Customer Confidential: Untold Stories of Earned Growth (Rob Markey, Bain & Company partner and customer experience expert)

The Net Promoter System has a mechanism called the inner loop that helps employees of all kinds get real-time feedback directly from customers. The feedback is usually positive—most employees do their job pretty well—so people typically become more engaged and enthusiastic. The occasional criticism or complaint about a specific interaction or decision can help individual employees and the organization learn to do their jobs better.

The challenge is to set up the inner loop in the right way, so that it reinforces learning rather than undermining it. 

In this short episode, Rob Markey discusses how the inner loop speeds learning. 

Learn more: The Net Promoter System's "Inner Loop": The Secret to Individual Learning and Connections with Customers

How do you get the best out of employees? Scripted interactions and oppressive rules are never the answer. The best companies hire the right people and set the right expectations, and they trust their employees to use their judgment to make customers happy. When executives step back, employees provide more authentic and empathetic service.  

Former Disney executive Lee Cockerell returns to the podcast to share his tips for striking that balance between loose and tight control. At Disney, Lee ran a operation with tens of thousands of employees who were spread across a huge physical space and ranged across a multitude of operational and service functions. What does it take to create a magical experience on that scale? Strong hires, high expectations and trust.  

If you missed Lee's first interview, you can check it out here: At Disney, the Show Must Go On 

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.

Delighted CEO Caleb Elston discusses his company's Net Promoter origins (3:29), its minimalist approach to feedback (9:00) and how its clients use its software to understand customers (39:21).

Mark Robinson, president of UPS Capital, the financial services subsidiary of UPS, joins me to discuss how the adoption of the Net Promoter System at UPS Capital was turbocharged by Agile ways of working and how Agile teams were able to radically speed up needed fixes to the customer experience that frontline employee identified in their huddles.

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Episode 243: At Emory University, 99% of donations come from just 8% of donors. It’s a small alumni minority funding almost the majority of the university. This raises a big question: How do you cultivate loyalty among everyone else?

In this episode, Emory’s Chief Experience Officer, Cutler Andrews, describes how they’re dismantling silos—by merging alumni relations, donor relations, and events—to offer a cohesive experience. They’re seeing success. Within five years, Emory’s engagement nearly doubled from 28,000 to 54,000 participating alumni.

Learn how Emory’s four engagement metrics (philanthropy, attendance, communications, and volunteering) feed a carefully designed funnel, turning casual alumni into potential major donors. We also explore how tracking personal preferences and tailoring interactions drives lasting impact.

It’s about balancing short-term fundraising with authentic relationships. How do you nurture entrepreneurs—those overlooked until “cash out”—and future big givers, without neglecting current donors? Learn how thoughtful engagement fosters trust, broadens participation, and reduces reliance on a few generous supporters.

Guest: Cutler Andrews, Chief Experience Officer & Senior Associate Vice President, Emory University

Host: Rob Markey, Partner, Bain & 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.

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

Time-stamped List of Topics Covered:

- [00:02:19 - 00:03:00] Merging engagement, communications, and marketing: Cutler describes the creation of a unified team to orchestrate all donor-facing activities under one umbrella.

- [00:03:39 - 00:04:26] Overcoming siloed teams: How sending separate letters, emails, and event invites—without coordination—diminishes the overall constituent experience.

- [00:07:51 - 00:09:00] Engagement vs. fundraising: Cutler explains why alumni relations are often viewed as more feel-good, whereas fundraising may often be seen as purely transactional.

- [00:14:36 - 00:16:00] Emory’s four engagement buckets: How Emory measures engagement via philanthropy, attendance, communications, and volunteering—and why each bucket matters.

- [00:27:00 - 00:29:00] The risk of relying on a tiny donor base: Cutler points out that roughly 99% of their funding comes from around 8% of donors, underscoring the need to reach that remaining 92%.

Time-stamped Notable Quotes:

[00:00:27] “Ninety-nine percent of our money comes from seven or eight percent of our donors. That’s scary, because if that keeps getting smaller, it’s a ton of risk.”

[00:01:03] “We have all of these KPIs and goals, and the only question people ask is, ‘How much money [have you] raised?’ That’s part of the story, but that is the output of a greater story.”

[00:06:22] “Yes, large gifts help, but alumni engagement has to serve that mission, too. It can't just be, ‘Make our alumni community feel good and give them programs.’ We have to ask the questions, ‘To what end? To what value?’”

[00:27:10] “All of a sudden there’s an exit and there’s an influx of cash, and then everybody’s jumping on. It’s like, ‘You haven’t talked to this person at all—why do you think they’ll want to engage now?’ It shouldn’t always be because, ‘I know in ten years, they might make a gift.’”

