Customer Confidential: Untold Stories of Earned Growth

Episode 265: Ryan Fuller started questioning online reviews after two terrible stays at highly-rated vacation rentals. Both had 4.9-star ratings. After Ryan posted negative reviews, the people behind each listing independently offered him £200 to change his review to five stars. "It was disappointing," he said, "that clearly many people took them up on this offer." On the flip side, the experience explained something that had been bothering him for a while: Places with thousands of positive reviews could still turn out to be terrible. So Ryan, founder of Larrocos Labs and a serial entrepreneur, decided to investigate. He built an AI system that has now analyzed hundreds of thousands of reviews covering roughly 22,000 restaurants. One example of what he found: In a focused analysis of 4,000 restaurants, about 70% showed at least one unusual review pattern. Some had sudden bursts of five-star reviews. He found one case in which roughly 100 reviews had been submitted within a two-minute period. Others featured suspiciously similar language, unusual concentrations of reviews mentioning particular employees, or reviewers whose histories raised questions about their credibility. None of that proves a review is fake. As Ryan explains, the goal is not to establish absolute truth, but to determine how much confidence we should place in what we are seeing. Ryan discusses what this means for consumers, platforms, and anyone relying on AI-generated information. He also explores an alternative: systems that show their work, identify potential sources of distortion, and tell us how confident they are rather than presenting uncertain conclusions as facts. He sums it up well: "I think we're living in a world where understanding what is real or what is true is going to become one of the most difficult problems for humans to deal with." Guest: Ryan Fuller, Founder, Larracos Labs Host: Rob Markey , Partner, Bain & Company Give us feedback: Customer Confidential Podcast Feedback Send us a note: Contact Rob Timestamped Topics 00:39 – How two 4.9-star vacation rentals led Ryan to question online reviews 03:11 – Why hours spent researching restaurants became a problem worth solving 04:49 – Using AI to automate the process of assessing restaurant reviews 05:26 – Building a database of 22,000 restaurants in six months with 300 lines of code 06:15 – Finding unusual review patterns across 70% of a 4,000-restaurant dataset 07:20 – Identifying sudden clusters of ~100 reviews for one restaurant 08:10 – Treating suspicious review activity as a question of confidence 08:40 – Using repeated staff names and customer incentives as review signals 09:12 – Detecting reviews that describe offers of money for positive ratings 11:05 – Assessing reviewer credibility through history, photos, and detail 12:11 – Building an AI product that checks authenticity and extracts review data 13:01 – Evaluating restaurant experiences across 36 distinct dimensions Notable Quotes 18:00 "I think with AI, it's like rocket fuel, where things can be done at incredible scale and with high degrees of believability in ways that were never true before. I think we're living in a world where understanding what is real or what is true will become one of the most difficult problems for humans to deal with on even just everyday stuff like picking a restaurant." 26:00 "Platforms that start to be more transparent about sources and degree of confidence and potential risks for any information they're providing will become more popular." 28:00 "It's almost just like an arms race. There's no sudden advance in tech or approach that's gonna solve the problem. I'm just pontificating here; I don't have good answers, but I do think this is maybe the problem of our time." 33:00 "The devious thing about AI is that it sounds so credible; we're going through a transitional phase where we're not as well attuned to what the tells are when confidence isn't there." 37:00 "I always try to show the work. One thing we do is we have a letter grade that we assign each restaurant for overall quality. So, it can be an A, a B-plus, whatever. And the very first thing underneath the score, the overall letter, is why it got a B-plus." Additional Resources Read Ryan Fuller's analysis of unusual patterns and manipulation in London restaurant reviews: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ryantfuller_london-ai-share-7399118135099973633-Iquu/ See Ryan Fuller's restaurant data visualizations and discussion of how platform algorithms shape restaurant visibility: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ryantfuller_datavisualization-londonlife-urbananalytics-ugcPost-7404913381431844864-cM7l/ Here's the article referenced about how a man created his own top-rated Dulwich restaurant: I Made My Shed the Top Restaurant on TripAdvisor: https://www.vice.com/en/article/i-made-my-shed-the-top-rated-restaurant-on-tripadvisor/

Episode 264: BARK maintains more than 800 subscription price points because it has promised customers that their price will not increase as long as they remain subscribers. CEO Matt Meeker explains why honoring that commitment matters, even when tariffs, public-market expectations, and pressure on margins make it costly. Matt started BarkBox in 2011 after struggling to find breed-appropriate toys for his large Great Dane, Hugo, in New York City pet stores. The original idea was simple: Send dog owners a monthly box of toys and treats selected for their dog's size. The first shipment consisted of 78 boxes. With no paid marketing, the business grew through word of mouth. Customers soon wanted to buy more of the products their dogs loved. That led BARK into individual product sales and, after Target approached the company in 2017, nationwide retail. BARK now sells through more than 50,000 retail doors globally. But expansion came with a cost: Retail gave BARK far less information about who bought its products and why. BARK became a public company in June of 2021. Matt describes how investor expectations shifted his team's attention toward quarterly financial measures that could conflict with investments in long-term customer value. That conflict became urgent when Matt returned after 16 months away from the CEO role. The company had lost $58 million in the prior years and burned through nearly $200 million in cash. After a three-year effort, BARK reached $5 million in positive EBITDA, only to confront a potential $145 million tariff headwind. BARK looked for other ways to absorb those costs while honoring the price and value it had promised to subscribers. That commitment creates real complexity: The company's engineers must maintain more than 800 legacy prices, including one early subscriber who still pays just $16 a month. Matt explains why he accepts that burden. BARK asks customers to commit to the company, so he believes the company should match that commitment. More broadly, BARK's experience shows why companies often benefit when they protect customer value, even when conventional financial measures cannot capture the full return. Guest: Matt Meeker , CEO, founder, and executive chairman, BARK Host: Rob Markey , Partner, Bain & Company Give us feedback: Customer Confidential Podcast Feedback Send us a note: Contact Rob Timestamped Topics 01:44 – What BARK does, from BarkBox the subscription to BARK Air the travel service 04:51 – How Matt's Great Dane, Hugo, sparked the idea for BarkBox 06:25 – How their first 78 boxes grew through word of mouth 11:04 – Expanding beyond subscriptions and entering Target stores 18:31 – Why BARK went public in 2021 and the importance of financial independence 26:32 – Balancing investor expectations with long-term customer value 35:32 – Responding to tariffs while protecting longtime subscribers Notable Quotes [06:00] "Frankly, we didn't expect anything. We thought maybe there might be a hundred customers out there who subscribed to this thing, we'll learn how a commerce business works, and won't that be fun? That was our ambition: to build something fun and make some people and their dogs happy." [7:00] "When we started, there were about 38 million households in the US with dogs. Today, that's about 66 million. So that grew really fast." [11:00] "When people said, 'My dog loved this [toy],' it often was followed with, 'Where do I get more of this?' And so that was just an easy leap of us saying, 'OK, here's where you can get more: right here at our shop.'" [15:00] "We went to the lengths of hiring, basically, spies, photographers, and people on the ground to go in. Mystery shoppers, essentially. Watch the aisles, interview customers, and talk about: Why are you buying that thing? What brought you in here? Why is this appealing to you? Because we were just so hungry for information about what's going on in that environment. And that, to me, is still the most difficult part of the retail experience." Additional Resources We discuss another subscription service, Birchbox, on Customer Confidential episode #34: https://baincompany.libsyn.com/ep-43-how-birchbox-unwraps-customer-data-to-open-up-delight | Learn more about Birchbox here: https://www.netpromotersystem.com/insights/birchbox-unboxing-a-fantastic-customer-experience-nps-podcast/ Read about when BARK became public here: https://www.gunder.com/en/news-insights/client-news/barkbox-announces-it-will-become-a-public-company-through-merger-with-northern-star-acquisition-corporation Read the email BARK sent to subscribers about tariffs impacting their business: https://bark.co/blogs/bark-post/tariffs-barkbox?srsltid=AfmBOor9u9SYva-tQuvmQGao4IbUBs89Hc_t1vvGEvfzASQiIAL4S1dS

