Customer Confidential: Untold Stories of Earned Growth

Episode 263:  What does it feel like to go into space? To rocket past the Kármán line, float in perfect silence, and return to Earth—all in 11 minutes? Blue Origin's astronauts experience an expensive thrill ride: part theme park roller coaster, part life-altering pilgrimage. In this episode, Allie Kuehner, a Blue Origin astronaut from the New Shepard flight NS-33, relives the intense pause before...

Episode 262:  What happens when a cold-pressed juice passion with humble beginnings in your own kitchen counter suddenly meets nationwide demand? Complications arise that demand fast decision making. Meet Crunchy Hydration CEO and founder Megan Riggs, whose company scaled at lightning speed, sending her into problem-solving mode. ( The memorable company name, she says, is because her early carrot...

Episode 261:  What if you could use AI-generated customer twins to test value propositions, pricing, and demand before you go to market? That is the idea my Bain colleague Andy Pierce is exploring. Synthetic customers can help teams move faster, pressure test offers, and simulate trade-offs much faster and at far lower cost than traditional research alone. Says Andy, "You can do things at half the...

Episode 260: When customers must re-explain the same problem, reopen old tickets, and chase for follow-ups, a shiny new tool won't help unless it's connected to support or sales history. How can leaders act on real signals to build shared memory and fix the root cause? Jeannie Walters, founder and CEO of Experience Investigators, and John Abraham, a customer experience consultant, believe that mos...

Episode 259: How do you prevent first-trip hassles such as a room not being ready at check-in, Wi-Fi outages, or service delays from discouraging first-time customers from returning? Today ' s guest, Rachel Bicking, EVP of Innovation at Kobie Marketing, says that after a slightly negative first trip, customers are 80% less likely to return. Kobie—a technology platform that builds and runs rewards...

Episode 258: How did two new leaders turn angry customer calls into executive promises to earn customer trust and advocacy?  Charlon McIntosh, Chief Customer Operations Officer, and Melissa Pint, Chief Digital Information Officer, both joined Frontier Communications on the same day in 2021.  At the time, Frontier faced both bankruptcy and a reputation crisis: Millions of customer complaint calls w...

Episode 257: How do you earn the next banking customer ' s loyalty, one moment at a time? Focus on what customers choose, and why. According to John Finley, head of marketing, technology, and innovation at BMO, a bank operating across North America, customer loyalty shifts with context. His team takes signals—what customers say—and wires them back into the very next touch. They then test whether t...

Episode 256 : What turns CX skeptics into advocates? A listening engine that makes caring for those you serve the gold standard. At IMG Academy, a private sports academy and boarding school in Florida, Chief Operating Officer Mike Milliron led the launch of a centralized experience team. "Not interested," said everyone from athletics, academics, athletic development, and student life. Why? IMG Aca...

Episode 255:  One of healthcare's biggest blind spots? When patients turn 18. It's the moment they age out of pediatrics and fall headfirst into a system designed to prioritize older, sicker adults. Physicians, stretched thin, reserve energy for complex cases, giving young adults shorter visits and less attention. That means early signs of medical trouble, like anxiety or preventive needs, go miss...

Episode 254: What if the future of AI in customer experience is built not by giant platforms but by small, reusable, open source AI agents? Gurdeep Pall, President of AI Strategy at Qualtrics, believes open, modular AI agents will outmaneuver big tech's locked-down systems. In this conversation from the X4 Summit, Gurdeep argues that "experience agents"—task-specific bots that can plug into any st...

Episode 253: Desjardins thought its cooperative roots made it member-first by default. Then members started leaving. Desjardins is a 125-year-old financial co-op based in Quebec. It has deep community ties and a proud history. But that pride masked a painful truth: Members no longer saw it as customer-centric. The organization believed its cooperative structure guaranteed loyalty—until low NPS sco...

Episode 252: Most CX maturity assessments ask how you think you're doing. This one demands proof. Erin Wallace, director of client engagement at MyCX from Bain & Company, is helping to lead a fundamental shift in how companies measure CX maturity. Most tools rely on perception-based self-assessments that reward self-promotion over progress. The Customer Experience Roadmap and Accreditation (CXRA)...