[00:33:10] “We've seen engagement go from 28,000 alumni to 54,000 alumni in five years because of that intentionality, that creativity, and thinking through that if somebody does a great event over here, but if we can't market it over here, it's not going to do any good.”

Most of us think about Uber as a true digital disrupter. Yet, there is a very large human side to Uber. When a driver, a rider or “an eater” (someone ordering food through Uber Eats) needs help resolving something that can’t be addressed purely in-app, they contact Community Operations, an organization of some 30,000 people run by Troy Stevenson. In this episode, Troy describes how he helped Uber navigate its rapid growing pains. He also has something many customer-focused executives would envy: vast amounts of real-time customer data, most of it in modern, accessible databases. In this podcast, he shares some of the ways that he makes sure that data gets turned into action, and talks about why that’s both a science and an art.

Satmetrix CEO Richard Owen discusses his company's approach to customer experience management (3:50), the use of social media as a feedback tool (22:30) and the future of surveys (29:10).

Dan McCarthy spends his time figuring out what loyalty is worth to shareholders, and how to measure it. As cofounder of Theta Equity Partners and assistant professor of marketing at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School, he and his colleague, Wharton professor Peter Fader, have developed a technique called customer-based corporate valuation that helps shareholders value a company by analyzing how its customers behave. Their approach signals a shift from a “growth at all costs” mindset toward sustainable growth based on the acquisition and retention of profitable customers.

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.

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.

Mobile phone stores increasingly depend on loyalty economics to drive their businesses. As a result, every customer interaction in one of these stores is vital. It’s a chance to wow a customer with a great experience, or to frustrate them with long waiting times, pushy salespeople or poorly trained technicians. Yet store owners generally struggle to get enough customer feedback to know how their customers’ purchasing experience feels to them, or what needs to be improved. Jimmy Salamanca, who runs six U.S. Cellular stores, discusses how he uses Fosubo, a feedback collection tool that uses text messaging, to gauge the customer experience. Fosubo CEO Misa Chien joins the discussion to explain how the tool works.

Learn more about this episode

The LEGO Group nearly went bankrupt a decade ago. It's hard to imagine. The company's return to profitability came from refocusing on its core: the bricks and the people who love to build with them. Conny Kalcher, vice president of marketing and consumer experiences at the LEGO Group, discusses how the company introduced the Net Promoter System and started collecting regular feedback to learn what Lego customers want. Conny says that Net Promoter gave the company a shared language that it could use to evaluate its products and that the system helped the company bring about broader culture change. Teams became more collaborative in working toward the ultimate goal of delighting customers.

Bain Partner Michael Mankins discusses what it takes to truly engage employees (8:59), tactics for managing star players (20:50) and the importance of inspirational leadership (26:17).

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

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Bios:

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

Horst Schulze, CEO of Capella Hotel Group and one of the founders of Ritz-Carlton, reflects on what it takes to set a high bar for service (7:34), engage employees (16:02) and earn customers' enduring loyalty (38:31).

Bain's Fred Reichheld returns to the podcast to share his early experiences with team huddles (1:50), the ways that companies use them to connect employees to the larger business mission (7:45), and tips to make them more effective (31:55).

If you’re struggling to find pants that fit, the last place you probably turn is the Internet. But men's clothing retailer Bonobos is using customer service, feedback and design to challenge this assumption. On the latest episode, Bonobos Cofounder Andy Dunn shares his philosophy for creating memorable customer experiences both online and in stores.

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. 

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.

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.  

Earning goodwill among your customers isn't enough to ensure long-term growth. Leaders must also create the conditions that enable and encourage loyal customers to do what they’re inclined to do anyway. They have to offer customers a continuing stream of products or services that stand out from the competition. They have to deliver those goods at the right price, at the right time, through the right channels, using the right messages. And sometimes they have to help customers communicate their experiences to friends, relatives and the world at large, as Rob Markey explains in this Net Promoter System Podcast short.

Rob Markey checks back in with Herman Miller's Michael Ramirez and Pam Carpenter about how a small pilot had a big effect (5:06), the challenge of rallying employees to address a single complaint (6:30) and identifying the ROI of doing so (11:30), why middle-management needs those numbers (18:24) and how the economics vary by customer segment (36:00).

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

A decade ago, when Roger Martin was dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, he called for a shift away from the business world’s focus on maximizing shareholder value to a new era in which value for customers and the value of customers would take primacy. He called it “The Age of Customer Capitalism.” His work had a profound impact on my thinking. Very few leaders have been able to act on his vision, but now, a decade later, the era of customer capitalism that he predicted is finally dawning.

Linda Verba of TD Bank and Brian Andrews, formerly of Intuit, discuss the difference between Net Promoter Score and Net Promoter System (11:22), accountability within the system (22:41) and the importance of authentic, human employees (30:34).