Episode 263: What does it feel like to go into space? To rocket past the Kármán line, float in perfect silence, and return to Earth—all in 11 minutes? Blue Origin's astronauts experience an expensive thrill ride: part theme park roller coaster, part life-altering pilgrimage. In this episode, Allie Kuehner, a Blue Origin astronaut from the New Shepard flight NS-33, relives the intense pause before liftoff, the three-G climb that somehow feels slow, and the instant gravity disappears. Joining her is Sarah Phelps, Blue Origin's former managing director of astronaut and customer experience, who reveals how her team turns that fleeting flight into a story people cherish for life. We take a behind-the-scenes look at Blue Origin ' s astronaut training program. It's curated, detail-oriented, and built to guide participants through an emotionally charged moment of awe. We unpack how a month-long window after Allie first decided to go into space narrows down to an intentionally designed two-day training sprint—one that forges six strangers into a crew that is forever changed upon their return to Earth. We explore, through Sarah's lens, what makes the experience meaningful via her design choices, such as why hearing that audible launch countdown is a moment you never forget. And how the first flight-suit try-on became an unexpected, emotionally charged moment of emphasis for astronauts and their loved ones. Sarah made many experience tweaks, as she explains: "We were going into the debrief, and I said, 'But I didn't hear the "go" poll.' … The answer was, 'Well, the astronauts don ' t need to hear that; that's not part of it. They can just hear the countdown.' I said, 'But I want to hear, "INCO go. Capsule go. Booster go. CAPCOM go. Crewmen go." I want to hear the flight director, "New Shepard is go for launch." … And just because that's never been done before and astronauts on previous vehicles didn't need to hear it, my astronauts … need to feel that reverberation in their whole being that we are go for launch." Allie and Sarah also share lessons any brand can use to choreograph peak emotion without sacrificing operational precision. And they cover what the future of space tourism looks like, such as why going to the space station just for a weekend may become a reality within our lifetimes. Guest: Allie Kuehner, Blue Origin Astronaut, New Shepard flight NS-33, conservationist, and board member of Nature is Nonpartisan Guest: Sarah Phelps , VP, Games Hospitality, United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee, formerly Blue Origin's Managing Director of Customer Experience Host: Rob Markey , Partner, Bain & Company Give us feedback: Customer Confidential Podcast Feedback Send us a note: Contact Rob Timestamped Topics [00:06] Seven-second rumble before motion and the surprise of a slow ascent [00:09] Capsule-booster separation and sudden silence [00:12] First look at Earth from above [00:14] The astronaut experience inspiration and reimagining astronaut training for modern civilians [00:16] Design brief and making 11 minutes meaningful without formal astronaut prep [00:18] Managing human variables like pausing the launch for final phone calls to family [00:19] Adding the audible "go" poll for emotional impact [00:22] Flight-suit reveals and custom bomber jackets as milestone markers [00:23] Humanizing an engineering culture and lessons CX leaders can mirror [00:25] Looking ahead to Sarah's vision of weekend trips to orbit Notable Quotes [00:00:02] "You're going faster than a speeding bullet. You go through three Gs, but you don't even feel the three Gs, because there's so much else going on. You're looking out the window, it's so loud, and then all of a sudden the rocket and the capsule dislodge from one another. And it goes to perfect silence." [00:00:48] "We're giving people an opportunity to go 62 miles above the earth, and you know that somehow, some way, that experience is going to change you, and it's going to change how you see the world moving forward. For me, it's how do we build an experience around that?" [00:05:34] "One of the most surprising things to me was the ascent—how beautifully slow it felt." [00:06:57] "The first time you get to look out these windows down at Earth, you just see this delicate, finite, beautiful planet. And in that moment, you just realize how connected we all are." [00:09:41] "This thing is an 11-minute flight. It ' s basically a half-million-dollar roller coaster ride." Additional Resources Watch a full replay of Allie's Blue Origin New Shepherd Mission NS-33 flight here: https://www.blueorigin.com/news/new-shepard-ns-33-mission

Episode 262: What happens when a cold-pressed juice passion with humble beginnings in your own kitchen counter suddenly meets nationwide demand? Complications arise that demand fast decision making. Meet Crunchy Hydration CEO and founder Megan Riggs, whose company scaled at lightning speed, sending her into problem-solving mode. ( The memorable company name, she says, is because her early carrot juices were too pulpy/crunchy for people's liking.) There was one key problem with scaling their product for a broad consumer audience. " With cold-pressed juices, you cannot wholesale unless you high-pressure pasteurize or heat pasteurize. I had a ton of stores reaching out to carry it, but I couldn ' t sell it to them," Megan said. So, Crunchy Hydration made a series of smart choices. They swapped fragile glass bottles for shelf-stable cans and kept pivoting in lockstep with consumer feedback. They unlocked national distribution after moving from perishable juice to functional sparkling water. Next, they saw velocities spike to 150 units per store per week—nearly 20 times the buyer ' s benchmark. They weighed pay-to-play math like $5,000 per SKU per store slotting fees or free-filling 12,000 cases across 4,000 outlets. They learned distributors wouldn ' t merchandise for you and that maintaining relationships was imperative. To succeed, they needed to choose a leaner path. Today, they ' re a coast-to-coast operation with just 12 employees. They juggle DTC subscriptions, retail velocities, and cash-flow gaps that can stretch four months. The result? A community-driven beverage that competes on flavor, cultural relevance, function, and customer devotion, all in one. Guest: Megan Riggs , CEO and Founder, Crunchy Hydration Host: Rob Markey , Partner, Bain & Company Give us feedback: Customer Confidential Podcast Feedback Send us a note: Contact Rob Timestamped Topics [00:00] Early juicing company origins and the product ' s shelf-life problem [00:03] Switching to shelf-stable functional cans [00:07] Pricing trust at $2.50 a can: too expensive? [00:12] Their first big grocery win and stock-out lessons [00:20] Slotting fees vs. free-fill economics [00:25] How their lean, 12-person team managed national reach [00:29] Picking partners and saying no to bad money [00:31] The new vision for 2026 and the evolution of the ongoing direct-to-consumer push Notable Quotes [00:01] " I wanted to create something on another level, from the flavor portfolio to the smoothness that you ' re tasting. People were spending hundreds of dollars a month on their juices because it truly was different." [6:00] " I ' m grateful that I have access to clean water, and I take a sip. And even just those five seconds of mindfulness, it ' s going to change the trajectory of your day, plus all of the benefits that are actually in this water. You really will feel different." [00:16] " Our net promoter scores of 10 are the people really diving into being the brand ambassadors that are then talking about how Crunchy is part of their identity." [00:38] " I did everything from the start with Crunchy, from driving the forklift, being the delivery person, learning how to build websites, doing socials, creating graphics. I learned all of that, but I also know what I created was not what was going to help us get to the next level." [00:40] " We ' re big believers in time-blocking and knowing what metrics define success before you even start."

