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 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

Andrew Clayton, global head of customer experience at E.ON, talks to Rob about how you inspire an organization to respond to customer feedback, not once or twice, but continuously, with unflagging energy. Since the early 2000s, he has scaled sustainable NPS programs at three major companies, Allianz, Bupa, and now E.ON. He has become an expert at winding that customer feedback loop into the DNA of the company, so that NPS self-replicates, even into new teams and new projects.

Alex Terpstra, head of innovations at ABN AMRO Bank, was born and raised for customer service. His father, a retailer in the Netherlands, never failed to remind young Alex who put food on the family's table. "Every day on our dinner table we were talking about customers." On this episode of the Net Promoter System podcast, Alex explains how he helped ABN AMRO to launch radically new services for its customers, even at the risk of a short-term profit hit. The payoff, he says, has been highly lucrative customer relationships that pay dividends far beyond the initial costs.

A recent Wall Street Journal article ran under a catchy headline, "The Dubious Management Fad Sweeping Corporate America." The dubious management fad, according to the article, is the Net Promoter Score. Of course, the headline bothered me and my podcast guest, Maurice FitzGerald, the former vice president of customer experience at HP. But once we read past the attention-grabbing headline, we agreed with much of what the authors had to say. They provided a sober summary of many ways a company can misinterpret or misuse the Net Promoter Score. In fact, I'd encourage NPS practitioners to ignore the headline and read the article with an eye towards all of the things you shouldn't do with the score. While NPS has gained tremendous popularity, many companies have cut corners or failed to invest in understanding the benefits of a comprehensive Net Promoter System. The article offers a jumping off point for a deeper conversation about the mistakes and errors that we wish all practitioners of the Net Promoter System would avoid, once and for all.

IBM used to collect customer feedback through longitudinal surveys—until Kathy McGettrick, the vice president of market development and insights at IBM, realized the surveys put all responsibility for creating quality experiences on IBM's sellers and ignored other aspects of the customer experience. So Kathy launched a digital platform that sent client feedback deeper into IBM. Today, some 40,000 IBMers use a client experience management platform that tracks hundreds of thousands of data points.

Razia Richter's path to the executive suite at Petco took her on a wild, winding tour of the company's operations and back-office functions, from accounting to inventory analytics to supply chain, to name a few. By the time Razia was put in charge of Petco's customer experience and the adoption of the Net Promoter System, she had personally busted through just about every organizational silo imaginable. And because she had walked in the shoes of so many of the company's line leaders, her early days as chief customer officer were marked by surprisingly little of the resistance often encountered when companies adopt the Net Promoter System. Her practical experience guided her to pursue an approach that earned the trust of business leaders and functional teams. Without that trust, many companies fail to achieve the culture change that the Net Promoter System demands. In this podcast, Razia shares just how far you can go when you have executive buy-in from the start.

Loyal listeners may recall my last conversation, with Joshua Rossman, formerly the senior director of global customer loyalty and NPS at eBay. Since that interview, Josh has left eBay and consulted with a variety of companies on using the Net Promoter System to help guide customer experience improvements. Now he's at McAfee, one of the world's largest security technology companies. 

Josh has mastered the art of creating a customer feedback system that supports senior executive goal setting and decision making, while also providing the platform for frontline learning and growth. His approach gets to the very heart of why a customer becomes a promoter or a detractor in the first place. By developing a rich set of qualitative insights and combining it with the quantitative data surrounding NPS, Josh seizes the attention of executives across the organization and draws leaders into a fast-moving feedback loop with the customers.

Kevin Parker is the chairman and CEO of HireVue, a platform for automating job interviews. Hirevue combines video interviews of job applicants with an AI-powered algorithms that can filter for qualifications faster than any HR team. Of course, an algorithm doesn't evaluate candidates the same way a human could. Like any breakthrough in machine learning, it's a grab bag of promising signals, emerging from the noise, and, well, noise. As Kevin will tell you, though, the signal-to-noise ratio is falling fast. 

Host Rob Markey and Ignacio 'Nacho' Deschamps, group head of international banking and digital transformation at Scotiabank, discuss the role of the Net Promoter System in culture change. They also explore what Nacho has learned during Net Promoter System journeys at three different banks around the world, including how to survive the wait for results to catch up to investment during year two.

Host Rob Markey talks to Ignacio 'Nacho' Deschamps, Group Head of International Banking and Digital Transformation at Scotiabank, who explains why he has long put customers and technology at the heart of his career in banking and describes how many of Scotiabank's digital efforts are developed locally and then shared internationally throughout the bank.