Horst Schulze is famous for being the visionary co-founder of the Ritz-Carlton and Capella hotel groups. They are two brands that set the bar for luxury service, and yet, Horst will tell you, his vision of luxury depends on employees how share that vision and feel a true sense of purpose to deliver it every day.

Michael Ramirez and Pam Carpenter discuss how the office furniture maker approaches customer loyalty (10:35), gathers feedback (16:33) and turns scores into action (31:38).

Some customer metrics are so good at predicting customer behavior and the value of a company’s customer base, says the Wharton School’s Peter Fader, that “any sensible investor should be demanding these kinds of metrics. And of course, any sensible executive should be obsessed over these kinds of metrics internally.” In this, the second podcast in our two-part discussion, we talk about how executives can use these same metrics to change the way they look at customer investments.

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.

E.ON's Olivier Mourrieras, Rene Matthies and Guntram Wurzberg discuss how market shifts prompted the energy provider to change its approach to service (3:45), its use of internal NPS (17:00) and loyalty economics (34:20).

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

Creating a pilot or prototype is an essential part of designing a robust Net Promoter System. These small-scale efforts allow a company to experiment with the system's essential elements, helping the company to create an effective program it can expand to other parts of the organization. In this Net Promoter System Podcast short, Rob Markey shares some best practices for prototypes.

Learn more: The Value of Prototypes

In this episode, Dr. Jason Guardino of The Permanente Medical Group and Rob Markey discuss how healthcare organizations like Jason’s are helping physicians and care facilities create meaningful and valuable patient experiences that promote better care outcomes.

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

If you’d like to learn more about Jason Guardino, you can find him on LinkedIn.

In this episode, Carolyn Saunders, former senior vice president, Consumer & Small Business (Retail), International Banking, for Scotiabank and current Bain external advisor, and Rob Markey discuss how enhancing relationships with customers and prioritizing frontline employees’ learning opportunities builds rapport vs. merely building up scores.

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If you’d like to learn more about Carolyn Saunders, you can find her on LinkedIn.

To provide perspective on the impact of Covid-19 in South America, Rob talks with Luiza Mattos, a Bain & Company partner based in São Paulo, Brazil. Luiza is one of Bain's customer experience, Net Promoter System and Results Delivery leaders, and she recently researched how consumers in South America have been spending their time since the start of the pandemic. She also discusses the strategies companies in the region are using to make sure their customers and employees feel connected and supported.

In this episode, Bain Fellow Fred Reichheld and Rob Markey discuss how Earned Growth and operational indicators can provide both inspiration and learning to an organization. We also explore companies’ most common Net Promoter Score mistakes, and we participate in a live audience Q&A.

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If you’d like to learn more about Fred Reichheld, you can find him on LinkedIn.

This episode was sponsored by NPSx℠, a new venture from Bain & Company that provides training, certification, technology, and community to help companies enrich their customers’ lives. Learn more at npsx.com.

The best companies--loyalty leaders that grow profitably--do things to teach their employees to do their jobs better. In fact, the Net Promoter System was designed to help companies facilitate and accelerate that individual learning. The system's inner loop and huddle play important roles in encouraging feedback and coaching so that employees can serve customers better and contribute to the mission of the organization.

Some people think that developing deep expertise simply requires time and practice, but there's more to it.

Anders Ericsson, coauthor of the new book Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise, and his team have deconstructed what it takes to become a true expert in a variety of fields. What they've discovered has direct application to any company.

Have you ever found it hard to tell an employee that his work simply wasn't cutting it? Maybe you were afraid of hurting the employee's feelings or creating tension, so you decided not to say anything. Kim Scott, an executive coach and former Google executive, considers these situations missed opportunities for growth. She argues that honest criticism that's shared with sincere concern can empower employees at every level of a company. In this episode, Kim discusses her Radical Candor framework and the power of saying what you think.

In the workplace, biased language and treatment can often slip by without consequence, leaving those discriminated against feeling powerless or unheard. But Just Work cofounders Trier Bryant and Kim Scott believe integrating bias disruptors in the workplace can help all who experience or observe bias speak up and address it in the moment.

In this episode, Kim, Trier, and I discuss how bias disruptors can contribute to a just work environment and what leadership can do to root out and recognize bias.

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Customer feedback has traditionally been used to evaluate performance, not necessarily improve it. The Net Promoter System, however, seeks to empower employees by teaching them the skills they need to generate loyalty and enthusiasm among customers. Rob Markey explains how in this Net Promoter System Podcast short.

