Episode 238: In what appears to be a paradox, Verizon is accelerating its responsible AI journey through a measured, deliberate approach—ensuring its technology is primed to enhance customer experiences when they matter most.

Verizon isn't rushing to put AI in front of customers. Instead, they're deliberately building trust, refining data quality, and rigorously testing their AI tools internally. This methodical strategy might seem slow, but is accelerating their progress toward a future where AI can take on a bigger, more direct, customer-serving role.

In this episode, Brian Higgins, chief customer experience officer at Verizon, explains how their thoughtful AI tool development empowers and supports employees today while laying the groundwork for handling more customer interactions tomorrow. Tools like the Personal Research Assistant are being refined internally, allowing Verizon employees to build confidence in AI's capabilities before these technologies ever touch a customer.

According to Brian, Verizon has focused on "bringing humans and AI together to drive more yield." By ensuring employees are comfortable and proficient with AI tools, Verizon is building a strong AI foundation. His team embraces a deliberate learning approach vs. rushing to deploy technology for its own sake.

Learn more about Verizon's AI strategy and how building trustworthy internal tools enables smarter, faster, and more personalized customer experiences at scale.

Guest: Brian Higgins, Chief Customer Experience Officer, Verizon

Host: Rob Markey, Partner, Bain & Company

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Time-stamped List of Topics Covered:

• [02:15] How Verizon uses AI to empower employees and streamline operations
• [07:05] The strategy behind building AI tools like Verizon's Personal Research Assistant
• [12:45] Employee co-development and involvement in AI-driven transformations
• [19:30] Balancing short-term wins with long-term AI-driven business goals
• [25:50] Leadership commitment and the role of AI in transforming customer experience

Time-stamped Notable Quotes:

• [02:45] "Customers don't only go into a store. They don't only go to verizon.com. They go all over the place and do all kinds of things with us all the time. You have to pull all that together into one view."
• [03:46]  "If the employees aren't happy with their overall experience, it's virtually impossible for them to make the customers happy."
• [05:30] "This is another tool in the toolbox, and the employees see [AI's value] right away."
• [11:15] "We had to reorganize everything ... but you can't simply go back to what you were doing before. You [have] to layer in something new."
• [22:45] "Our primary focus was on areas of pain for both employees and customers."
• [27:21] "This is about bringing humans and AI together to drive more yield. If we were a declining business, it might have a different model. But we're not a declining business. We're a growing business. We need to get more out of the current employees we have."
• [32:25] "Personalization is the material unlock—for us and our customers."
• [38:32] "We had some challenging times for a few years at Verizon. There was a recognition that we needed to reorganize how the whole company was structured. And we did that."

How does democratizing intelligence enhance productivity and drive smarter decision-making?

Murli Buluswar, Citigroup's Head of Analytics for the US Personal Bank, joins host Rob Markey to explore Citi's strategies for democratizing intelligence. Murli emphasizes building a conversational intelligence platform that enables proactive and reactive insights to reduce friction between curiosity, insight, and decision-making. This approach enhances organizational efficiency, boosts productivity, and sparks more complex problem-solving.

Taking a scientific approach, Citi treats customer experience as a key growth strategy. Murli shares how small improvements in customer experience can boost long-term retention and how investing in marketing to existing customers offers quick returns.

Citi's in-house Journey Analytics engine integrates financial transactions, customer information, external data, and internal algorithms to identify opportunities that enhance the customer experience. This innovative approach to decision-making—a mere dream five years ago—is now a reality, delivering significant customer value and better business results.

Guest: Murli Buluswar, Head of Analytics, US Personal Banking, Citigroup 

Host: Rob Markey, Partner, Bain & Company

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We'd love to hear from you. Help us enhance your podcast experience by providing feedback here in our listener survey. https://bit.ly/CCPodcastFeedback

Want to get in touch? Send a note to host Rob Markey: https://www.robmarkey.com/contact-rob

Time-stamped list of topics covered:

• (1:07) High-level business overview for context
• (1:53) The democratization of intelligence
• (4:49) Clarifying Murli's role vs. that of a chief data and analytics officer
• (6:25) The transformation and aggregation of disaggregated teams within Citi—and the need for a global solution
• (11:42) Customer health index
• (19:59) Framework to examine actions, forecast outcomes, and bring more intentionality to decision-making
• (32:30) Automated aberration detection
• (37:25) Career reflections and parting thoughts

