Customer Confidential: Untold Stories of Earned Growth
Rob Markey, Bain & Company partner and customer experience expert
The Customer Confidential Podcast unlocks a world of unparalleled customer and employee loyalty insights. Host Rob Markey, a Net Promoter System pioneer, uses his deep expertise and empathetic approach to challenge conventional wisdom, peel back layers of typical advice, and expose the real stories of industry transformation. Take a deep dive into discussions on CX, customer journey, customer insights, Net Promoter Score, and more. Every episode is a master class in loyalty. Guests include CMOs, CXOs, and heroes of customer-centric transformation, along with thought leaders who inspire them. Exploring organizational structures, operating models, goals, and metrics, Rob and his guests from companies such as Vanguard, American Express, and more bring to light practical marketing, product, customer experience, and technology strategies for earning customer-focused growth. This podcast is your source for untold stories of customer and employee loyalty. Challenging, insightful, and instructive—all in one place. Earned growth starts here.
Episodes
Mentioned books
Dec 10, 2015 • 36min
Ep. 63: How text messages helped a phone retailer turn up feedback
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
Dec 3, 2015 • 57min
Ep. 62: Lessons from great founder-led firms
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
Nov 24, 2015 • 39min
Ep. 61: How Qualtrics stumbled on the Net Promoter System
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
Nov 19, 2015 • 38min
Ep. 60: At DonorsChoose, supplying transparency and integrity
DonorsChoose founder Charles Best and CMO Katie Bisbee discuss how their nonprofit gives schoolchildren the supplies they need and donors the transparency they want. Learn more about this episode
Nov 12, 2015 • 5min
Ep. 59: Shorts - Your best employees work for love, not money
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
Nov 5, 2015 • 29min
Ep. 58: At Safelite, training leaders to hit the gas on culture change
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
Oct 29, 2015 • 40min
Ep. 57: Restaurants discover the special sauce of Net Promoter feedback
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
Oct 15, 2015 • 4min
Ep. 56: Shorts - The benefits of a competitive benchmark Net Promoter Score
Leading practitioners of the Net Promoter System seek feedback not only from their own customers but also from their competitors' customers. 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. Learn more: The benefits of a competitive benchmark Net Promoter Score The Net Promoter System's "outer loop" Net Promoter System: Creating a reliable metric
Oct 8, 2015 • 36min
Ep. 55: Rebuilding the LEGO Group by rediscovering customer centricity
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.
Oct 1, 2015 • 50min
Ep. 54: Power to the customer at E.ON
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).