In this episode, Evan Siegel, vice president of financial services and business development at eGain, and Rob Markey discuss why customer-focused bankers need to learn how to listen to consumers’ true financial needs and wants, and why empowering consumers to take charge of their financial health wins their long-term trust.

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If you’d like to learn more about Evan Siegel, you can find him on LinkedIn.

Recreating the same customer intimacy that an individual shopkeeper can provide is possible for large organizations if they have an operational infrastructure that can foster high-quality interactions on a bigger scale. Rob Markey explains how in this Net Promoter System Podcast short.

Why would a world-class sports academy invest in a student center, rather than more coaches, fancy equipment, or dorms?

IMG Academy, a Florida boarding school, turns out some of the most successful college and professional athletes around. Its president, Tim Pernetti, led a massive cultural shift toward customer loyalty.

Tim says IMG Academy used to be highly focused on coaching and sports operations. To be clear, that emphasis on athletic excellence helped produce a large number of highly successful athletes. But Tim and the leadership team saw the potential to add something on top of this: a focus on serving a more comprehensive set of student-athlete needs. Today, IMG Academy leverages student-athlete input to refine its program and operations. New initiatives range from enhancing dining experiences to introducing flexible communal spaces.

Tim shares how an emphasis on employee recognition combines regular student and parent feedback to instill deep, enduring culture change.

Guest: Tim Pernetti, President, IMG Academy

Host: Rob Markey, Partner, Bain & 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

Time-stamped list of topics covered:

• [00:09:17] Global influence and expansion
• [00:14:25] Culture shift toward experience
• [00:19:57] Response to student feedback
• [00:25:32] Investment in campus experience
• [00:30:01] Recognition's impact on staff
• [00:35:23] Challenges in universal buy-in
• [00:37:09] Commitment to improving IMG Academy

Time-stamped list of notable quotes:

• [00:04:43] “Really, [our early] focus was on intense physical training, like total immersion in tennis. And the result was ten world number ones [were trained here].”
• [00:07:23] “This is an environment where you're bringing people in from all over the world. You want to have good people in the environment. We put a lot of weight into that, like getting to know kids, and getting to know their parents.”
• [00:23:17] “We went into meetings with data and said, ‘Here’s what the customer is saying.’”
• [00:29:16] “[At] a place like IMG Academy, we have everything from coaches, people that serve food every day, and our transportation drivers, [and people] who cut the grass at five o'clock in the morning. And I've shadowed all of them."
• [00:30:12] “We [recognized a tram driver] with a financial bonus and a gift card to take his wife out to dinner. This guy now is known as the friendliest, nicest, most outgoing person on campus.”
• [00:30:35] "The biggest tool you have in your toolkit right now is your personal and other leaders' acknowledgment and recognition when people do the right things.”

Guest and Host Bio Links:

• Tim Pernetti's LinkedIn Profile
• Rob Markey LinkedIn Profile

Herman Miller's Pam Carpenter returns to the podcast to discuss the company's NPS pilot efforts (5:55), its response rates (16:04) and an experiment that's giving the company a window into the customer experience (34:59).

What makes people recommend your brand and services to others? Winning referrals are more than just a marketing channel; they’re a way to turn prospects into lifelong customers through word-of-mouth advocacy based on authenticity and trust.

In this episode, guest Andy Cockburn, CEO and cofounder of Mention Me, and Rob Markey discuss the effectiveness of trust-based referrals, how to integrate advocacy into company culture to unlock the transformative potential of referrals, and how data-driven approaches can optimize referrals’ effectiveness.

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

If you’d like to learn more about Andy, you can find him on LinkedIn.

What if the key to creating truly innovative products and solutions lies at least as much in uncovering the deep emotional and attitudinal needs of your customers as in mastering technology?

Eckhart Boehme, founder and managing director of Unipro Solutions, shares his approach to putting Clayton Christensen’s Jobs to Be Done framework into practical use. Eckhart demonstrates how in-depth interviews with customers and their families can reveal the underlying personal experiences, emotions, and desires that truly motivate people to seek out and purchase products or services. With these insights in hand, companies often uncover fundamentally different needs than they first anticipated, sometimes even opening up new markets or uses for their products.

We also discuss Eckhart’s Wheel of Progress model, which he designed to reveal the hidden layers of reasoning behind customer decisions. It provides a systematic way to deconstruct customer narratives and identify the jobs that are most likely to drive customer decisions along their cyclical journeys. Learn how this model segments the customer journey into phases of motivation, decision-making, and action. He brings this all to life with a compelling case study about finding a senior living place for an elderly loved one, revealing a hidden but critical job to be done: giving the elderly parent a sense of purpose.

Our conversation also lays bare some common pitfalls when applying the Jobs to Be Done framework, such as focusing too narrowly on functional jobs while missing the bigger picture of the customer's overarching goals and emotional needs.