Episode 251: In 2018, Dell set out to do something big: turn customer feedback into a system that could not only provide insights, but help set priorities and run the business. They had the data. They had the intent. But they made a compromise that many organizations settle on: Rather than enforce one unified approach to customer feedback, they allowed each team to build its own. While this helped...

Episode 250: Comcast solved the age-old problem of how to make employee suggestions a powerful, reliable source of value-driving improvements at scale.   Sean McEntire, Comcast's Vice President of Customer Strategy and Operations, explains how the Outer Loop channels every employee elevation—no matter how small—through a disciplined screen, assigns a named owner, and tracks progress in public view...

Episode 249: When " revenge travel" brought guests roaring back to Four Seasons Hotels, they capped occupancy, turning away guests and revenue. Scott Taber, senior vice president of global hospitality, describes the Four Seasons philosophy: No points, no perks. Just great properties, individual recognition, personal service, and an emphasis on making sure the first five minutes after check-in are...

Episode 248: At Dominion Energy, keeping the lights on isn't just a priority—it's the single biggest driver of customer experience. But as customer expectations continue to evolve, the bar keeps rising. Customers don't just want to know when their power will be back, they want to know why it is out. And they expect that experience to be as seamless, informed, and intuitive as downloading and using...

Episode 247: What if customers achieve real results—but don ' t know it? Most vendors sell functionality. Mari Cross wants customers to see impact—in their own numbers, in real time. Mari Cross, Chief Customer Officer at Infor, is dismantling a common illusion: that delivering software features equals delivering value. Infor sells enterprise resource planning (ERP) tools, but Mari's focus is on pr...

Episode 246: The AI future of customer service is already here—and it ' s better than most people think. In this episode, Deon Nicholas, President and Executive Chairman of Forethought, joins host Rob Markey to show us how some companies are already using AI to resolve customer issues end-to-end in ways we could barely imagine just a couple of years ago. Deon introduces us to agentic AI: an emergi...

Episode 245: What happens when digital transformation becomes table stakes—and customer relationships become the real differentiator? Eduardo Roma, Global Head of Customer Experience Transformation at Bain, believes companies that spent years optimizing transactions and digitizing every interaction are now unprepared for what matters most: becoming more humanized. The human element is now critical...

Episode 244: What defines a differentiated customer experience? It starts with a clear framework for measuring intangible value and making calculated trade-offs. In this special tribute show, we revisit our 2016 conversation with Eric Almquist, a former partner at Bain & Company, on the Elements of Value. This framework transforms how businesses understand loyalty, brand equity, and growth. Inspir...

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...

Episode 242: Wells Fargo has established a clear position on artificial intelligence: If you can't explain how an AI model works, you shouldn't deploy it. This stance challenges the common assumption that black box algorithms are acceptable costs of advanced AI capabilities. In this episode, Kunal Madhok, Head of Data, Analytics, and AI for Wells Fargo's consumer business, reveals how the bank has...

Episode 241: When is mastering the basics a differentiator? In an industry where complexity is the norm, Prudential Group Insurance has made a counterintuitive strategic choice. While many companies chase innovation through digital transformation and enhanced features, Prudential has discovered that operational excellence—the "absence of noise"—can be a more powerful differentiator. Abhii Parakh a...

Episode 240: How has the Chief Customer Officer (CCO) role evolved over time? Traditionally focused on tracking metrics, CCOs now play a proactive and forward-facing role in driving business innovation. In this episode, Caroline Lombardi, Global Head of the Hospitality & Leisure Practice at Egon Zehnder, explores the CCO role's dramatic evolution. Customer experience—no longer just about tracking...

Episode 239:  What hidden insights can customer behavior data analysis reveal about how successful one food delivery app may be over another? Discover how analysis of externally sourced customer behavior data can fuel dramatic improvements in revenue forecasts and strategic decisions. See how competitor data analysis can help identify strengths and weaknesses that are otherwise hidden. In this epi...