Episode 261: What if you could use AI-generated customer twins to test value propositions, pricing, and demand before you go to market? That is the idea my Bain colleague Andy Pierce is exploring. Synthetic customers can help teams move faster, pressure test offers, and simulate trade-offs much faster and at far lower cost than traditional research alone. Says Andy, "You can do things at half the time and a third the cost. You can be a hero internally by helping your business functions get to success better, faster, cheaper." But synthetic customers can also mislead you if you treat them like magic. Left ungrounded, large language models tend to be overly positive, can drift over time, and may reflect bad data rather than real human behavior. To put theory into practice, we'll explore a 24-month telco case study that ran in parallel with a synthetic panel and hit ~85% overlap with human survey responses after confronting both bias and brown-nosing behavior. Guest: Andy Pierce, Partner, Bain & Company Host: Rob Markey , Partner, Bain & Company Give Us Feedback: Help us improve the podcast here: https://bit.ly/CCPodcastFeedback Time-Stamped Topics: 00:00 — Value proposition basics and the design target question 00:05 — Pricing as the most natural lever and why finance often doubts research 00:09 — Early LLM experiments 00:10 — Telco case study 00:12 — Over-positivity and tuning to an ~85% survey overlap 00:14 — Quarter-by-quarter improvement 00:35 — Rational vs. experiential vs. emotional Time-Stamped Quotes: [32:00] "We've already started to see a world where I can train an LLM on a new idea, develop a new value proposition—or an extension to an existing value proposition—and instead of trying to predict the research outcome, I'm trying to predict actual sales in the marketplace." [37:00] "It's not good enough to just create the persona … you still have to test against real humans." [38:00] "Synthetic customers are here to stay. It's not a fad. And clients are already using them to build a competitive advantage." Resources Referenced on Today's Show: Generative Agent Simulations of 1,000 People — https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.10109 Simulating Human Behavior with AI Agents — https://hai.stanford.edu/assets/files/hai-policy-brief-simulating-human-behavior-with-ai-agents.pdf How Synthetic Customers Bring Companies Closer to the Real Ones — https://www.bain.com/insights/how-synthetic-customers-bring-companies-closer-to-the-real-ones/ UXAgent: A System for Simulating Usability Testing of Web Design with LLM Agents — https://arxiv.org/html/2504.09407v2 The Rise of Synthetic Respondents in Market Research — https://nielseniq.com/global/en/insights/education/2024/the-rise-of-synthetic-respondents Synthetic Users: If, When, and How to Use AI-Generated "Research" — https://www.nngroup.com/articles/synthetic-users/ A Tale of Two Identities: An Ethical Audit of Human and AI-Crafted Personas — https://arxiv.org/html/2505.07850v1 Luxury in Transition: Securing Future Growth — https://www.bain.com/insights/luxury-in-transition-securing-future-growth/

Episode 260: When customers must re-explain the same problem, reopen old tickets, and chase for follow-ups, a shiny new tool won't help unless it's connected to support or sales history. How can leaders act on real signals to build shared memory and fix the root cause? Jeannie Walters, founder and CEO of Experience Investigators, and John Abraham, a customer experience consultant, believe that most customer frustration isn ' t about a single moment. It ' s about when someone becomes worn down by repeated fixes, handoffs, and follow-ups. When organizations chase shiny tools without a clear execution plan, it ' s harder to agree on what " great" customer experience actually means. Learn how AI-assisted listening (for things like tone, behavior, and patterns) surfaces exhaustion signals that surveys miss, why sentiment analysis becomes a dead end without action, and how to replace tool-chasing with cross-functional fixes that stick. We ' ll also cover the danger of becoming a " company with no memory," and the simple prompt leaders can use to ask, " What can we learn … without a survey?" The goal? When you stop celebrating case-by-case resolutions, you eliminate those frustrating repetitions that drain trust. Guests: Jeannie Walters , CEO, Experience Investigators, and John Abraham , Customer Experience Consultant Host: Rob Markey , Partner, Bain & Company Give us feedback: Customer Confidential Podcast Feedback Send us a note: Contact Rob Timestamped Topics [00:00] Shiny tools derail real outcomes [00:02] Learn without a survey mindset [00:04] The company with no memory [00:07] AI listening, beyond survey bubbles [00:12] Repetition, not incidents, drives exhaustion [00:14] Trade-offs beat vague promises [00:18] Redefine success beyond scores Notable Quotes [00:02] Jeannie: "The siloed nature of organizations is still here, and that's just the nature of how big organizations work. What I am more excited about is that it's not just about that holistic idea, but really helping individuals understand where they fit." [00:07] John: "The big debate [used to be] around driver questions and how long should the survey be. Now, the debate is much more, 'What can I learn without a survey?'" [00:08] John: "It's one thing to take a large data set and say, 'Okay, anybody can log in and play around with it.' It's very different when you see data, and you work in a frontline team or at a location." [00:15] Jeannie: "We have to say, 'This is who we are, and this is the promise we're making to you.' If we say we're gonna be all things to all people, we're saying we're nothing to no one." Additional Resources - Jeannie reveals how any leader can win with her proven method to drive performance, retention, and revenue by making customer experience their greatest competitive advantage in her upcoming book, Experience Is Everything: Making Every Moment Count in the Age of Customer Expectations .

Episode 259: How do you prevent first-trip hassles such as a room not being ready at check-in, Wi-Fi outages, or service delays from discouraging first-time customers from returning? Today ' s guest, Rachel Bicking, EVP of Innovation at Kobie Marketing, says that after a slightly negative first trip, customers are 80% less likely to return. Kobie—a technology platform that builds and runs rewards and loyalty programs—is solving this. They use a "journey atlas" to read social signals, spot subtle first-trip frictions, and then trigger targeted offers or fixes. They model lift and rewards liability so that investment can follow behavior change. Journey maps freeze a tense customer moment. A live atlas shows where small failures block the next purchase and coordinates fixes across channels. Inside the business, spending becomes about precision. Simulators forecast lift, break-even, and profit impact by segment and moment, so finance are able to see trade-offs before money moves. The payoff? Practical programs that grow trips, expand categories, and raise lifetime value. Guest: Rachel Bicking , EVP of Innovation, Kobie Marketing Host: Rob Markey , Partner, Bain & Company Give Us Feedback. Help us improve the podcast here: https://bit.ly/CCPodcastFeedback Time-Stamped Topics: [00:03] First-trip friction that kills repeat purchases, with examples and fixes [00:10] Personalization that simplifies the customer experience [00:12] Emotional Loyalty Scoring, habit, status, and reciprocity [00:21] Coordinating recovery across store, app, and site for the same customer [00:23] Using precision to avoid incentivizing the wrong customer base [00:27] Designing redemptions to expand baskets, categories, and trip frequency [00:31] Accounting for redemption cost and liability without derailing good decisions [00:34] Using simulators to forecast lift and break-even before spending a dollar [00:36] The moment modeling convinces finance to reallocate the budget Time-Stamped Quotes: 00:05 — "What we're trying to do at scale is identify those moments that matter and those micro-moments that then lead to a negative or positive experience. Because we want to amplify the positives and we want to make sure that we intercept the negative ones." 00:07 — "I think there's been a broader inclination to say, 'Hey, if it's below a certain amount, people don't care.' And this is where personalization becomes really important. If I get delayed checking into my hotel room and I have to go to the next meeting and I don't have time to put my stuff down, ten minutes matters." 00:08 — "Data-wise, we're always trying to break down customers' interactions [and] rewards into a series of metadata, into a series of features, so that we can make them more explainable at scale." 00:13 — "If personalization is done well, the experience from a customer perspective should be very simple. It should be guided. It should be deliberate."

