Hi Lili!
Post #1
At MGM, I used to sit in the hotel lobby for hours. Not managing. Not talking. Just watching. Observing.
Then I became CMO of a bank.
At MGM, I could walk out of my office and get consumer feedback right there, real time. I could literally walk into any lobby and ask somebody: How did you feel about your meal? How long did it take you to check in?
That's how we ended up launching mobile check-in. Two hours of sitting and watching.
But when you're working in a bank — unless you're sitting in a branch, and we know that's less and less frequent — how do you make sure every employee understands what customers are actually thinking? Experiencing?
So I brought the lobby into the boardroom.
Every Tuesday afternoon, our executive committee listens to a customer call. Our CEO. Our chief legal counsel. Our chief risk officer. Our head of fraud.
Some are great calls. Some aren't. And some are really painful and ugly.
But it starts this whole dialogue. We listen and we start asking: why did that customer get caught in that vortex where they can't get out?
It's a real eye-opener when your chief risk officer has to sit there and hear that. They don't get to hear those stories every single day.
The lobby was my greatest tool. I just had to create a different version of it.
Post #2
I spent six months chatting with one of the world's most recognizable brands trying to resolve an issue on my account. Six months. And I never could.
No phone number. No live agent. Just chat.
The only reason it got fixed is because I happened to know the CMO. I had to call in a favor — which I hated doing — and say: I'm really sorry, but I've been trying to sort this for six months. It just hasn't happened.
She had to step in personally to get it resolved.
I understand why companies digitize. When it works seamlessly, it's brilliant. We all love paying our bills through an app.
But when you have that use case where you're swirling, you can't help yourself, you can't figure out how to get out, you have to be able to talk to somebody live.
And today most people are craving that.
7.26% of your customers drive 80% of your revenue. You cannot afford to lose those people over a chatbot.
I'm not okay with that. We're not okay with that.
Post #3
The first thing I did as CMO of Barclays wasn't a campaign. It wasn't a rebrand. It was two words: Make It Better.
Four years ago, we launched it as our internal north star.
The language was intentional. Simple enough that every single employee understood what was expected of them.
Whether you were answering phones. Developing digital capabilities. A UX designer. Working on fraud alerts.
Your job is to make it better for the customer.
I would walk into a meeting and start asking: how are you making that better?
And people would start saying: we're making it better this way. We're making it better by doing this.
It took hold.
Just the other day, somebody sent me a note: "I love how we really turned the passion around to be much more focused on the customer."
That started with a mindset shift. Not a product launch. Not an ad campaign.
Two words that gave every person in the building, from the call center to the C-suite, a north star they could actually use.
The next one-on-one you have with a direct report, ask them: what are you doing to make it better?
Entertainment Industry Ghostwriter
Turning entertainment founders, investors and execs into personal brands that attract clients, investment, talent and deal flow @ Loge Noir.