# Mareile Osthus

Mareile Osthus works on customer experience in ecommerce. Through humii, Osthus helps retailers understand where online shopping journeys create friction, using feedback from online mystery shoppers and comparisons with other retailers.

- Profile: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/creators/mareile-osthus/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mareile-osthus-2abb849b
- Topics: ecommerce, leadership, customer-experience
- Based on 11 dated posts, latest 2026-09-27

## Summary

They are most useful for research and commentary on ecommerce customer experience and journey friction.

- Best for: A CX or experience-measurement software company seeking a co-branded ecommerce experience benchmark.
- Not for: A consumer activewear brand seeking paid social posts to drive direct-to-consumer product sales.
- Check first: Confirm audience data, partnership formats and commercial terms before contacting.

### Takeaways

- NPS can show dissatisfaction without explaining what caused it.
- A product gallery can work as designed yet frustrate shoppers who expect to swipe.
- Customer experience is a leadership and hiring challenge.

## Main ideas

- **A rating tells you what went wrong, not why**: Osthus does not call NPS wrong, but incomplete. It gives a score without explaining what made someone abandon a website or why a customer completed a purchase but is unlikely to return. It hears only from converted customers who choose to respond and does not show how an experience compares with competitors. That gap led to humii: online mystery shoppers give unbiased, structured feedback across the complete customer journey, benchmarked against retailers a customer is also considering. Aggregated at scale, that feedback appears in a dashboard designed to show where friction occurs and why. The two questions Osthus keeps returning to are: what actually happened, and why did it change the customer's decision?
- **Working as designed isn't the same as working as expected**: Osthus describes a gap where nothing is broken, but the customer still leaves. A page functions as its designers intended, yet fails to match the behaviour shoppers have learned elsewhere, creating a moment of hesitation. Osthus defines the behavioural gap as ecommerce that works as designed but not as customers have learned to expect. The argument puts human expectations and learned habits, not function alone, at the centre of journey design.
- **Customer experience is a leadership and hiring challenge**: Osthus sees experience quality as inseparable from the people running it. Promoting a Community Experience Manager role at LSKD, they point to a benchmark — LSKD sitting at the top of the Online CX Index for two years running — and spell out what the role demands: someone who has led leaders, built high-performing CX teams, and knows CX operations and KPIs without forgetting the human on the other side of the number. The person should be comfortable challenging "we've always done it that way" and rethinking what world-class CX looks like. Osthus says experience in activewear or ecommerce is not required, signalling that they value what someone has led and changed over their category background. The same instincts shape their own hiring: building the UK arm of humii meant rehiring Sophie Larsen-Jarrett, first hired at THE ICONIC in 2018, after looking for deep ecommerce experience, entrepreneurial drive, commercial sense, and someone willing to roll up their sleeves and build.
- **Real conversation, not polished networking**: Osthus values industry gatherings where people share their experiences, ideas and time generously, including what went wrong, not just the success stories usually shown on LinkedIn. They describe two very different Melbourne events — Amazing Women in eCommerce and Growth Tank — as sharing the same core: candid talk about leadership, resilience, backing yourself and getting things wrong, in a room that wanted everyone on stage to do well. Osthus credits organiser Rad Mitic with bringing brilliant people together, cutting the usual industry-event fluff and making a gathering feel like a community rather than a networking session.

## Work to read

- [Why NPS does not explain ecommerce friction](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mareile-osthus-2abb849b_my-face-when-someone-says-nps-is-a-good-measure-activity-7499953459685855232-Arqn)
- [The behavioural gap: when ecommerce works as designed but not as expected](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mareile-osthus-2abb849b_the-behavioural-gap-in-ecommerce-nothing-activity-7500677623526785025-uXPR)
- [What LSKD’s CX hiring post reveals about Osthus’s standards](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mareile-osthus-2abb849b_this-one-goes-out-to-my-fantastic-cx-network-activity-7505499623516639232-bJyD)
- [Building humii’s UK team around a repeat hire](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mareile-osthus-2abb849b_some-hires-feel-like-they-were-meant-to-be-activity-7502478300582367232-xR4V)
- [Why they value rooms built for real conversation](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mareile-osthus-2abb849b_when-rad-mitic-calls-you-are-better-there-activity-7510092213146730496-tRHm)

## Brand relationships

- **humii** (owned_business)
- **THE ICONIC** (employment)
- **LSKD** (mention)

## Partnerships

Mareile Osthus argues that customer-experience scores such as NPS show a result but not why customers hesitate or leave, making the case for online mystery shopping to identify friction across the buying journey. In a post about Zara, they illustrate how a functional design can still clash with shoppers’ learned behaviour. Their writing also covers CX leadership and community, including a hiring post that ties operational expertise to developing people. Ask for available partnership formats and terms, as their posts do not describe a commercial offer or brand enquiry route.

## Alternatives

- Danna Rabin: Choose Danna for a campaign about what customers say in reviews and how those patterns can guide product and merchandising decisions. In a Yotpo report post, the author describes analysis of 51 million reviews across 14,000 brands and eight industries. A second post turns one finding—disappointment with the color red—into practical suggestions about product imagery and visual reviews.
- Mey Nenadic: Choose Mey for a campaign about AI-mediated product discovery or how agencies can adapt their working practices. In a shopping example, the author describes using ChatGPT to find size-50 sneakers in stock. Another post argues that teams should embed AI in how they work, rather than treat it as a standalone tool.
- Ben Salomon: Choose Ben for a campaign about loyalty-program engagement at the point of purchase or ecommerce visibility in AI-driven discovery. A loyalty feature post focuses on putting loyalty features on product pages and in carts. A separate post offers a planning angle for improving brands’ visibility in AI engines.

---
AI-assisted summary of public posts. Audience demographics are not available. Engagement appears only where we checked recent posts. Method: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/methodology/