Episode 258: How did two new leaders turn angry customer calls into executive promises to earn customer trust and advocacy? Charlon McIntosh, Chief Customer Operations Officer, and Melissa Pint, Chief Digital Information Officer, both joined Frontier Communications on the same day in 2021. At the time, Frontier faced both bankruptcy and a reputation crisis: Millions of customer complaint calls were pouring in, with only one way to reach the company. Charlon and Melissa inherited a brand that customers didn't trust. To fix it, they built a system where complaints trigger commitments, leaders face weekly scrutiny, and new product and feature launches aren't approved until they are absolutely ready. "Our CEO, Nick Jeffery, outlined a very simple four-point strategy for us," says Charlon. "Build fiber, sell fiber, improve the customer experience, and improve our operational efficiency." In alignment with these goals, Frontier treated millions of monthly calls as a focus group, and started by redesigning its messy billing process. They used data on call reasons and complaint volumes to guide a weekly, two-hour "earning customer loyalty" meeting across departments. One Friday at a time, owners identified fixes, rather than providing chest-beating updates. Charlon and Melissa's collaborative relationship is an enviable example of cross-functional teamwork. They finish each other's sentences and share a single scorecard. "There is no IT strategy," Melissa says. "There is only the business strategy." "And customers tell us if it worked," adds Charlon. A digital-first agenda became the default. Customers now use chatbots for routine tasks, with a one-tap handoff to a person. Progress runs on shared operations and IT metrics, with the CEO actively observing from the customers' viewpoint, even using customer tools himself, to identify adjustments they could implement in real time. "We were able to shift adoption from nearly a hundred percent of our transactions being handled in a call center to today, where less than 20% of our interactions are assisted between chat and phone calls," Charlon says. "The point isn't deflection. It's a faster, better answer." Guests: Charlon McIntosh , Chief Customer Operations Officer, Frontier Communications, and Melissa Pint , Chief Digital Information Officer, Frontier Communications Host: Rob Markey , Partner, Bain & Company Give us feedback: Customer Confidential Podcast Feedback Send us a note: Contact Rob Time-Stamped Topics [00:02:00] Frontier's turnaround mandate and four-point strategy [00:05:00] How experience assurance sets standards and shapes launches [00:07:00] How call volume helps spot customer experience opportunities [00:09:00] How a weekly "earning customer loyalty" forum drives executive action [00:10:00] Frontier's prioritization of billing and communications cleanup [00:18:00] How digital channels rapidly shift interactions [00:23:00] How their chatbot resolves most chats by understanding intent [00:27:00] Diving into results experienced thus far and record-low churn [00:39:00] Issuing a no-go on a marquee launch to prioritize quality [00:45:00] Looking ahead to the future of data and AI Notable Quotes [00:08] "The interactions with our customers every day in our contact channels, those are like mini focus groups. They're telling us what's confusing, what's broken, what we've done wrong, where they need help, and where they need additional support. We used the reasons customers were calling as our initial guide to say what's happening." [10:00] "As a care leader, I have the data. I can tell my partners across the organization where we are making poor decisions and where we have low quality. It's the ability to get them to listen to me. That's what makes the difference in my team's success and our ability to improve the customer experience." [15:00] "As a turnaround company, since we did need to turn around pretty quickly, we did not have the luxury of completely changing core legacy backend systems. … Our strategy was to create a layer on top of them that would bring systems together." [18:00] "A digital-first strategy means things are going to start being automated, and you put things in your customer's hands; you're giving more power to your users to have automated tasks. That drives different traffic in your backend systems—different traffic patterns—that backend systems need to accommodate."

Episode 257: How do you earn the next banking customer ' s loyalty, one moment at a time? Focus on what customers choose, and why. According to John Finley, head of marketing, technology, and innovation at BMO, a bank operating across North America, customer loyalty shifts with context. His team takes signals—what customers say—and wires them back into the very next touch. They then test whether the micro-fix actually changes the next behavior. The goal is to earn the next choice—and the corresponding interaction. To make this happen, BMO runs targeted interventions wherever friction points show up. For example, " Customers who don ' t know who their banker is are much more likely to be a detractor," explains John. To address this, BMO will reintroduce the customer to their banker and then track whether that specific change moves the next response. It ' s a practical and simple playbook: close rapport gaps, personalize the next contact, and measure whether advocacy—not just willingness to recommend alone—drives ongoing loyalty. Guest: John Finley , Managing Director, Head of Marketing, Technology, & Innovation, BMO Host: Rob Markey , Partner, Bain & Company Give us feedback: Customer Confidential Podcast Feedback Send us a note: Contact Rob Time-Stamped Topics [00:03:00] Feeding survey input back into the next interaction [00:03:00] Use case on reintroducing the banker to close detractor risk [00:04:00] Causation vs. correlation: designing tests that read the next response [00:05:00] Post-acquisition noise: how integration affects signals [00:06:00] A multi-bank reality of how loyalty shifts according to the situation [00:07:00] Loyalty (the emotional) compared to retention (the behavioral) [00:09:00] Advocacy and " willing to recommend"; why formal referrals fall short [00:10:00] Don ' t chase more surveys; mine behavioral data to reap value Notable Quotes [05:00] " Customers who don't know who their banker is are much more likely to be a detractor." [06:00] " We're very much in test mode. … We're going to be able to measure how the interaction [customers] had influences the next time they provide us feedback." [08:00] " If somebody ' s willing to recommend, that's one thing. But if somebody's advocating strongly, it's that next step of loyalty."

Episode 256 : What turns CX skeptics into advocates? A listening engine that makes caring for those you serve the gold standard. At IMG Academy, a private sports academy and boarding school in Florida, Chief Operating Officer Mike Milliron led the launch of a centralized experience team. "Not interested," said everyone from athletics, academics, athletic development, and student life. Why? IMG Academy's culture initially prized local control. "Owners of experience," says Mike, is how teams saw themselves. Mike and his team persisted. They built a real-time listening program with trusted access and immediate visibility so coaches, teachers, and staff could act on feedback. The centralized team partnered across athletics, academics, athletic and personal development, and student life to align fixes and remove friction for frontline work. Results followed: NPS rose for parents and students. Re-enrollment increased. Earned growth forecasts climbed. "It made their jobs easier," explains Mike. "But also, it helped them get to the end result they want: delivering an unrivaled experience for students." Guest: Mike Milliron , Chief Operating Officer, IMG Academy Host: Rob Markey , Partner, Bain & Company Give Us Feedback: Help us improve the podcast here: https://bit.ly/CCPodcastFeedback Time-Stamped Topics: 00:01 — Who owns experience on a campus built on silos 00:04 — Non-negotiables like culture change and real listening access 00:05 — Mission UCX prioritizes caring for those they serve 00:06 — Early financial signals drove re-enrollment to tick up 00:07 — Standing up CX and a listening program spanning multiple verticals 00:08 — Value lands when CX makes people's jobs easier 00:09 — New games unlocked by data and insight loops 00:11 — Rapid-fire takes on popular CX buzzwords Time-Stamped Quotes: [09:00] "The most difficult part was trying to figure out how it was actually going to work. Once we got it up and got it moving and realized the value right away, it became one of the smartest decisions, and it made people's jobs easier." [9:00] "We introduced a listening program. We introduced a dedicated team to work across verticals. [It was about] just the cultural component of A) getting that team in place, and then B) trying to figure out how do we actually best navigate what's been in place for the previous 35 years—and some muscles that have been built—in a trustworthy way and in a way that people wanted to engage." [06:00] "We're starting to see customer experience and NPS go up across parents, students, and essentially all of our experiences in our product lines. We're also seeing employee experience go up, which is super important—that's helped with retention and workplace satisfaction." [10:00] "We have different opportunities to actually understand how to drive value and impact. And we're just like, 'Oh my gosh, we never would've thought that we're able to do this.' And how it then ties back to a retention strategy or to a new product or new experience that we want to launch. So, it's fun to actually see those things come to life." Resources "A New Playbook" (Episode 230 with former IMG Academy president, Tim Pernetti)