This week, on the Net Promoter System Podcast, I'm sharing Part 2 of my interview with Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the former commander of U.S forces in Afghanistan and head of the Joint Special Operations Command during the Iraq war.

We pick up the conversation where we left off: how a leader, who has successfully built trust among a team of rivals, can then push the organization to change its strategy on a dime.

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

General Stanley McChrystal, the former commander of U.S forces in Afghanistan and head of the Joint Special Operations Command in Iraq, joins me for part one of a two-part interview. In our discussion, he describes how he forged trust among the military's most elite fighting units. Today, he shares what he learned with civilian executives, as a co-founder of the McChrystal Group, offering battle-tested advice to leaders in the business world.

When I rent a car, I too often find myself waiting in line for the service desk, wondering why my car wasn't ready and waiting for me, as promised. 

Now I can test my hypotheses against the real world experience of this week's guest, Eric Smuda. He led customer experience practices for two different giants of the rental car industry, Avis Budget Group and Hertz. He draws back the black curtain, and reveals what it's like to deliver a car to a customer, from behind the scenes.

Like fitness or dieting, getting started with the Net Promoter System is easy in some ways. Executives are typically optimistic and excited about their fledgling program, riding the high of their early wins. And then something emerges and threatens that momentum. But like maintaining good health, the companies that stay the course learn to anticipate their customers' needs, allowing them to deepen relationships and deliver bigger financial results in the long term.

That's what happened at CA Technologies. In this episode, I continue my conversation with Dayton Semerjian. He guided the enterprise software company through a Net Promoter journey that returned it to growth. In this episode, Dayton discusses the challenges he faced while bringing culture change to CA and how he overcame them.

CA Technologies' Dayton Semerjian joined me on the podcast in 2016 to discuss his approach to managing the enterprise software company's customer experience in a rapidly changing industry. At the time, the business-to-business service provider was deep in a Net Promoter journey that would ultimately rebuild its customer relationships and return it to growth.

Fast forward two years and Dayton's efforts as general manager of global customer success and support not only surpassed senior leaders' expectations, they made CA an attractive acquisition target. In light of CA's success, I invited Dayton back on the podcast to reflect on his experience in the first of a two-part interview.

Host Rob Markey talks to Brian Scudamore, the founder and CEO of 1-800-GOT-JUNK, whose rubbish hauling business started as a way to pay for college and grew into an international franchise. Brian discusses how the company's commitment to customer service helped set it apart from competitors and what it takes to maintain service standards in a growing business.

Big things have been happening at Citizens Financial Group, the New England-based financial services company. After spending 26 years as part of the Royal Bank of Scotland, the company returned to the public market in a 2014 initial offering that raised $3 billion. And the bank has been undergoing a multiyear turnaround effort that has put customers at the center of its business.

In this episode, Rob Markey talks to Beth Johnson, chief marketing officer and head of virtual channels for Citizens Bank. She has been a key player in these efforts since she joined the company in 2013.

Host Rob Markey talks to Bain Partner Gerard du Toit. His team recently asked hundreds of executives if they've adopted 20 of the most popular customer experience tools, and more importantly, whether they're happy with the results. While customer experience tools are not a panacea, they do form an arsenal with which companies can arm themselves to compete. Gerard also discusses the results and other emerging trends in customer experience.

Medical outcomes matter, but they're not the only factor in patient satisfaction. A provider's ability to communicate and express empathy are also critical to the customer experience in healthcare. 

Host Rob Markey welcomes back Maurice FitzGerald, retired vice president of customer experience at HP Software and author of Net Promoter—Implement the System. Rob and Maurice discuss the unique customer experience challenges that healthcare providers and organizations face, and how the Net Promoter System can help.

Host Rob Markey welcomes back Jeanne Bliss, author of the new customer experience book, Would You Do that to Your Mother?

In her book, she argues that companies need to humanize the customer experience to help their employees provide the service that customers want. 

Jeanne also advises senior leaders as founder and president of CustomerBliss, and previously oversaw the customer experience at Land's End, Microsoft, Coldwell Banker and Allstate.

Follow-up calls offer an opportunity to hear real customers describe, in detail, the things that make them love your company, or not. And they can involve senior executives in learning what it's like to be an average customer or an average frontline employee—to get out of the mindset of "corporate" and into the world where customers interact with your company every day.

In this episode, Rob Markey continues his conversation with Charlie Herrin, Comcast's chief customer experience officer, who has been leading Comcast's multiyear Net Promoter turnaround. He discusses some of the most important drivers of culture change there. 

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."