Guest: Eckhart Boehme, Founder and Managing Director, Unipro Solutions

Host: Rob Markey, Partner, Bain & 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

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

Time-stamped list of topics covered

[1:19] How Jobs to Be Done goes deeper than traditional customer needs analysis

[3:02] Clarifying what Jobs to Be Done entails and why it’s a game changer

[6:08] The Wheel of Progress model and its role in dissecting customer decisions

[10:41] Applying Jobs to Be Done in complex customer service scenarios

[15:00] The practical steps and challenges in implementing this framework

[20:14] Examples of transformative customer insights derived from in-depth interviews

[22:10] Strategies for businesses to effectively harness Jobs to Be Done

[30:54] Future trends and directions in customer experience research

Time-stamped list of notable quotes:

[6:26] “You want to understand where the story starts. What [event] triggered people [wanting to conduct] research and go through pain. Understanding what triggers people have is very valuable because then you can start building a relationship—even before people have started going to a search engine to look for a solution."

[7:51] “When we look at the customer journey, we call it ‘the cycle of progress’ because we think that people make progress in cycles."

[16:01] "We try to design our offerings and the marketing and sales processes to focus on helping customers make progress.”

[24:23] “Jobs to Be Done helps you to do the right thing and design thinking helps you to do things right."

Additional Resources:

• Learn more about Eckhart’s Wheel of Progress
• Learn more about HBS professor Clay Christensen’s Jobs to Be Done Theory and his famous story about how to improve milkshake sales

A central theme in Fred Reichheld's new book, Winning on Purpose: The Unbeatable Strategy of Loving Customers, is purpose. For Fred, a well-defined company purpose is the engine that drives success. But it’s not enough. To succeed, an organization’s No. 1 goal should always be to make customers’ lives better.

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Lori Cobb found her passion in a leadership role at Cummins Inc. that included responsibility for customer experience and insights: “I love solving problems, and I particularly enjoy solving customer problems,” she says. “And customers were hungry to have somebody just listen to what their needs are.” Today, she’s CEO of Mockingbird Ventures and a principal of AIM Advisory Services. In this episode, she shares some of the lessons she learned on her journey into customer centricity.

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One of the most important, and difficult, roles of any leadership team is to instill in the workforce a culture and sense of purpose. Back in 2014, I did a podcast interview that put this challenge in simple, stark terms that have stayed fresh in my memory. That’s largely thanks to my guest at the time, the inimitable Horst Schulze, co-founder of the Ritz-Carlton hotel group and founder of the Capella Hotel groups. He’s an exceptionally plain-talking common-sense leader who just doesn’t take excuses for poor service. And he believes, passionately, that good service depends not on management, but on inspired employees. 

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.

A few years ago, Qualtrics CEO Ryan Smith realized that there were 130,000 different versions of Net Promoter surveys in the survey company's system. The Net Promoter Score had become wildly popular among its customers, yet there was little consistency in its application. Ryan saw an opportunity to make it easier for Qualtrics customers to measure their Net Promoter Score. On the podcast, Ryan talks about Qualtrics' history, its Net Promoter tools and how it uses the Net Promoter System to keep the voice of the customer inside the company as it grows.

Learn more about this episode

Investing in customer happiness can be the surest way to high Net Promoter Scores. But how do you accomplish that while maintaining a healthy business?

Michael Mauboussin, head of Consilient Research at Counterpoint Global, Morgan Stanley Investment Management, and Rob Markey discuss how expectations investing impacts valuations and business growth. The two also share insights on how companies can build a long-term investment strategy that can withstand changes in the market while attracting and retaining loyal customers.

Get your copy of Michael’s book, Expectations Investing, here.

If you’d like to learn more about Michael, you can find him on LinkedIn.

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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. 

How can an organization’s passion for high-quality culinary delights forge unbreakable customer bonds? For food wholesaler METRO’s customers, buying food is a personal experience. It’s the art of witnessing, inhaling, savoring, and examining the produce, meat, and fish in the store—a sensory feast that leaves customers’ hearts full.

Creating exceptional fresh-food buying experiences is METRO’s mission. In this episode, guest Peter Gries, customer and sales officer at METRO, and Rob Markey discuss why the company values its diverse customer segments. Peter also shares an insider’s perspective on the change journey transforming the company’s relationship with its customers.

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If you’d like to learn more about Peter, you can find him on LinkedIn.

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.

Kim Scott's book, Radical Candor, focuses on the role that feedback plays in helping other people succeed and the idea that delivering tough messages to colleagues is important when done right. But, Kim discovered, "an awful lot of people are using Radical Candor as an excuse to act like a garden variety jerk.” In this episode, we talk about the revised edition of her book, which addresses some misconceptions about her ideas. We also listen to one of the funniest examples of radical candor gone wrong, from the HBO series Silicon Valley.