Episode 255: One of healthcare's biggest blind spots? When patients turn 18. It's the moment they age out of pediatrics and fall headfirst into a system designed to prioritize older, sicker adults. Physicians, stretched thin, reserve energy for complex cases, giving young adults shorter visits and less attention. That means early signs of medical trouble, like anxiety or preventive needs, go missed. Jason Guardino and Karen San, care experience experts at The Permanente Medical Group, are addressing this massive and often invisible problem head-on. The Permanente Medical Group found that younger patients in their twenties and thirties consistently gave lower satisfaction scores than both pediatric and senior patients. "They didn ' t feel listened to and they felt dismissed," Jason says. "They felt like there was a lack of compassion during that [medical] visit." That sentiment, combined with rising anxiety, digital misinformation from things like social media, and a national shortage of mental health professionals, creates a high-stakes problem few health systems are equipped to solve. When doctors unintentionally triage young adults as low risk, this puts younger patients' health at risk, "If you don't slow down and focus on providing a great experience, you can miss something that could be potentially very dangerous for this patient," Jason explains. Fixing this gap means rethinking how we treat both patients and providers, from doctors to nurses to clinicians. To drive change, The Permanente Medical Group is listening—literally. Through live feedback tools and real-time digital prompts, they're surfacing patient pain points. That data is changing how care teams engage with young adults and helping leaders understand the double bind facing providers: everyone needs high quality care, despite limited time and resources. Guests: Jason Guardino , Chief Experience Officer and Gastroenterologist, The Permanente Medical Group, and Karen San , Senior Director of Care Experience, The Permanente Medical Group Host: Rob Markey , Partner, Bain & Company Give us feedback: Customer Confidential Podcast Feedback Send us a note: Contact Rob Time-Stamped Quotes 00:01:00 – Why young adults often feel overlooked in adult care 00:02:30 – The Net Promoter Score drop for post-pediatric, 18-year-old patients 00:04:00 – Pediatric expectations compared to the reality of adult care 00:06:00 – How provider triage creates blind spots 00:08:00 – Understanding complaints from young patients 00:09:30 – Social media and how people's anxiety levels impact care 00:10:30 – The mental health burden on primary care 00:12:00 – Listening at scale, with real-time feedback 00:13:30 – What patient ratings can reveal, data-wise 00:15:00 – Why compassion still beats automation Notable Quotes 00:00:05 "We don't set [children up] well for when they make a transition into adult medicine. There's an opportunity to strengthen our care delivery model to meet those expectations and the ever-changing patient expectations." 00:00:07 "If you don't slow down and focus on providing a great experience, you can miss something that could be potentially very dangerous for this patient. Even if they're in the minority, I always say, if something happens a few percent of the time, somebody has to be in that small percentage of time—that [means] an injury can happen." 00:00:08 "The system stressors disproportionately affect our younger members because the providers are using this as a kind of survival tactic. They're saving their energy for the more complex patients with more comorbidities. And so it's not affecting our older population the same way it is our younger." 00:00:09 "We have found that the younger population [does] have heightened anxiety. And that's fueled by a number of things. Covid-19 affected their perception of health. Social media is affecting how they define what good looks like. And so they're looking to primary care providers, who may not be experts in mental healthcare, to provide that mental healthcare. And that also creates a friction point that we need to solve for." 00:00:11 "We did a pilot of 5 of our 21 medical centers for several months. And then, in December of 2023, we launched it throughout the entire medical group—so, 21 medical centers and all of our patients. So we're about a year and four months into this, and right now, we're sitting at about 2.5 million results. We have about 1.5 million—what we call 'caring moments'—[where] patients write about their clinicians and the staff. And as we say, it's an expression of gratitude, appreciation, and love—like something we've never had before." Resources Check out Episode 197 of Customer Confidential, where we interviewed Jason Guardino back in 2022 on the importance of compassion in healthcare: https://www.netpromotersystem.com/insights/compassion-in-healthcare-podcast/

Episode 254: What if the future of AI in customer experience is built not by giant platforms but by small, reusable, open source AI agents? Gurdeep Pall, President of AI Strategy at Qualtrics, believes open, modular AI agents will outmaneuver big tech's locked-down systems. In this conversation from the X4 Summit, Gurdeep argues that "experience agents"—task-specific bots that can plug into any stack—will give companies more control, better performance, and real freedom. Closed AI platforms promise convenience, but they trap businesses in rigid walled gardens. Gurdeep argues that modular architectures unlock something better: flexibility, reuse, and evolution. "Break down the agents to very specific functionality," he says. "And those agents can be invoked by many different agents for different types of tasks." This isn't just a tech choice. It's a business and philosophical stance. Qualtrics is partnering with LangChain and releasing open connectors to build an ecosystem of interoperable agents. The goal? Let companies mix, match, and scale customer-facing systems without depending on any one vendor. " This is one semantic level up," he says, comparing today's agentic architectures to the launch of the web and mobile eras. "What agents are going to do for user experience—taking our digital game to the next level—is very exciting." Guest: Gurdeep Pall , President of AI Strategy, Qualtrics Host: Rob Markey , Partner, Bain & Company Give Us Feedback: https://bit.ly/CCPodcastFeedback Time-Stamped Topics: (00:01) Why Qualtrics is going all-in on open agentic AI (00:04) An overview of the Qualtrics and LangChain partnership (00:06) The modular architecture of " experience agents" (00:08) Why one task might require seven agents (00:09) How specialization allows reuse and scale (00:10) Rejecting the walled garden model (00:11) Making open systems friction-free (00:12) A real-time use case from the X4 stage (00:14) Plug and play simplicity for complex integrations (00:15) Why this is a new digital paradigm Time-Stamped Quotes: [7:00] "It's about how you break up the task. Like, when you call the human, the human didn't sit there and not do anything and the password got reset. The human went to a piece of software and they went and worked on it. So, what we are talking about here is the combination of software and the human, now organized most efficiently." [8:00] " If you're able to break down the agents to very specific functionality, then those agents can be invoked by many different agents for different types of tasks." [10:00] " There is one example of a very small, open system called the Internet, which somehow, through open standards, became one of the most incredible innovations of human beings ever. So what we are trying to do is to take a stand and say, 'We believe in open systems and we want to let our customers know that this is a choice.'"

