Member Interview with Max Puzyrev

We are delighted to bring you a Member Interview with Max Puzyrev, Head of CRM, SEVEN

What’s your golden rule?

Expectations drive behaviour. Understand what customers aspire to experience, and meet them there with care and consistency. Trust, loyalty, and growth will follow.

Who has been your biggest influence?

My biggest influence has been the shareholders and boards I’ve worked with over the years.

What is your most hated business expression?

“Customer-centric”, when it’s used as a slogan rather than a discipline.
If there’s no clear ownership, no understanding of real customer behaviour, and no measurable impact on the experience, the phrase loses its meaning. Truly being customer-centric shows up in decisions, trade-offs, and how teams act when it’s uncomfortable. 

What’s the smartest business idea you’ve ever had?

The smartest business idea I’ve had was positioning CRM as the backbone of the entire organisation, not just a marketing tool. By using CRM to connect customer data, decisioning, and execution across teams, it aligned marketing, product, operations, and service around the customer. In practice, this delivered measurable impact, up to 300% growth in digital sales, 50% reduction in acquisition costs, and sustained improvements in retention and lifetime value across multiple businesses and markets.

Which leader do you admire most and why?

Steve Jobs. He understood instinctively that expectations drive behaviour. By redefining what customers expected from technology and experiences, he changed how they behaved, how they bought, used, and stayed loyal. That belief has strongly influenced how I think about CRM and growth: shape expectations across the journey, and behaviour, trust, and long-term value follow.

What is on your mind the most right now as a marketing leader?

Right now, what’s on my mind most is how to raise customer expectations in the right places without adding complexity. As marketing leaders, we have more data and technology than ever, but the real challenge is using them to create simpler, more meaningful experiences across the journey.

Why is being part of The Marketing Society important for your career?

Being part of The Marketing Society is important to me because it keeps me connected to how marketing is really evolving. As someone working at the intersection of data, technology, and customer experience, I value learning from peers who are facing similar challenges in different industries and markets. It’s a place to exchange real experiences, challenge assumptions, and stay sharp as a leader.

Why does marketing matter to you?

Marketing matters to me because it’s about creating real value for customers, not just driving sales. At its best, marketing helps people make better choices, removes friction from their lives, and builds trust over time. When you focus on genuinely understanding customers and meeting their expectations, commercial results follow naturally.

Tell us something that’s not on your CV

We’ve lived in Norway, Spain, China, Russia, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia, and I’ve worked with teams and customers globally. When you experience that level of diversity firsthand, you realise that success isn’t about imposing a single way of thinking; it’s about understanding context. Different cultures communicate differently, interpret intent differently, and respond to expectations differently.
That has fundamentally shaped how I lead. The most critical skill in multinational culture isn’t control or expertise.  It’s the ability to listen deeply, communicate clearly, and align people around shared expectations while respecting differences. That’s true for teams, and it’s equally true for customers.