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.

How does a banking group operating in multiple countries accelerate improvements in customer experience, particularly digital improvements, while still meeting the unique needs of individual countries? This was the challenge facing UniCredit, and the topic of my podcast with Francesco Vercesi, UniCredit's head of Agile, practice sharing and customer service. The answer, as his title implies, was to create a centralized Agile process, but with product owners in each country empowered to set their development priorities.

Luis Angel-Lalanne, vice president of customer listening for American Express, explains how his team goes beyond the mechanics of simply providing Net Promoter scores and the drivers behind them. At American Express, that can mean combining Net Promoter data with other operational data and performing an analysis to uncover previously unrealized links that affect customer experience .

In this episode, Nate Henderson, BILT’s founder and CEO, and Rob Markey discuss how to make a great customer experience an empowering experience, how to raise Net Promoter Score℠, and how BILT leverages analytics to improve customer sentiment.

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If you’d like to learn more about Nate Henderson, you can find him on LinkedIn.

How can companies get revenue forecasting and value creation right? By slowing down.

Michael Mauboussin, head of Consilient Research at Counterpoint Global, Morgan Stanley Investment Management, and Rob Markey discuss the metrics and methods businesses can use to grow their long-term value.

Make sure to listen to part two.

·        Get your copy of Michael’s book, Expectations Investing, here.

·        Read Michael’s Harvard Business Review article “The True Measures of Success” here.

·       Read more from Michael about the economics of customer business here.

If you’d like to learn more about Michael, you can find him on LinkedIn.

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Alan Balmer and Fernando Cadena of Elwood Staffing discuss how they use Net Promoter to improve conditions for employees in temporary placements (18:34), build lasting relationships (35:28) and improve the staffing experience for clients (42:43).

Why are so many of the global loyalty leaders run by their founders or their founders’ family members? What do they do that increases their ability to achieve and sustain customer loyalty? James Allen, head of Bain's Strategy practice, has studied successful founder-led companies in great detail. On the podcast, he discusses how companies can preserve what he calls the Founder’s Mentality while they grow into some of the largest firms in the world.

Learn more about this episode

What do you call the space between you and your customer? According to Dayton Semerjian, that's where you'll find the true value of a customer relationship. Dayton is general manager of global customer success and support at the IT services firm CA Technologies. 

CA's customers tend to be large companies, and the decision to buy its software and services is usually made by big groups of people armed with heavy analysis. Customer relationships can be very complex, involving many internal teams that handle sales, implementation and tech support.

It’s not that uncommon for some customers to feel like they've fallen through the cracks in situations like these. In this episode, Dayton shares what it takes to earn promoters in complex client relationships.

Learn more: Do Your B2B Customers Promote Your Business?

In this Net Promoter System Podcast short, Rob Markey explains why it's important to create conditions that will help employees succeed before connecting Net Promoter Scores to compensation. Learn more:

• Your best employees work for love, not money
• Converting loyalty into economic advantage

When veteran leader Amy Cribbs took on the challenge of improving customer experience at Vanguard, the world’s largest mutual fund company, she felt ready for the challenges of adopting new, Agile ways of working. But her experience proved to be full of surprises. A expected, the new cross-functional teams helped Vanguard design better customer experiences and deliver them faster. But there was a lot more. In a previous episode, Amy described how the Agile approach had revealed unexpected insights about what really mattered to customers, which helped the teams design even better customer episodes. As it turns out, the new insights extended well beyond customer needs. The biggest and most rewarding surprise, says Amy, came when she saw individual employees blossom. The unexpected customer insights the Agile approach delivered also reinforced the need for humility when it comes to thinking she understands what customers want. Similarly, she says, she has learned the importance of being a servant leader so she can nurture, not control the new ways of thinking that Agile encouraged on her teams. 

Chad Keck of Promoter.io discusses his experience with the Net Promoter System (4:02), his goals to simplify feedback collection (16:11) and what's next for his company (46:40).

In this episode, guest Kentaro Kawamori, CEO and cofounder of Persefoni Inc., and Rob Markey discuss the interconnection between Net Promoter Score and organizational sustainability.

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If you’d like to learn more about Kentaro, you can find him on Linkedin.

Bain & Company is an investor in Persefoni. Together, we’ve created a unique partnership combining breakthrough carbon footprint analytics with decarbonization strategy. To learn more about our partnership, visit our partnership page.

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.

Jim Clark of the Steamboat Springs Chamber Resort Association and Rob Perlman of the Steamboat Ski and Resort Corporation discuss when led them to gauge visitor sentiment across their town (6:40), what they learned (12:10) and how they're improving the tourist experience (21:26).