Episode 253: Desjardins thought its cooperative roots made it member-first by default. Then members started leaving. Desjardins is a 125-year-old financial co-op based in Quebec. It has deep community ties and a proud history. But that pride masked a painful truth: Members no longer saw it as customer-centric. The organization believed its cooperative structure guaranteed loyalty—until low NPS scores and rising member churn showed otherwise. Mathieu Staniulis and Séverine Clairet recount how Desjardins confronted its own mythology, restructured governance, and began treating feedback as a system, not a score. Desjardins ' wake-up call came in the early 2010s. Despite its co-op status, members said the experience felt disjointed. Branches operated as near-independent entities. " It was really difficult to see the full scope of our company because we were presenting ourselves as different companies," says Mathieu. CEO Guy Cormier led a bold move: unifying the 17 siloed organizations within Desjardins under a single governance structure. But structure alone wasn ' t enough. Internally, CX, risk, and profit still pulled in different directions. As Mathieu puts it, " People in charge of customer experience only talk about customer experience and NPS. People in P&L ownership talk about their performance—their bottom line. How can they improve their performance, especially on the financial metrics? And then you have the risk people trying to manage risk and deal with regulators always bringing new regulations, especially in the financial industry. And I believe we have to find a way to work together to balance customer experience, efficiency or financial metrics, and risk management." The challenge became about integrating those forces to make balanced, member-first decisions—without sacrificing performance. Now Desjardins faces a new frontier: recreating intimacy in a digital world. Transactions moved online. But financial advice—the core of trust and loyalty—remains unsolved. The question, Mathieu says, is urgent and unanswered: " How do we bring advice into a digital world?" Guests: Mathieu Staniulis , Vice President, Products, Solutions & Digital, and Chief Transformation Officer | Séverine Clairet , Vice President Customer Experience & Marketing Strategy, Desjardins Host: Rob Markey , Partner, Bain & Company Give us feedback: Customer Confidential Podcast Feedback Send us a note: Contact Rob Time-Stamped Topics 00:01 – A logout button reveals blind spots in member experience 00:04 – Desjardins ' founding story: community aid in a kitchen 00:06 – " Member-owned" in theory vs. practice across 17 silos 00:08 – How Guy Cormier unified Desjardins under one governance model 00:09 – Why NPS lagged despite a strong co-op identity 00:12 – " The S means system": transforming how feedback drives action 00:15 – Balancing CX, P&L, and risk without silos 00:18 – The call center debate: cost now vs. loyalty later 00:20 – Journey teams as a model for cross-functional accountability 00:21 – Digital did the easy part, so what comes next? 00:22 – Can " digital" be intimate? The next frontier for co-ops Notable Quotes [15:00] ​​ "It was really difficult to see the full scope of our company because we were presenting ourselves as different companies. … We had to pivot from working together, but in silos." [16:00] " We believe we're member-focused, but we were lagging in NPS. We were also losing membership, so we had to pivot and change all of that, changing the way we look internally at our performance, raising NPS as the top KPI for our company." [16:00] " That ' s the equation of NPS. Buying more, referring more, and staying longer mean more profitability. For P&L, it means better risk management, because there ' s a tendency to lower your risk when you have loyal customers with you. So you have to bring that all together." [17:00] " We were very proud of Desjardins, especially in the Quebec market. In some lines of products, we have almost 40% market share. You will see a branch of Desjardins in every town. It's deep in our roots." Additional Resources Read Bain ' s case study, From Laggard to Leader: Desjardins Evolves Member Centricity for the Digital Age: https://www.bain.com/client-results/from-laggard-to-leader-desjardins-evolves-member-centricity-for-the-digital-age/

Episode 252: Most CX maturity assessments ask how you think you're doing. This one demands proof. Erin Wallace, director of client engagement at MyCX from Bain & Company, is helping to lead a fundamental shift in how companies measure CX maturity. Most tools rely on perception-based self-assessments that reward self-promotion over progress. The Customer Experience Roadmap and Accreditation (CXRA) demands verifiable proof—evidence against 55 global, industry-backed standards. It's not always comfortable, but it ' s often the turning point. Bain ' s CXRA challenges the internal echo chamber. Erin explains how most assessments rely on surveys sent to a handful of CX insiders, producing a distorted view of reality. The CXRA demands documentation of policies, processes, behaviors, and measurable outcomes such as customer experience metrics, operational KPIs, or business results. It uses outside-in validation to confront that distortion. This isn ' t academic. It ' s where things get real. Leaders often push back. Some insist, " We're better than this." Others admit, " We ' re not as good as we might think." That tension is the point. Because CXRA doesn ' t just assess quality—it measures how consistently CX practices are applied across the business. That ' s how it exposes the " pockets of brilliance" that never scale, leaving most customers with a fragmented, uneven experience and leadership teams with a false sense of progress. For many leaders, conducting the CXRA offers clarity they ' ve never achieved: a shared fact base, benchmarks of world-class practice, and a clear path forward. It doesn ' t just reveal what ' s missing, it builds the conviction to fix it. Guest: Erin Wallace , Director of Client Engagement, Bain & Company Host: Rob Markey , Partner, Bain & Company Give Us Feedback: Help us improve the podcast (feedback link) Key Topics Covered 01:00 – Why perception-based CX tools fall short 02:20 – What defines a successful evidence-based assessment 03:10 – The challenge with identifying " pockets of brilliance" 04:15 – How companies respond to uncomfortable truths 05:40 – Aligning leaders around what " good" really looks like 06:55 – Using 55 global standards to benchmark performance 08:10 – What Bain ' s CX Roadmap and Accreditation assesses 09:30 – What Erin learned at the X4 2025 Conference in Salt Lake City Time-Stamped Notable Quotes [5:00] " MyCX ℠ is a tool anyone in the industry can use, whether you're a strategic advisor, a technology implementer, or a CX practitioner. These should be things we agree on in terms of the standard of excellence for culture, capabilities, and execution." [6:00] " Most maturity assessments—tools to understand where you are and how you're doing with CX—are survey-based. They ' re perception-based. We send [them] out to a couple hundred people in the company, see what they think, and how they think they ' re doing with CX. You usually get back a pretty inactionable result. What's different about MyCX Roadmap and Accreditation, which is based on these global standards, is that it's an evidence-based, outside-in assessment." [7:00] " It ' s an opportunity to dig in and have a conversation. And to evaluate the perception with the policy against results." [8:00] " We look at quality, coverage, and consistency of application across the business. There could very well be a spotlight—like pockets of excellence—that are not applied across the organization in a meaningful way." " [9:00] " What does good look like, and is that really what we aspire to accomplish? And then what will it take to get there? Because oftentimes, everyone has a different opinion of what is ' good. ' And do we really want to get there? This helps [organizations] break through and get that bigger investment unlock that ' s required to lead." Learn more about Bain & Company ' s CX Roadmap and Accreditation process: https://www.bain.com/consulting-services/customer-strategy-and-marketing/customer-experience-transformation/mycx/ Learn more about the Global CX Standards: https://www.netpromotersystem.com/resources/cx-standards/

Episode 251: In 2018, Dell set out to do something big: turn customer feedback into a system that could not only provide insights, but help set priorities and run the business. They had the data. They had the intent. But they made a compromise that many organizations settle on: Rather than enforce one unified approach to customer feedback, they allowed each team to build its own. While this helped with initial adoption and change management, it also led to fragmentation—multiple tools, different methods, no shared truth. And it got worse over time. Real progress ultimately would require centralizing what had become scattered. When Dell ' s Marc Stein appeared on this podcast in 2018 (episode 129), the company had just completed its EMC merger and launched a chief customer office. The ambition: one integrated Net Promoter System to tie sentiment to economics and put the customer at the center of every decision. But good intentions ran into a harsh reality: Every function was listening to customers, but no one was hearing the same thing. In this episode, Mike Valanzola, Dell ' s Senior Director of Voice of Customer and NPS Operations, picks up the story. He explains how misaligned tools, siloed ownership, and governance gaps made customer feedback hard to act on. His team didn ' t want to tear down what existed. Instead, they brought it together. Through consolidation, centralization, shared standards, and stronger governance, they transformed scattered signals into an enterprise-wide system of action. The turning point came with the Customer Experience Roadmap and Accreditation. The CXRA gave Dell a framework to drive internal accountability and rebuild trust in the system. As Mike describes, cross-functional teams now meet weekly to act on shared signals. Tomorrow's goal? Make every employee a promoter and make every signal actionable. Guest: Mike Valanzola , Senior Director, Voice of Customer and NPS Operations, Dell Technologies Host: Rob Markey , Partner, Bain & Company Give us feedback: Customer Confidential Podcast Feedback Send us a note: Contact Rob Time-Stamped Topics 00:01 - Marc Stein ' s 2018 ambition: a unified CX system 03:50 - Why integration faltered: fragmentation, politics, data overload 06:20 - Mike ' s mission: centralize tools, enforce governance 10:00 - Transforming custom systems to create shared accountability 13:30 - Early delivery surprises and sentiment gaps 17:10 - Predictive models and operational fixes 21:00 - How Dell built trust in the new NPS engine 27:45 - Weekly action meetings: turning listening into doing 35:30 - Why CXRA certification mattered, internally and externally 40:00 - Reflections on past company decisions Notable Quotes " We have a robust partner community that allows us to expand our scale in terms of the customers that we can touch. Each and every one of those folks has some things that are important for us to hear." [8:00] "We do—and did—as a company, listen regularly, but we didn't always hear. The reason for that came down to every function across the company, ultimately doing their own listening programs, using their own application, governing how they listened, controlling what they got back, and not sharing it." [18:00] "We had been really in a run-the-business function, really focused on NPS management, really focused on owning that measurement for the company. And now, I was proposing a large-scale, end-to-end corporate transformation that was going to require my own team to think about how we operate, and effectively operate differently." [28:00] Additional Resources Hear our 2018 podcast with Marc Stein on Dell ' s original CX ambition, Bringing Net Promoter to Scale Learn more about Bain ' s MyCX Roadmap & Accreditation