Time-stamped list of notable quotes

• (4:21) "We are building a conversational intelligence platform that allows people to interact with data. There's both the proactive identification of things we might not have conceptualized. And there's the—dare I say—reactive component of, 'I have a question and I want to ask the engine.'"
• (6:00) "That's why this notion of democratization of intelligence is important to me. If I can enable the organization to whet its curiosity and its appetite independently, and then rely on my team as we get to the third and fourth layer of sophistication, then I've improved productivity and have freed up time and energy to focus on higher-order problem-solving."
• (7:19) "Perhaps about 80% of the team was focused on followership, 20% on partnership, and maybe essentially next to 0% on leadership."
• (10:30) "We ended up building a software tool that essentially democratized decision-making across finance, product marketing, and my team."

How does a global medical technology company maintain customer focus while managing operational challenges during a pandemic?

In this episode, Tony Ezell, executive vice president of North America and chief marketing officer for Becton, Dickinson and Company (BD), explores how integrating customer feedback into your business strategy can maintain—and even enhance—customer loyalty by helping shape business strategies that are both robust and responsive to evolving customer needs.

Tony outlines how customer loyalty and adaptability are essential strategic tools in healthcare innovation. Together, we explore how BD leveraged a customer-centric approach to skillfully navigate operational continuity and customer satisfaction.

We also take a short trip down memory lane to connect the dots from our chat with Tony a decade ago, exploring the ongoing impact of customer experience and Net Promoter Systems on Tony's evolving career trajectory and leadership style.

Guest: Tony Ezell, executive vice president of North America and chief marketing officer, Becton, Dickinson and Company

Give Us Feedback:

We'd love to hear from you. Help us enhance your podcast experience by providing feedback here in our listener survey. https://bit.ly/CCPodcastFeedback

Send a note to host Rob Markey: https://www.robmarkey.com/contact-rob

Episode Highlights

• Introduction and Tony Ezell's background [01:59]
• The balance of operational responsibilities and customer-centricity [04:53]
• Covid-19's impact on customer loyalty at BD [05:50]
• Implementing customer feedback into business strategy [09:09]
• BD's challenges and opportunities [12:09]
• Tony's NPS work [15:07]
• Customer feedback scores [20:07]
• Partnerships [21:30]
• Connecting the dots between 2014 and today [26:22]
• Driving loyalty [27:46]

Quotable Quotes:

• "We have customers who were starting to decide whether they want to go away from us, who are now calling us to engage, to help them solve their problems again." [01:19]
• "I always think about what drives loyalty, and do we know what drives loyalty? And are we actually delivering on the things that matter most to our customers, that drive loyalty? And that's what we're operating on now." [04:33]
• "Our customers see us as one company, not as seven or nine different businesses. And now that we've done that, we're starting to make improvements." [12:38]

Additional Resources:

• Hear Tony's 2014 podcast with Rob Markey: "Breaking Down the 'Invisible Fence'"

Host: Rob Markey

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.

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.

How does an insurance industry leader integrate a simple yet profound question—Would you do that to your mom?—to transform customer service and decision making? In this episode, Richard Watts, board member at Farmers Insurance and former sales and service president at Progressive, discusses how asking this question improves business operations. He explores how this unique approach revolutionizes customer service and sets a new industry standard for empathy and customer focus.

Richard also shares insights into how this philosophy transformed internal practices, significantly influenced customer satisfaction and loyalty, and how it continues to shape his leadership and strategic decisions. We'll also revisit Richard's journey from biology to computer science and his shift toward customer-centric innovations in insurance.

Guest: Richard Watts, board member, Farmers Insurance

Give Us Feedback:

We'd love to hear from you. Help us enhance your podcast experience by providing feedback here in our listener survey. https://bit.ly/CCPodcastFeedback

Send a note to host Rob Markey: https://www.robmarkey.com/contact-rob

Episode Highlights:

• Introduction and background [02:05]
• The genesis of the "Would You Do That to Your Mom?" philosophy [05:10]
• Reflections on the evolution of customer service in insurance [11:25]
• How empathy drives customer loyalty and business success [14:15]
• Challenges and triumphs in embedding this into organizational culture [18:30]
• The ongoing influence of this approach in Richard's career [22:45]
• Balancing data-driven strategies with ethical considerations [25:50]

Quotable Quotes:

"There isn't a single business initiative or change program that people don't say has to be CEO-led or have the CEO's blessing." [21:19]

"Having someone out there to take the machete and, hack through the jungle of all these processes, being able to go there and say, 'Okay, we need real-time processing. We can't live with these batch systems anymore." [22:30]

Host: Rob Markey

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

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.