Omar Hashem, chief customer officer of the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia, discusses his role as a customer advocate (9:35), the challenges he encounters (14:08) and the Net Promoter System's impact on his company (31:08).

Darrell Rigby, head of Bain's Global Innovation practice, discusses what it takes to turn a great idea into an innovation (2:30), the "BothBrain" innovation concept (4:25) and the dangers of multitasking (35:00).

Unless you know how much more valuable your top customers are, you are flying blind. It's impossible to know how much to invest in efforts to create and retain more of these customers. In this Net Promoter System Podcast short, Rob Markey explains how companies use the Net Promoter System to understand the needs of their most valuable customers.

Bain & Company Partner Gerard du Toit talks about the struggle banks face in attracting new customers (7:25), the companies that have made the biggest strides in service (23:32), and the importance of digital tools in fostering loyalty (31:14).

The Net Promoter System is simple in concept, but adopting it can be a cataclysmic event for an organization. From asking frontline employees to reach out to customers to asking finance to manage new metrics, turning Net Promoter into tangible results typically requires significant culture change. Bain Partners Andreas Dullweber, Jason Barro and Maureen Burns discuss some of the biggest hurdles they encounter as they help companies build customer-centric cultures.

Bain Fellow Fred Reichheld discusses the Net Promoter System's inner loop mechanism for collecting and sharing feedback (9:56), the qualities that make NPS popular worldwide (17:09) and the perils of using mystery shoppers (24:10).

In this episode, guest Allison Hartsoe, managing director of customer and growth at EY and author of The Age of Customer Equity, and Rob Markey discuss calculating customer lifetime value, why understanding customer behavior generates more accurate revenue forecasts, and how to develop a high-quality approach to customer equity.

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If you’d like to learn more about Allison, you can find her on LinkedIn.

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.

In this episode, guest Andreas Heckmann, executive vice president of product engineering and head of customer solution support and innovation at SAP, and Rob Markey discuss the past, present, and future of cloud innovation as it relates to machine learning, artificial intelligence, organizational and customer challenges and opportunities, and cost savings.

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If you’d like to learn more about Andreas, you can find him on LinkedIn.

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.

Bain Fellow Fred Reichheld discusses the risks of tying Net Promoter Scores to compensation (4:00), the consequences of gaming a feedback system (11:33) and what it takes to get to the true root cause of a complaint (17:49).

In this episode, Zack Anderson, chief data and analytics officer at National Westminster Bank (NatWest), and Rob Markey discuss how garnering a deeper understanding of customers’ perspectives improves a company’s data analytics and why a more streamlined approach to extracting customer information improves client satisfaction. Zack also highlights his top strategies to ensure consumers remain responsive and satisfied with a company’s offerings, approaches, and targeted communications.

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If you’d like to learn more about Zack Anderson you can find him on LinkedIn.

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.     

For Francesco Lagutaine, Manulife Asia's chief marketing and experience design officer, Asia is a market of contradictions. On  the one hand, insurance products are relatively new to the region, so simply delivering well and reliably on business basics will still wow customers. On the other hand, customers have enormously high expectations for fast and simple digital services, because they compare them with platforms such as WeChat in China or Go-Jek in Indonesia. In this episode, he talks about how Manulife Asia has begun creating specialized teams to improve customer experiences.

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

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.

Andrew MacPherson of the UK National Health Service talks about the organization's Friends and Family Test (15:12), the challenges of measuring customer service in healthcare (17:36) and what's next for its Net Promoter program (46:34).

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:

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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

Host Rob Markey welcomes Mark Slatin, CEO of EmpoweredCX, to dissect the intricate dynamics of trust within customer experiences. Drawing insights from real-world examples, they explore the role of product and service quality in establishing trust, the impact of reliability and consistency in decision making, and the potential pitfalls of self-orientation. Delving deeper into the Trust Equation and explaining its different facets, Mark underscores the necessity of understanding the customer’s journey and perspective. They address the challenges of reliability, targeted marketing implications, customer vs. company centricity, the art of meaningful recommendations, and more. And they explore how to balance customer needs with shareholder expectations. Mark also provides an analytical perspective on the integral components of trust in a business landscape.

In this show, Rob and Mark discuss the Trust Equation, which you can learn more about here:

https://trustedadvisor.com/why-trust-matters/understanding-trust/understanding-the-trust-equation 

https://modelthinkers.com/mental-model/trust-equation

Guest: Mark Slatin, CEO of EmpoweredCX

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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.

How can businesses transcend traditional customer service boundaries to establish new customer experience benchmarks?