Episode 250: Comcast solved the age-old problem of how to make employee suggestions a powerful, reliable source of value-driving improvements at scale. Sean McEntire, Comcast's Vice President of Customer Strategy and Operations, explains how the Outer Loop channels every employee elevation—no matter how small—through a disciplined screen, assigns a named owner, and tracks progress in public view. Ninety thousand teammates now feed a single pipeline that forces scattered ideas into accountable hands and verified fixes, solving 7,000 customer pain points so far. A frontline agent's push for an easy‑to‑use, large‑button remote shows the system at work: The idea passed triage in hours, landed on the product team's desk, and shipped nationwide within months—evidence that voices on the floor can reshape the hardware in customers' hands. Once an elevation clears triage, technology, operations, or product leads must respond within set deadlines—accept, reject, or ask for data. Every decision and follow‑up lives on the same dashboard employees use to log ideas, so trust grows with each visible step. As McEntire puts it, " CX is all about transparency. If you're going to be transparent with your customer, you need to be transparent with your teammates." The result? Faster fixes, rising JD Power and NPS Prism rankings, and a workforce that, 10 years into the transformation, keeps feeding the Outer Loop because they've seen their suggestions become reality. Guest: Sean McEntire, Vice President, Customer Strategy and Operations, Comcast Host: Rob Markey , Partner, Bain & Company Give Us Feedback: Help us improve the podcast (feedback link) Want to get in touch? Send a note to host Rob Markey . Time-Stamped Topics (00:01) Comcast's early days of the Outer Loop (03:00) Why NPS never drifts when the Outer Loop is active (06:00) What it takes to operationalize trust with 90,000 employees (08:30) Large-button remotes and other frontline-sourced Outer Loop ideas (11:00) Inside the elevation system: votes, comments, and Outer Loop visibility (13:00) Why rejecting ideas can build more trust than accepting them (16:00) An industry-wide trust gap and the Outer Loop's role in closing it (18:00) Moving beyond scores to what drives CX progress (20:00) Synthetic feedback, benchmarking, and the new Outer Loop data stack Time-Stamped Notable Quotes [3:00] " This is our ten-year anniversary of operationalizing NPS within the organization. And we consistently, to this day, listen to both our customers and teammates. We learn from that feedback. […] We act on putting new solutions into the business that improve the lives of our customers and our teammates." [5:00] " We are approaching our 7,000th resolved NPS elevation. So that's 7,000 net new experiences for both our consumers and teammates. And that's true progress." [12:00] "CX is all about transparency. So, if you're going to be transparent with your customer, you need to be transparent with your teammate." [16:00] " CX never sleeps." [23:00] " It's not the score, it's the system. And if people focus on the score, you spend more time trying to explain a few basis points of score change and trying to correlate what may have caused that when it may have nothing to do with that. So it's, the score will be your north star on, 'Are you making progress?'" Additional Resources Learn more about the NPS® Outer Loop by Bain & Company: https://www.qualtrics.com/marketplace/bain-outerloop/ Listen to our two-part 2018 podcast on the origin of Comcast's NPS journey with Charlie Herrin, Comcast's chief customer experience officer: https://www.netpromotersystem.com/insights/inside-a-cable-giants-net-promoter-turnaround-nps-podcast/

Episode 249: When " revenge travel" brought guests roaring back to Four Seasons Hotels, they capped occupancy, turning away guests and revenue. Scott Taber, senior vice president of global hospitality, describes the Four Seasons philosophy: No points, no perks. Just great properties, individual recognition, personal service, and an emphasis on making sure the first five minutes after check-in are spectacular. That belief was put to the test when the world started traveling again and labor gaps persisted at the end of the pandemic. The company had a choice: chase revenue or protect intimacy. It chose intimacy. To avoid overextending staff and diluting the experience, Four Seasons capped occupancy. The organization focused on preserving what Scott calls the "first five": those opening minutes that define a guest's stay. "People want to see your eyes and your teeth," he says. They want to be recognized, not processed. That doesn't mean resisting tech. Four Seasons embraced tools that support connection: a CRM "golden record" surfaces each guest's preferences so staff can deliver personal touches at scale. They also rolled out a proprietary 11-platform chat tool that helps staff resolve 80% of requests within 90 seconds. Last year, they set an NPS record. Culture provides the foundation for the organization's enduring success. Recruiting favors empathy, veterans mentor newcomers, and managers celebrate tiny moments of recognition as fiercely as revenue. With management contracts that stretch a whopping 80 years, Four Seasons plays the long game: culture first. For Four Seasons, the strongest currency isn't points, but people. Guest: Scott Taber , Senior Vice President for Global Hospitality, Four Seasons Hotels Host: Rob Markey , Partner, Bain & Company Give us feedback: Customer Confidential Podcast Feedback Send us a note: Contact Rob Topics Covered: 00:04 How occupancy caps protect service under pressure 00:12 No points program means loyalty through recognition 00:20 Salesforce " golden record" and how it personalizes at scale 00:30 The benefits of their chat platform that responds instantly to guests 00:35 Getting culture right, like hiring empathetic staff and having veterans mentor newcomers 00:41 How their 80-year contracts reinforce a culture-first strategy Notable Quotes: 00:02 " It's the service excellence that we want to have in our properties every single day, and making sure that we have the right tools, training, support, structure, to truly bring that to life. And all while creating great jobs and helping to have amazing leaders and supporting them to create great memories and experiences for our guests." 00:03 " We had a record year last year with our guest experience score, Net Promoter Score." 00:11 " Our typical management agreement is 80 years. We want to be with this hotel, we want to be with this project, for the long term. It's the vision of Mr. Sharp [Four Seasons' founder] committing himself to the property and us being committed to the property for that period of time. I think there are some pretty good foundational elements to keep us going for a long time to come." 00:12 " [Customers] want to be remembered and appreciated for their business. Four Seasons doesn't have a loyalty program. We're a small brand: 133 hotels. So, how do we do that in a way that is thoughtful and that helps our employees to be able to remember our guests in the right way?" 00:25 "We want to hire for attitude and teach the skills. So you are looking for someone who wants to connect with that guest and be in sync with what that guest needs at that moment. And that comes with how we teach and how we coach that behavioral side to engage with the guests—what's important for them in the moment." Additional Resources: Connect the dots between the present and the past with our Customer Confidential podcast from 2016, Inside the Four Seasons Approach to Five-Star Service Learn more about how Four Seasons was impacted by Covid-19 in our brief: The Power to Change

