Ep. 236: David Tudehope & Joseph Michelli | “Zig When They Zag”: Macquarie's Customer-Centric Revolution
Customer Confidential: Untold Stories of Earned Growth
Release Date: 07/11/2024
Ep. 265 | Ryan Fuller: Can You Trust a Five-Star Review Anymore?
Customer Confidential: Untold Stories of Earned Growth
Episode 265: Ryan Fuller started questioning online reviews after two terrible stays at highly-rated vacation rentals. Both had 4.9-star ratings. After Ryan posted negative reviews, the people behind each listing independently offered him £200 to change his review to five stars. “It was disappointing,” he said, “that clearly many people took them up on this offer.” On the flip side, the experience explained something that had been bothering him for a while: Places with thousands of positive reviews could still turn out to be terrible. So Ryan, founder of Larrocos Labs and a...
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Ep. 264 | Matt Meeker: 800 Prices, One Promise: What BARK Pays to Reward Loyalty
Customer Confidential: Untold Stories of Earned Growth
Episode 264: BARK maintains more than 800 subscription price points because it has promised customers that their price will not increase as long as they remain subscribers. CEO Matt Meeker explains why honoring that commitment matters, even when tariffs, public-market expectations, and pressure on margins make it costly. Matt started BarkBox in 2011 after struggling to find breed-appropriate toys for his large Great Dane, Hugo, in New York City pet stores. The original idea was simple: Send dog owners a monthly box of toys and treats selected for their dog’s size. The first shipment...
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Ep. 263 | Allie Kuehner and Sarah Phelps: Designing the Astronaut Experience: Turning a Half-Million-Dollar, 11-Minute Thrill Ride Into a Moment of Awe
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 liftoff, the three-G climb that somehow feels slow, and the instant gravity disappears. Joining her is Sarah Phelps, Blue Origin’s former managing director of astronaut and customer...
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Ep. 262 | Megan Riggs: From Farmers Market Fav to Supermarket Staple: How a Lean Juice Company Scaled Fast
Customer Confidential: Untold Stories of Earned Growth
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 juices were too pulpy/crunchy for people’s liking.) There was one key problem with scaling their product for a broad consumer audience. “With cold-pressed juices, you cannot wholesale unless...
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Ep. 261 | Andy Pierce: False Confidence at Machine Speed: How to Make Synthetic Customers Useful
Customer Confidential: Untold Stories of Earned Growth
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 time and a third the cost. You can be a hero internally by helping your business functions get to success better, faster, cheaper.” But synthetic customers can also mislead you if you treat...
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Ep. 260 | Jeannie Walters and John Abraham: A Company with No Memory: When Your Systems Don’t Remember the Customer
Customer Confidential: Untold Stories of Earned Growth
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 most customer frustration isn’t about a single moment. It’s about when someone becomes worn down by repeated fixes, handoffs, and follow-ups. When organizations chase shiny tools without a clear...
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Ep. 259 | Rachel Bicking: Customers’ First Micro-Frustration Makes or Breaks the Next Purchase
Customer Confidential: Untold Stories of Earned Growth
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 and loyalty programs—is solving this. They use a “journey atlas” to read social signals, spot subtle first-trip frictions, and then trigger targeted offers or fixes. They model lift and...
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Ep. 258: Charlon McIntosh & Melissa Pint | Accountability is the Product at Frontier: “We Didn’t Do Interesting. We Did Effective.”
Customer Confidential: Untold Stories of Earned Growth
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 were pouring in, with only one way to reach the company. Charlon and Melissa inherited a brand that customers didn’t trust. To fix it, they built a system where complaints trigger...
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Ep. 257: John Finley | Stop Chasing Surveys: How to Earn the Next Customer Choice
Customer Confidential: Untold Stories of Earned Growth
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 the micro-fix actually changes the next behavior. The goal is to earn the next choice—and the corresponding interaction. To make this happen, BMO runs targeted interventions wherever friction...
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Ep. 256: Mike Milliron | “We Made It Cool to Care”: From CX Resistance to Results
Customer Confidential: Untold Stories of Earned Growth
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 Academy’s culture initially prized local control. “Owners of experience,” says Mike, is how teams saw themselves. Mike and his team persisted. They built a real-time listening program with...
info_outlineEpisode 236: When telecom rivals offered lower rates and bigger networks, Macquarie bet big on customer loyalty—and won.
David Tudehope, Macquarie Technology Group’s CEO, joins Rob Markey to discuss Macquarie’s competitive differentiator: a bold, customer-centric approach.
David co-founded Macquarie to prioritize exceptional customer experience over price and network quality competition. Joining David is Joseph Michelli, author of Customer Magic: The Macquarie Way, who shares a key moment about how a product launch was postponed and short-term profits were sacrificed due to customer need misalignment.
"We weren't living our purpose if we proceeded. We had to take our medicine and accept stakeholder disappointment," David recalls.
That leadership decision reinforced Macquarie's culture. Transparency and real-time feedback improved employer-customer interactions, workforce engagement, and Net Promoter Scores. Sharing real, exceptional service examples inspired employees to excel when creating memorable customer experiences.
Impressive results include exceptional shareholder returns and consistently having Australian telecom’s lowest per-customer complaint volume.
Guests: David Tudehope, CEO of Macquarie Technology Group, and Joseph Michelli, Ph.D., author of Customer Magic: The Macquarie Way
Host: Rob Markey, Partner, Bain & Company
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Want to get in touch? Send a note to host Rob Markey: https://www.robmarkey.com/contact-rob
Time-stamped list of topics covered:
(00:00:13 - 00:01:12) Identifying market opportunities by recognizing underserved and overcharged segments in telecom
(00:01:12 - 00:03:09) Initial business strategy to develop a better billing system and the importance of customer experience
(00:03:03 - 00:04:54) Customer experience as a core value and how making tough decisions helps prioritize customer satisfaction
(00:04:54 - 00:06:33) Navigating industry competition and differentiating through customer service in a price-focused market
(00:06:28 - 00:12:06) Empowering employees with transparency, real-time feedback, and engagement strategies
(00:12:18 - 00:18:19) Overcoming challenges like billing complaints and learning from feedback
(00:18:19 - 00:26:28) Cultural reinforcement and how storytelling can inspire employees
(00:26:19 - 00:28:12) Continuous improvement in NPS through cultural shifts
(00:28:15 - 00:31:32) Self-propelled learning and institutional growth and how to develop a sustainable model for continuous improvement
Time-stamped list of notable quotes:
(00:05:55) "The customer experience is the compass from which we make hard decisions.”
(00:05:43) "Our purpose is making a difference for customers that are underserved and overcharged."
(00:8:09) "Macquarie has between zero and two complaints a year."
(00:17:03) "Our real-time feedback of customer experience scores to staff has been very powerful."
(00:17:38) "When we took our hands off the big levers, we actually got significant change."
(00:34:42) "We found that when we educated the person on their bill, they became an advocate for us."
(00:30:21) "Storytelling has been transformational for our business."
(00:35:55) "Our model is self-learning and self-propelled, and it has been that way for 10 years."
Additional Resources:
Read Joseph Michelli’s book: Customer Magic: The Macquarie Way