Cable company executives know they have shaky relationships with many customers. In fact, most have been working to improve their customer experience. And one or two are taking truly radical steps to improve. Comcast, one of the biggest Internet providers in the US, is among those working hardest to earn more trust and loyalty from customers. In this episode, Rob Markey talks to Charlie Herrin, Comcast's chief customer experience officer. 

USAA, which primarily serves members of the US military and their families, has some of the most loyal customers in business. How does the company do it?

USAA has organized itself around customer episodes—all the steps required to meet a customer's need—instead of products and services. The company has gone beyond identifying and tracking these crucial moments to assigning leaders to manage and enhance them, using Agile methods to speed change.

Rob Markey recently spoke with Julio Estevez-Breton, USAA's vice president of member and market insights, about the benefits the company is seeing from this radical approach and what it took to get there. 

Rob Markey talks to Charlie Chase, president and CEO of FirstService Brands, which provides property services such as painting, remodeling and storage design through its franchise network. Charlie started as a painting franchise owner in 1982 and went on to start CertaPro Painters, one of the company's brands. 

FirstService uses the Net Promoter System to collect feedback from not only customers, but also prospects who didn't choose his company's services. This allows FirstService's leaders to identify and address weak service experiences.  

Rob Markey welcomes back Fernando Cadena, director of associate engagement at Elwood Staffing Services, which places 25,000 temporary employees at companies across the country. Fernando has been leading the firm's Net Promoter efforts, which began six years ago when he first sought feedback from the company's associates. He has since expanded the company's feedback efforts to its customers. Net Promoter feedback has helped Elwood Staffing improve its customer experience, increase employee retention and build better relationships with the companies it serves. 

Year Up has helped thousands of young adults leave minimum wage jobs and forge meaningful careers. Its one-year program has served almost 20,000 people since 2000, and the vast majority end up in roles at major companies or in college.  

Delivering such strong results requires Year Up to balance the needs of its students, donors and the companies that provide critical support and internships. The organization has been using the Net Promoter System to gauge those relationships to ensure that everyone's needs are met. 

Garrett Warfield, senior director of research and evaluation, and Research and Evaluation Manager Jess Britt say that feedback is simply part of Year Up's culture. In this episode, Rob Markey talks to Garrett and Jess about Net Promoter's role in achieving the organization's mission.  

What do successful leaders have in common? It often comes down to two key traits: passion and perseverance. In other words, they have grit. 

In this episode, Angela Duckworth, a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, shares insights from her New York Times best-selling book, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. She's also the founder of Character Lab, a nonprofit that works to advance the science of character development.

When companies set out to dramatically improve their customer experience, they have many decisions to make—where to invest, which markets to go after, which touchpoints to enhance. And there are usually many opinions to consider for each choice. 

In this episode, Rob Markey talks to Bain Partner Jason Barro about how companies can use a roadmap to leadership to set priorities and find clarity as they work toward customer centricity. 

Rob Markey talks to Jackson Jeyanayagam, chief marketing officer at Boxed, an online grocery startup that's taking on traditional wholesalers by offering personalized service and convenient delivery. Jackson joined the company in 2016 after overseeing digital marketing at Chipotle Mexican Grill.      

Host Rob Markey talks to Celine Del Genes, vice president, concept to consumer, for Adidas Football. She oversees the sports apparel company's go-to-market strategy for soccer shoes and gear, managing key decisions about pricing, sales channels and marketing approaches. Celine is also a Net Promoter practitioner and uses the method to gauge customer reaction to company initiatives and product design. She recently brought together social marketing, agile decision-making and Net Promoter feedback in an innovative campaign to promote Adidas' Glitch soccer cleat. 

Rob Markey talks to Bain Partner Jeff Melton, co-leader of Bain Simple & Digital, an approach that helps companies apply digital technology where it matters. Jeff discusses the importance of choosing the right metrics to gauge a customer episode and what happens when companies choose the wrong ones.

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."

Dell has been collecting customer feedback since Michael Dell dropped out of college three decades ago and founded the company. It's part of the company's DNA.

The computer maker began its Net Promoter journey a decade ago when it was trying to connect customer satisfaction with economic outcomes. Now the company has a robust Net Promoter System that informs major projects and innovations.

In this episode, host Rob Markey catches up with Marc Stein, senior vice president of customer experience at Dell. Marc discusses how the company's comprehensive Net Promoter System has evolved since Dell merged with EMC in 2016.