Episode 248: At Dominion Energy, keeping the lights on isn't just a priority—it's the single biggest driver of customer experience. But as customer expectations continue to evolve, the bar keeps rising. Customers don't just want to know when their power will be back, they want to know why it is out. And they expect that experience to be as seamless, informed, and intuitive as downloading and using their favorite mobile apps. Meeting those expectations requires transparency, empathy, and a companywide commitment to service. In this episode, Utibe Bassey, vice president of customer experience, shares how Dominion Energy's mission-driven culture empowers this commitment, and how the company is harnessing tools like NPS Prism to better understand what customers need and how they perceive the service they receive—especially during critical moments like outages. That feedback helps teams act faster, communicate better, and focus on what really matters to customers. And it is, truly, a team sport. From operations and audit to communications and compliance, delivering a great experience takes cross-functional alignment and a shared sense of purpose. It's a culture where colleagues often rotate into different areas to build a greater understanding of the customer experience. Through data-driven decision making, a customer-centric mission, and an "all in" commitment to serve, Dominion is proving that customer-centricity can be a utility's greatest source of power. Key Topics Covered: Communicating clearly about service disruptions Aligning teams around the customer journey Bridging the gap between customer perception and reality NPS Prism as a tool to inspire and inform improvements Meeting rising customer expectations in a utility context The value of empathy and transparency in customer communications Cross-functional teamwork and shared CX goals Strengthening a customer-centric culture Guest: Utibe Bassey , Vice President of Customer Experience, Dominion Energy Host: Rob Markey , Partner, Bain & Company Give Us Feedback: Help us improve the podcast. Want to get in touch? Send a note to host Rob Markey. Notable Quotes: [6:00] "We have a term that we say, 'all in service,' because we're all in service of the customer. We want people, whether they're front line facing or they're in audit, supply chain, or ethics, to connect the dots between … even if it's three or four steps removed, it impacts how customers see our company." [13:00] "The main thing our team tries to keep front and center for all of our stakeholders is that we need a shared outcome." [32:00] "When you have an organization whose colleagues think about the customer in a way that connects themselves to the customer, even personally, this stuff is like wildfire." Additional Resources: Read Bain & Company's Case Study with Dominion Energy: How a National Leader Turned CX Ideas into Action with NPS Prism

Episode 247: What if customers achieve real results—but don ' t know it? Most vendors sell functionality. Mari Cross wants customers to see impact—in their own numbers, in real time. Mari Cross, Chief Customer Officer at Infor, is dismantling a common illusion: that delivering software features equals delivering value. Infor sells enterprise resource planning (ERP) tools, but Mari's focus is on proving business outcomes. She built a system where customers define the results that matter, track them through the product itself, and act on them with confidence. Her team isn ' t there to rescue implementations. They ' re there to make value obvious—and to ensure it keeps showing up. Most ERP systems operate like black boxes. Even when customers get results, they can ' t always prove it. Mari attacks that gap. Infor's value mapping begins before the deal closes. Once the system is live, telemetry and process mining show what ' s working and where clients are drifting off course. This isn ' t a side program—it's baked into the product and reflected back to users in dashboards, metrics, and business KPIs. The shift isn ' t just operational. It ' s cultural. Mari rebuilt Infor ' s customer success team to be proactive, industry-specific, and integrated from day one. That means fewer rescue missions, fewer slide decks, and more conversations grounded in actual product usage and outcome data. And it means the customer success journey starts well before go-live—and runs all the way through renewal. "A good value conversation is if you have some measures in place that are more repeatable than having a value engineer fly in from left field," Mari says. Learn how Infor ' s CareFor Success program gives customer success teams the tools, visibility, and data to show what ' s working and where to go next. And learn how and why value delivered is value clients understand. Guest: Mari Cross , Chief Customer Officer at Infor Host: Rob Markey , Partner, Bain & Company Give Us Feedback: Help us improve the podcast (feedback link) Want to get in touch? Send a note to host Rob Markey . Key Topics Covered: (01:00) The value void: what clients miss—and what it costs (03:30) Why Infor embeds value mapping into the sales process (06:10) Telemetry, process mining, and outcome tracking (11:45) The difference industry specificity makes (14:50) Mari ' s CareFor Success program explained (17:30) Getting sales, success, and product aligned (22:15) Making value visible across the customer lifecycle (25:00) How to track value realization in real time (36:00) Culture change and customer empathy Notable Quotes: [05:00] " If someone wanted to stick completely to standard, they could flip the switch on Day 1 and use our product. That ' s very different than the approach, I think, some other vendors take." [10:00] " In the vision of, ' We succeed when our customers succeed,' the [chief customer officer] role [at Infor] was really pivoted to make sure to focus on ongoing value realization and optimization after the go-live date. That is probably a very unique orientation for Infor." [12:00] "We are very focused on this idea of value engagement. We launched CareFor Success, which is our success program, last year. But it's completing this value-based customer journey all the way through where we are on a regular basis, across all teams, and repeatedly driving value with our customers by helping them look at the data, optimize, and then that visibility into value delivered within the product." [29:00] " We want to be in sync with our strategy when we talk about success motions, because that alone is an incredible power. We can become proactive."

Episode 246: The AI future of customer service is already here—and it ' s better than most people think. In this episode, Deon Nicholas, President and Executive Chairman of Forethought, joins host Rob Markey to show us how some companies are already using AI to resolve customer issues end-to-end in ways we could barely imagine just a couple of years ago. Deon introduces us to agentic AI: an emerging class of intelligent agents that take real action, integrate across enterprise systems, and adapt to each customer ' s needs. Drawing on his experience building Forethought ' s platform, Deon reveals how these systems are resolving issues, improving customer satisfaction, and going live in as little as 1 to 30 days. This isn ' t a future promise. It ' s happening now. The episode explores the architecture behind agentic AI, including Forethought ' s use of multi-agent systems, plain-language Autoflows, and a Discover model that learns company policies from historical tickets and call logs. Rob and Deon dig into risk, hallucination, and data privacy concerns—and how to address them without six-month implementation timelines. A surprising insight? Forethought sometimes adds a delay to its lightning-fast responses. Why? To build trust through operational transparency. Deon explains how even loading dots can reassure customers that the system is working on their behalf. Guest: Deon Nicholas , Founder, President, and Executive Chairman, Forethought Host: Rob Markey , Partner, Bain & Company Give Us Feedback: Help us improve the podcast (feedback link) Want to get in touch? Send a note to host Rob Markey . Key Topics Covered [1:00] Agentic AI vs. traditional chatbots [2:00] Why chatbots fail regarding decision trees and limitations [4:00] Real-time AI issue resolution and automation [7:00] AI integration with enterprise systems [12:00] Fast deployment and autoflow policy learning [15:00] Multi-agent AI systems and scalability [18:00] AI adoption challenges and business integration [22:00] Balancing AI automation and human agent handoffs [27:00] Cost comparison of AI vs. business process outsourcing [30:00] Rapid AI deployment and testing strategies Time-stamped Notable Quotes [4:00] " With an agentic AI, you have something that has learned from your business policies. It's read through hundreds of thousands of past conversations, knows the vernacular, knows how to respond, and knows the business policy. So, instead of getting a menu of items, you just have a conversation." [13:00] " You probably already have hundreds of thousands of conversations, whether they're sitting in transcripts, support tickets, [or] call recordings. It turns out that is a wealth of data that can train an AI in such a way that you don't need to manually create all these rules and decision trees and workflows." [ 16:00] " When we first launched our LLM-native AI two years ago, there were some hallucinations. But we've been able to go through, evaluate the model, fine-tune the model, and now we ' re at the point where it rarely happens. What we typically say to everyone is: ' Test it. Test it before you launch it, run a 14-day free trial, proof of value, run us against anyone else in the market.'" [21:00] " What's beautiful about all of this is now you get to the point where AI can become embedded into the ecosystem—and, ironically, make all of these human experiences better." [21:00] " AI is making it so that when it's time to actually hand off to a human agent, you're far less frustrated, or far less likely to be frustrated. And then the humans will now be resolving issues that require more judgment and more empathy."