How do the needs of students at for-profit, mostly online colleges differ from those of typical college students? They often require financial aid, schedule flexibility, and academic support that can go far beyond the norm of traditional higher education. In this segment, we explore why graduation rates have traditionally been quite low at these colleges due to all the challenges students face. How do schools like this strike an appropriate balance of flexibility, support, and rigorous academic programs that will help their students succeed in the workforce?

Ruth Veloria is the chief strategy officer and customer officer at the University of Phoenix. She is on a mission to help more of the school's students successfully overcome challenges so they can complete their studies and reap the rewards of their education. Ruth and the team at University of Phoenix have spent over a decade working to improve student retention and success rates.

In this episode, roughly a decade after Ruth first joined Rob on the podcast, she shares how the University of Phoenix has achieved a remarkable increase in student retention rates, from 64% to 74%. They now graduate over a third more students than they did 10 years ago. Ruth discusses how the Net Promoter System helped fuel the university's deep commitment to learning from and acting on student feedback. She describes academic policies that are empathetic versus unempathetic, and how data analysis and feedback have been used to enhance student experience and to support policy and process change.

Give Us Feedback:

We'd love to hear from you. Help us enhance your podcast experience by providing feedback here in our listener survey. https://bit.ly/CCPodcastFeedback

Send a note to host Rob Markey: https://www.robmarkey.com/contact-rob

Episode Highlights:

• Overview of a subscription-like model for student enrollment [03:15]
• Transition of Ruth from the School of Business to strategy and customer experience leadership [07:10]
• Approaches to student retention and success [11:45]
• Utilizing data analytics and technology to improve student outcomes [16:25]
• Adapting to Covid-19: Impact on student experience and education delivery [20:55]
• Insights into student acquisition costs and orientation processes [25:30]
• Reflections on the implementation and evolution of the Net Promoter System [30:15]
• Ruth's advice for educational transformation and future goals [35:00]

Quotable Quotes:

• "We went from a 59 Net Promoter Score up to a 73 Net Promoter Score." [16:33]
• "We created a lot of entrepreneurs. We got a lot of people excited about changes they could make in the student experience." [24:19]
• "We actually set up a pilot team that was using a business leader and tech leader to come together to fix application problems. In fact, we still have that today." [25:06]

Guest: Ruth Veloria, chief strategy officer and customer officer, University of Phoenix

Host: Rob Markey

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.

When faced with a scrappy challenger, it's not hard for established brands to lose sight of their core customers, especially if they're in a highly competitive market.

These situations usually arise when an established brand starts to lose market share to a buzzworthy upstart. When that happens, a company's leaders might debate whether they should change course to chase a new competitor or try to reconnect with the brand's base.

Sarah Robb O'Hagan, CEO of the indoor cycling company Flywheel Sports, knows this scenario well. More than five years ago, she helped turn around PepsiCo's multibillion-dollar Gatorade brand when she was president of the sports drink's division. She went on to serve as president of the high-end gym operator Equinox before taking the helm at Flywheel Sports.

Sarah, who's also the author of Extreme You: Step Up, Stand Out, Kick Ass. Repeat, shares her experiences in this episode, including her views on what it takes to connect with customers. 

What if a company wants to adopt the Net Promoter System, but lacks the resources and time to fully implement each aspect of the framework? Is something better than nothing?

In this episode, Rob Markey welcomes back Maurice FitzGerald, the retired vice president of customer experience at HP Software and author of Net Promoter—Implementing the System. Together, Rob and Maurice will tackle this question and others submitted by members of the Net Promoter System Forum on LinkedIn, a group for Net Promoter practitioners that Maurice manages.

The Net Promoter System continues to evolve and improve based on the experience of thousands of companies. Maurice and Rob reverse their roles in this episode, allowing Rob to share the latest thinking on critical Net Promoter issues, such as best practices for questions and tactics for collecting deeper feedback from business-to-business companies.

Telecom executives are under pressure from their customers, shareholders and other stakeholders to become more digital, to exploit the new technologies and opportunities that will enable them to deliver more services and operate more efficiently.