Rob Markey welcomes Griff and Hunter Jaggard, the brothers behind the FireDisc, a portable propane cooking surface that has become required gear among outdoor enthusiasts. They launched their company in 2010 with a tractor plow disc and an idea inspired by their Texas childhoods, and they have been using Net Promoter to help guide their efforts.

When responding to an angry customer, few words are as effective as "I'm sorry." And yet, it's so hard for some people to apologize sincerely. Why?

In this episode, host Rob Markey welcomes back Maurice FitzGerald, retired vice president of customer experience at HP Software and author of Net Promoter—Implement the System. Together, Rob and Maurice will discuss how behavioral economics can inform companies' interactions with customers and how they use the Net Promoter System.

How does a customer's country of origin affect the feedback they provide about service experiences? Are certain countries home to naturally tough critics? Do people in some countries view rating scales differently?

Cultural differences play a role in Net Promoter feedback, but to a far lesser degree than many practitioners assume. The challenge is to separate cultural issues from real service problems.

In this episode, host Rob Markey welcomes back Maurice FitzGerald, retired vice president of customer experience at HP Software and author of Net Promoter—Implement the System. Together, Rob and Maurice will take on questions about cultural differences that Net Promoter System practitioners often encounter.

Despite companies' best efforts to engage their teams, more than half of employees say they are uninspired and dissatisfied in their roles, according to Bain research. Only 19% of employees say they're inspired and satisfied—a huge opportunity for companies that learn to tap their teams' potential.

We've spent the last several years studying companies' best engagement methods and distilling them into a simple approach that other companies could adopt to get their employees' best. We call it Net Promoter for People.

In this episode, host Rob Markey welcomes Darci Darnell, who leads Bain's Customer Strategy and Marketing practice in the Americas and has played a critical role in developing this powerful system.

Building internal support for a fledgling Net Promoter System can be one of the biggest challenges of getting such an effort off the ground. It requires leaders to not only have a strong grasp of loyalty economics and the company's strategy, but the softer skills necessary to inspire and teach employees to do the right thing for customers.

In this episode, host Rob Markey welcomes back Maurice FitzGerald, retired vice president of customer experience at HP Software and author of Net Promoter—Implement the System. Together, Rob and Maurice will discuss how companies can rally their employees around their Net Promoter System efforts.

No industry has escaped the disruption of digital technology. Advertising is no exception.

Ad agencies, which previously thrived in what was once a loyalty-based industry, are now facing new competition as they struggle to hold on to client relationships. Advertising fee structures have also changed, along with customer expectations.

In this episode, host Rob Markey talks to advertising industry expert Michael Farmer, author of Madison Avenue Manslaughter: An Inside View of Fee-Cutting Clients, Profit-Hungry Owners and Declining Ad Agencies. His firm, Farmer & Co., advises advertising agencies on business strategy, giving him a front-row seat to the industry's dramatic shifts. Michael shares his observations of the changing ad industry and lessons for other companies.

Begging customers for strong scores. Only seeking feedback from customers who had positive outcomes. Altering contact information to make dissatisfied customers hard to reach.

When it comes to gaming the Net Promoter System, we've seen it all and one thing is always clear: When employees intentionally undermine a company's efforts to understand customers and improve service, everyone loses.

In this episode, Rob Markey welcome back Maurice FitzGerald, retired vice president of customer experience at HP Software and author of Net Promoter—Implement the System. Together, they discuss ways that companies can discourage employees from sabotaging their feedback efforts.

Airbnb launched 10 years ago when roommates Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia decided to rent out an air mattress on the floor of their San Francisco living room to make a few extra bucks. Now it's a $31 billion hospitality giant that has created a whole new category of lodging.

Airbnb's unique business model, which allows people in more than 190 countries to rent their homes to travelers, requires a high level of trust among not only guests and hosts, but also employees and managers. The company has gone to great lengths to infuse that sense of trust, inside and out.

In this episode, host Rob Markey welcomes Aisling Hassell, global head of customer experience at Airbnb. Aisling joined Airbnb more than three years ago after leading customer experience efforts at Sage, Vodafone and Symantec. She has played a critical role in promoting Airbnb's culture among hosts in the more than 65,000 cities where it operates.

The statistical validity of the Net Promoter Score depends on response rates; the higher the rate, the greater the accuracy. Low response rates can easily undermine a company's Net Promoter System, causing leaders to overlook burgeoning problems or wrongly assume that customers are happy.

In this episode, host Rob Markey and Maurice FitzGerald, retired vice president of customer experience at HP Software and author of Net Promoter—Implement the System, tackle common questions about response rates. 

Learn more: Creating a Reliable Metric

Episode 245: What happens when digital transformation becomes table stakes—and customer relationships become the real differentiator?

