX research. The Awkward Silences podcast lives in the intersection of technology and business, focusing on the people and processes that connect them. Listen for practical insights, empathetic strategies, and the occasional shared laugh about the inevitable fumbles that come with trying to understand anyone. It’s for anyone who believes that building effectively starts with listening well.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

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