Arc’s Playbook: How They Turned Customer Obsession from a Buzzword into 10x Growth

Arc’s Playbook: How They Turned Customer Obsession from a Buzzword into 10x Growth

Customer obsession is easy to preach but hard to practice. Most companies list it as a core value, but few actually measure and operationalize it. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Arc CEO Don Muir revealed how his company turned this often-empty phrase into a systematic approach that drove explosive growth in the competitive B2B fintech space.

Making Customer Feedback Measurable

Arc’s approach starts with concrete metrics. “We track KPIs internally against the number of touch points we’re having with customers specifically focused on improving their product,” Don explains. This isn’t a vague customer satisfaction score – it’s a specific count of meaningful customer interactions that lead to product improvements.

The company’s growth – “we’ve grown over ten x year over year” according to Don – stems directly from this methodical approach to customer feedback. Every interaction is tracked, measured, and tied to specific product outcomes.

Building Customer Obsession into Company DNA

What sets Arc apart is how deeply customer feedback is woven into their operational framework. “The founders, the product team and the revenue team are required and track on a weekly basis to monitor all of those touch points and ensure that we’re receiving a sufficient amount of feedback to improve our product on a weekly basis,” Don shares.

This isn’t just about collecting feedback – it’s about creating a systematic process for turning that feedback into action. Their OKRs and planning processes specifically focus on “how do we get in front of more customers, get feedback from them and ensure that we’re building the products that they want, that they need.”

From Feedback to Features

The impact of this approach is evident in Arc’s product development process. “Every product, every feature we have built and shipped at this company has been informed by what our customers are asking for,” Don notes. This isn’t just about building requested features – it’s about understanding the underlying problems customers are trying to solve.

This deep customer understanding led Arc to identify a crucial gap in the market. Traditional banks were making lending decisions based on relationships rather than fundamentals, leaving many qualified companies without access to capital. Arc’s response was to build a technology platform that could make objective, data-driven lending decisions.

Turning Customer Problems into Market Opportunities

Arc’s customer obsession revealed that founders were “selling too much ownership in their business too soon” because they thought “equity was the only type of capital to fund their business at the early stages, even once their revenue generating.” This insight led to Arc’s core value proposition: providing non-dilutive growth capital based on business fundamentals rather than VC relationships.

The result is a product that truly addresses customer needs. While traditional banks take “weeks to months” to make lending decisions, Arc can do it “in days.” This speed and efficiency directly responds to customer pain points around accessing capital.

Creating a Feedback Flywheel

Arc’s approach creates a virtuous cycle. Better understanding of customer needs leads to better products, which attracts more customers, generating more feedback and insights. This flywheel effect has helped them challenge much larger competitors.

“The incumbent banks who dominate, who comprise 98% of share today, they can’t keep up and they, unfortunately, cannot innovate organically,” Don observes. By contrast, Arc’s systematic approach to customer feedback allows them to innovate rapidly and effectively.

For B2B founders, Arc’s story offers a concrete example of how to turn customer obsession from a buzzword into a growth engine. It’s not enough to say you’re customer-focused – you need systems to measure, track, and operationalize customer feedback at every level of the organization. When done right, this approach can help even small companies challenge industry giants.