Some companies approach their digital transformation as a series of boxes to be ticked: mobile apps, better web services, more online transactions. But these companies are missing out on an opportunity to reinvent themselves. The most forward-looking executives will take advantage of this pressure not merely to digitalize their companies, but to deliver remarkably better experiences for customers. 

In this episode, host Rob Markey talks to Bain Partner Frederic Debruyne. As head of Bain's Telecommunications practice in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Fred has been helping companies tap digital technology to radically simplify their customer experience, using Bain's Simple & Digital approach.

In the old days, shop owners were on a first-name basis with their customers. Of course, the owners cultivated these relationships within their communities for years, allowing for the intimacy that so many companies aspire to today.

It's tough to achieve—top leaders often drift further away from the front lines as a company grows. But technology is changing all that. Now companies are harnessing their customer data to form much deeper relationships at huge scale.

In this short episode, we look at these new opportunities in relationship building and how firms of the future will need to adapt to take advantage of them.

If you're an angry customer, the last thing you want is another generic offer from the company that has raised your ire. These missteps can irreparably damage a relationship.

But companies that know how to collect, analyze and act on customer data will learn to avoid these situations, says my colleague Tom Springer, who leads Bain's Advanced Analytics practice. They'll use that data to calibrate their offers based on a customer's level of advocacy, allowing them to expand relationships with promoters and avoid missteps that might leave detractors feeling exploited.

Most companies have vast amounts of customer data—such as the recency, frequency and value of purchases, as well as the number of service calls—but few are using it to its deepen those relationships. Tom is helping companies harness Big Data in ways we couldn't imagine 10 years ago, creating new opportunities to build loyalty.

Employees who are sincerely happy almost always provide a better customer experience. But what can companies do to make a meaningful difference in how employees feel about their work?

Shawn Achor, The New York Times best-selling author of The Happiness Advantage and Before Happiness, says that companies can do a lot. In fact, sometimes the solutions are as simple as encouraging social interaction and praise.

In this episode, Shawn discusses the connection between happiness and success, and his work with Fortune 100 companies that want to increase employee engagement. 

Long before social media and online surveys, shopkeepers relied on a simple measure of customer sentiment: whether their customers were smiling. 

In this short episode, Fred Reichheld and Rob Markey share the story behind the Net Promoter System's signature smiley face icons, and discuss how one number can become a powerful learning tool for inspiring lasting change. 

Do you shop online differently if the purchase involves clicking buttons vs. dragging an item into cart? Does a product search feel more fulfilling if it forces you to scroll through a vast trove of options? Do your survey responses change if the scale starts on the left or the right? 

These are the questions that Jonathan Levav, associate professor of marketing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, explores. His research looks at the factors that influence consumers' choices and judgment, such as biomechanics, context cues and product attributes. 

In this episode, Jonathan discusses his latest research projects and how businesses are increasingly turning to experimental psychology and behavioral economics for answers.     

How do high-quality NPS benchmarks unlock strategic priorities and initiatives? What if your NPS data seems highly counterintuitive? For example, what if Detractors seem to be more loyal than Promoters?

Host Rob Markey and Jason Barro, a partner at Bain & Company and the leader of Bain's NPS Prism benchmarking service, unpack this situation in the airline industry. It's an illustration of how Net Promoter Score benchmark data might be misleading when not all customers have the freedom to choose, revealing the nuanced understanding required to transform raw data into strategic business insights.

Jason and Rob use this example to explore some of the ways a sophisticated knowledge of how customers buy, the choices they have available, and how a market's competitive dynamics inform the interpretation of customer loyalty benchmarks like NPS.

Episode Highlights:

1. Introduction to Jason and NPS Prism [01:02]
2. Using NPS Data for Market Insight [02:05]
3. Exploring the complexity of NPS in different industries [05:12]
4. Concept of Trapped Customers [10:17]
5. Earned Growth Strategies [23:52]
6. Banking and Insurance Customer Dynamics [27:22]

Quotable Quotes:

"The more captive you are, the more likely you are to give high share of wallet to somebody that you don't like very much." [15:53] - Rob Markey

"One of the effects we see in the Prism data for airlines more broadly is that high frequent travelers are happier than low frequent travelers." [18:06] - Jason Barro

"You can see this strategy of, 'Earn the respect and happiness of your customers,' is a path to profitable growth, and you can see…just how much it actually matters." - Jason Barro [23:28]

Additional Resources:

NPS Prism by Bain & Company

Net Promoter System Overview

Listen to Jason's earlier podcast, NPS Prism: The Source for True, Deep NPS Insights

Bios

Jason Barro

Rob Markey

Get in touch:

We'd love to hear from you. Help us enhance your podcast experience by providing feedback here in our listener survey. https://bit.ly/CCPodcastFeedback

Send Rob a note here.