Stan Swinton, Founder and General Manager of NPSx, Bain & Company, discusses how a comprehensive approach to customer experience extends beyond gathering feedback or managing customer journeys.

Stan details Bain’s NPSx framework—comparable to a restaurant star rating, he says—which offers an extensive customer-centricity analysis via 60+ dimensions and eight pillars. Stan shares how this methodology motivates companies to strive for top-tier customer satisfaction.

We also discuss the Customer Experience Roadmap and Accreditation (CXRA). Stan highlights CXRA's effectiveness in uncovering inefficiencies and enhancing customer-employee synergies.

In addition, we explore why businesses frequently restrict their customer experience initiatives to areas such as feedback management, and discuss the essential role of Customer Experience Officers in achieving genuine customer centricity. Finally, we examine the constantly changing landscape of CX benchmarks and expectations, emphasizing the importance of a flexible and adaptive approach.

Guest: Stan Swinton, Founder and General Manager of NPSx, Bain & Company

Host: Rob Markey, Partner, Bain & Company

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

Time-stamped list of topics covered:

• [16:56] Role of CX: Stan highlights how the NPSx framework aids in defining company decision rights and categorizes 60 different jobs or dimensions to be coordinated.
• [17:50] Framework Pillars: Eight pillars provide a structured context for internal dialogue on improvement within organizations.
• [18:15] Framework applicability: The framework's relevance, even for companies that are just starting their CX journey or are less mature in their CX programs
• [19:19] Framework evolution and review: The living nature of the framework, with ongoing revisions and updates to standards and maturity scales to keep pace with current trends in customer centricity
• [20:10] Benchmarking and improvement: How clients sometimes feel dissatisfied with their initial ratings but are encouraged to view it as a journey toward improvement, similar to achieving restaurant rating stars in the culinary world
• [21:48] Identifying opportunities: How the framework allows organizations to identify their strengths and areas for improvement in customer experience

Time-stamped list of notable quotes:

• [04:49] “We would generally work with a company first to define their taxonomy. One of the things we recognize is a lot of different industries and clients have different ways of defining their experiences. But there are standards and there are best practices that we can bring to the table to help shape that taxonomy and definitions.”
• [7:28] “One of the things that we recognize at Bain is that a lot of practitioners didn't come from a CX background. There aren't a lot of degree programs dedicated to CX. And when we were looking at the market, we’d say, well, how can you train yourself as a CX practitioner?”
• [12:31] “Our framework has eight pillars: purpose and leadership, proposition management, customer value and lifecycle management, customer journey management, customer service management, customer feedback management, customer data management, and employee experience.”

Additional Resources:

• Bain article | The Elements of Value: Understanding the 30 elements of value for consumers can help companies gain an edge.
• HBR article | The Elements of Value: Measuring—and delivering—what consumers really want

Guest and Host Bio Links:

• Stan’s LinkedIn profile
• Rob Markey LinkedIn Profile

Borge Hald, founder and CEO of Medallia, explains how the company captures a wide variety of customer feedback and shares it with company employees (6:50), how Medallia got its start in the hotel business during a difficult time (8:15), the importance of company cultures that treasure feedback (28:28) and what he thinks the future of customer feedback will look like (41:25).

A number rarely tells the whole story. That's why leading Net Promoter companies ask customers to discuss their experiences in their own words.  

Bain Fellow Fred Reichheld returns to the podcast to talk about the shortcomings of multiple-choice surveys, the power of verbatim feedback and some common customer service myths.  

In a previous episode of the Net Promoter System Podcast, we heard how Safelite applied the Net Promoter System and became a "people-powered" and "customer-driven" organization. It started with helping frontline workers change the game so they could build customer loyalty. In our latest discussion, CEO Tom Feeney and senior executives Natalie Crede and Renee Cacchillo explain why it's equally important to reset the priorities of leaders and their views of their own roles. Learn more:

• Leading a Net Promoter System company
• Energetic, enthusiastic and creative employees
• Learn more about this episode

In part two of Rob's discussion with Linda Verba of TD Bank and Brian Andrews, formerly of Intuit, they talk about what happens in NPS Loyalty Forums and discuss the importance of senior leadership support for NPS initiatives (5:23), loyalty across a broad range of industries in Asia (8:23), the need to selectively tackle NPS opportunities (20:10) and a problem with pasta on a plane (28:30).

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.

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.

Innovative restaurant companies such as Patxi's Pizza and Tomatina are putting a range of technologies to work to collect Net Promoter feedback from customers. One tool in particular, Thanx, offers restaurants a prepackaged rewards system and an easy way to gauge diner sentiment through a mobile app. Learn more:

• The economics of loyalty
• Closing the loop
• The infrastructure behind a Net Promoter System
• Learn more about this episode