Eduardo Roma, Global Head of Customer Experience Transformation at Bain, believes companies that spent years optimizing transactions and digitizing every interaction are now unprepared for what matters most: becoming more humanized. The human element is now critical, and efficiency can't be mistaken for real connection.

Eduardo outlines three forces reshaping customer experience: Digital is now table stakes, customer power has surged to new heights, and predictive, data-driven relationships are setting brands apart. 

Too many organizations still equate digitization with progress while missing what actually builds loyalty: emotional relevance, early engagement, and personalized support that evolves alongside customer needs.

Learn how leading firms are using data to build trust, earn loyalty, and deliver meaningful value—especially in the earliest moments of the customer relationship. And discover how to make customer engagement a true driver of growth.

Guest: Eduardo Roma, Partner, Bain & Company, Global Head of Customer Experience Transformation

Host: Rob Markey, Partner, Bain & Company

Give us feedback: Customer Confidential Podcast Feedback

Send us a note: Contact Rob

Topics Covered:
00:30 – Why customer experience is at an inflection point
01:00 – Digital experiences are now table stakes
02:00 – Generative AI and the shift in customer power
03:10 – Moving from reactive to proactive experience management
05:00 – The limits of digitization when every app feels the same
07:00 – Personalization that creates value, not just sells more
08:30 – The problem with local optimization in product teams
11:15 – Digital capture vs. earning engagement
14:00 – Humanizing experiences with data and behavioral science
17:00 – Creating customer value creation plans
20:00 – How new challengers are forcing incumbents to rethink CX
21:30 – Predictive, proactive engagement and relationship signals
24:00 – Why CX professionals must speak the language of value

Notable Quotes:

• "Now that [companies] have digitized experiences, they really need to humanize those experiences through data. And what I mean by that is how to make interactions with customers much more meaningful, much more relevant, [and] much more personalized in a way that those interactions build enduring relationships with customers."
• "There are way too many degrees of separation of people who understand the customers and where some of the decisions are being made. It is important for organizations to be aware of those blind spots and to close those gaps."
• "The whole idea of just focusing on the experience, we need to move people beyond that. Move to relationships, to stop and think where we are on this experience pointing in time. We need a more holistic view."
•  "Now, customers are much more in control. That is [a] transformation of organizations, when they think about the reach and relevance of the relationship they have with customers."

Additional Resources:

• Transforming Customer Experience with AI: A Guide to Sustainable Growth (A webinar by Eduardo Roma, Rob Markey, and Phil Sager)
• Eduardo Roma on Three Changes on Customer Engagement (Video located on Eduardo's profile page)

People feel good when they look good—it doesn't take a fashion expert to tell you that. But that feeling compounds when you make it easy for people to access clothing that's unique, fits well and suits the occasion.

That's the Rent the Runway approach. The company launched in 2009 with a mission to help women feel their best by renting them designer clothing and accessories through an innovative subscription model. The service has been a huge hit, allowing the company to earn more than 6 million members and more than $190 million in venture capital.

In this episode, Rent the Runway's CEO and Cofounder Jennifer Hyman discusses the company's disruptive business model and how it built a loyal following in one of the most fickle industries out there.

What does it take to develop meaningful competitive benchmark Net Promoter Scores? What is the relationship between benchmark trends and revenue? What if your company is small or operates in a niche industry with few competitors for comparison?

Competitive benchmark Net Promoter Scores provide an objective and fair basis for comparing your company's feedback to the feedback your competitors earn. Done right, they can provide the basis for goal setting and prioritization at the highest levels of a company. However, calculating a sound benchmark score can be challenging and complex.

In this episode, Rob Markey welcomes back Maurice FitzGerald, retired vice president of customer experience at HP Software and author of Net Promoter—Implement the System. Together, Rob and Maurice will tackle questions about competitive benchmarking from members of the Net Promoter System Forum on LinkedIn.

Learn more: The Benefits of a Competitive Benchmark Net Promoter Score

What do customers really want when they buy a product? Some benefits are fairly obvious—convenience and quality, for example.

But some customers, even those in business-to-business (B2B) markets, are seeking far more from their purchases—hope, self-actualization and motivation.

Bain Partner Eric Almquist returns to the Net Promoter System Podcast to discuss developments in his Elements of Value framework and how companies are using it. Eric introduced his framework, which draws on themes from psychologist Abraham Maslow's "hierarchy of needs," last year in Harvard Business Review. In recent months, he has been expanding the framework to consider the specialized needs of companies in B2B markets.