One of the great philosophers said that a person who sets out to be happy probably won't achieve his goal. On the other hand, if a person sets out to help others and make the world a better place, he will probably end up happy.

The same logic applies to companies that set the vague goal of maximizing shareholder value, according to Roger Martin, former dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. In reality, successful companies create products their customers want and provide exceptional service—and increase shareholder value in the process.

Roger, who's the author of 10 books, including Getting Beyond Better and Playing to Win, and a frequent contributor to Harvard Business Review, shares his business philosophies in this episode.

By focusing on a single question, the Net Promoter System eliminates unnecessary complexity. Rob Markey and Fred Reichheld, inventor of the Net Promoter Score, explain the origins of the "likelihood to recommend" question. 

Steve Jobs. Charles Schwab. Howard Schultz. They all spotted an unmet customer need and made it their mission to meet it. They also founded iconic companies that started out as disruptors only to struggle as bureaucracy and distraction set in. In each case, it took the founder's return to get the company back on track. 

It's a story that will be played out again and again in business. But it doesn't have to.

According to Bain Partner Chris Zook, these companies have battled the predictable crises of growth. In The Founder's Mentality, a new book Chris cowrote with Bain's James Allen, Chris talks about how companies can hold on to the spirit of their founders as they grow. No surprise: It requires companies to focus on their customers. He recently joined me on the podcast.

Rob Markey discusses how he became a Net Promoter convert with Fred Reichheld, inventor of the Net Promoter Score.

Millennium Mat has developed a unique culture in which employees make production decisions for their teams and share in the financial benefits of their success. The leaders of these teams are called CEOs and they make all of the hiring and production decisions. Their employees, whom Millennium calls partners, are expected to bring forth their performance-improving ideas.

Companies of all sizes and in all industries could learn a lot from Millennium's approach, which has propelled its business to almost 40 countries.

In this episode, Millennium Mat's founder Ian Malpass discusses what it takes to forge a culture that's truly self-directing and self-correcting.

Large companies live and die by traditional financial forecasts—earnings estimates, sales targets and so forth. After all, it's how the market measures their value and whether they're worthy of investment.  

The intense pressures to meet these goals can cause some executives to make short-term cuts that can undermine their long-term strategies. Some would argue that we need new gauges of corporate strength. The Net Promoter Score is a very powerful measure, but so is another: customer lifetime value. This measure helps companies identify their most valuable customers and build those relationships. 

Peter Fader, a marketing professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, returns to the Net Promoter System Podcast to discuss the importance of measuring customer lifetime value. He recently founded a company called Zodiac that specializes in estimating customer value.  

The Net Promoter System's "outer loop" is used to prioritize and address problems that can't be resolved by individuals or small teams. Rob Markey discusses why a robust, rigorous and transparent "outer loop" is essential to a solid Net Promoter System in this short episode. 

Read more: The Net Promoter System's Outer Loop

A lot of companies find themselves a situation in which their competitors are increasingly adding value to their products, while they're struggling to figure out which features and services might move the needle with customers. The leaders of these companies aren't sure what level of service will capture more of their market—or if they should even focus on service.

It's the classic "how to play/where to win" question. Companies can't invest in everything. To succeed, they must distinguish themselves from competitors. Often this means meeting customers' deepest needs—aspirations they might not even be aware of.

Bain Partner Eric Almquist has spent much of his career researching these questions. In this episode, he discusses the 30 elements of value that draw customers most to a product or service. Companies that fulfill more of these needs have customers who are more loyal. 

Does the Net Promoter Score gauge a customer's broader relationship with a company or just the customer's most recent experience? Or both? Who should make follow-up calls to customers?

Rob Markey addresses these questions and more in this episode.

Why does the Net Promoter scale go from zero to 10? Why is passive not the same as neutral? Rob Markey answers these questions and others in this episode.  

Recommended reading: 

• The Benefits of a Competitive Benchmark Net Promoter Score
• Creating a Reliable Metric

From reshaping the playful culture of a global toy company to cracking the customer-centricity code at Zurich Insurance, how did Conny Kalcher manage the leap?

Conny Kalcher, now the group chief customer officer at Zurich Insurance, has a rich history of pioneering customer-centric transformations. Conny introduced a swath of fresh perspectives and approaches to the more traditional environment of Zurich Insurance. She did this not long after retiring from a rewarding career at LEGO, where she helped a customer-centric transformation. Her influence transcends the boundaries of any one company, partly a result of her active participation in Bain's NPS Loyalty Forum, where she has made large contributions to the ongoing Net Promoter System movement. For context to today's discussion, you might want to listen to her conversation with Rob Markey in episode 55, Brick by Brick.

In this episode, Rob and Conny delve into her remarkable journey from the playful and imaginative domain of toys to the structured and staid sphere of the insurance business. Conny's customer engagement methodology breaks industry molds. She draws parallels and contrasts between her long career in an organization selling toys made of stackable bricks and her new role in a complex global behemoth selling insurance policies and managing financial and operational risk. Conny's anecdotes reveal that most of the principles behind understanding and catering to customer needs are universal, regardless of the specific type of customer or product. As Conny reminisces about her time in the toy industry, she sheds light on how the lessons learned there acted as a catalyst for nurturing a customer-first culture at Zurich Insurance. It illustrates how a keen understanding of customer sentiments can be a game-changer in any industry.

Topics covered:

1. Transition from the LEGO Group to Zurich Insurance [02:20]
2. Customer-centric transformation [04:00]
3. Corporate strategy and vision [06:50]
4. Metric implementation (NPS) [07:07]
5. Decentralized vs. centralized organizational structures [11:00]
6. Earning customer loyalty [24:30]

Quotable quotes:

1. "Anybody who needs to change something I would definitely advise to also think about, 'How can we do processes, structures, ways of working to make people naturally change,' because people want to do the right thing, basically." [01:45]
2. "We've defined our strategy for this strategic cycle to become the preferred insurer of our customers. So, it's all about earning the loyalty of those customers." [27:15]
3. "My proudest moment in the Zurich [Insurance] journey is when I go to the local offices and I talk to the people there and I see the fire in their eyes, and I see the new brand on the walls, and they talk in a new kind of language that they didn't use to talk in." [32:37]

Additional resources:

1. Zurich Insurance's long-term strategy and near-term targets
2. Episode 55 of Customer Confidential Podcast: Brick by Brick: Rebuilding the LEGO Group by Rediscovering Customer Centricity
3. Net Promoter System overview
4. Insurance industry reports by Bain & Company

We'd love to hear from you. Help us enhance your podcast experience by providing feedback here in our listener survey. https://bit.ly/CCPodcastFeedback

Bios:

• Conny Kalcher, group chief customer officer at Zurich Insurance
• Rob Markey

The goal of the Net Promoter System is to create a culture that encourages employees to bring energy and creativity to their jobs. 

Developing that kind of culture requires inspiring leaders. We've all seen those people who seem born to be leaders. They have an uncanny knack for motivating the people around them. They show gratitude and connect with people in authentic ways.

You might chalk it up to charisma or a rare innate gift. While that might be true, it's possible that they studied their own behavior and learned how to mobilize the best qualities of their personality.

In this episode, Rob Markey talks to Bain Partner Mark Horwitch, who has been studying what makes a leader inspiring. He says it comes down to 33 qualities. Most of us have some of them, but none of us have all of them. He says that when we know our strengths, we can develop them into true leadership assets.

Learn more: How Leaders Inspire: Cracking the Code

The team huddle is the part of the Net Promoter System that connects the inner loop to the outer loop. Rob Markey discusses why regular get-togethers—often daily or weekly—are a critical element of the system.

Read more: The Net Promoter System's "Huddle": How Employees Come Together to Focus on Customers and Teamwork

It's a question just about every manager wrestles with: How do I get my employees to do what I want them to do? How do I get them to be more empathetic to customers? To take feedback and make meaningful changes?

Obviously, fair pay is essential, but there's far more to it. After all, motivating people requires tapping into deep emotional needs for autonomy, purpose and affiliation.

In this episode, Rob Markey talks to Daniel Pink, author of the 2011 best-seller Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. In the book, Daniel breaks down the scientific research on motivation and explains why simple carrot-and-stick approaches rarely result in the behaviors that companies want. 

Recommended reading: Your Best Employees Work for Love, Not Money