Customer Confidential: Untold Stories of Earned Growth

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

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 experience, who reveals how her team turns that fleeting flight into a story people cherish for life. We take a behind-the-scenes look at Blue Origin's astronaut training program. It's curated, detail-oriented, and built to guide participants through an emotionally charged moment of awe. We unpack how a month-long window after Allie first decided to go into space narrows down to an intentionally designed two-day training sprint—one that forges six strangers into a crew that is forever changed upon their return to Earth. We explore, through Sarah's lens, what makes the experience meaningful via her design choices, such as why hearing that audible launch countdown is a moment you never forget. And how the first flight-suit try-on became an unexpected, emotionally charged moment of emphasis for astronauts and their loved ones. Sarah made many experience tweaks, as she explains: "We were going into the debrief, and I said, 'But I didn't hear the "go" poll.' … The answer was, 'Well, the astronauts don't need to hear that; that's not part of it. They can just hear the countdown.' I said, 'But I want to hear, "INCO go. Capsule go. Booster go. CAPCOM go. Crewmen go." I want to hear the flight director, "New Shepard is go for launch." … And just because that's never been done before and astronauts on previous vehicles didn't need to hear it, my astronauts … need to feel that reverberation in their whole being that we are go for launch." Allie and Sarah also share lessons any brand can use to choreograph peak emotion without sacrificing operational precision. And they cover what the future of space tourism looks like, such as why going to the space station just for a weekend may become a reality within our lifetimes. Guest: Allie Kuehner, Blue Origin Astronaut, New Shepard flight NS-33, conservationist, and board member of Nature is Nonpartisan Guest: Sarah Phelps [https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahphelps99/], VP, Games Hospitality, United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee, formerly Blue Origin's Managing Director of Customer Experience Host: Rob Markey [https://www.linkedin.com/in/robmarkey/], Partner, Bain & Company Give us feedback: Customer Confidential Podcast Feedback [https://bit.ly/CCPodcastFeedback] Send us a note: Contact Rob [https://www.robmarkey.com/contact-rob] Timestamped Topics [00:06] Seven-second rumble before motion and the surprise of a slow ascent [00:09] Capsule-booster separation and sudden silence [00:12] First look at Earth from above [00:14] The astronaut experience inspiration and reimagining astronaut training for modern civilians [00:16] Design brief and making 11 minutes meaningful without formal astronaut prep [00:18] Managing human variables like pausing the launch for final phone calls to family [00:19] Adding the audible "go" poll for emotional impact [00:22] Flight-suit reveals and custom bomber jackets as milestone markers [00:23] Humanizing an engineering culture and lessons CX leaders can mirror [00:25] Looking ahead to Sarah's vision of weekend trips to orbit Notable Quotes [00:00:02] "You're going faster than a speeding bullet. You go through three Gs, but you don't even feel the three Gs, because there's so much else going on. You're looking out the window, it's so loud, and then all of a sudden the rocket and the capsule dislodge from one another. And it goes to perfect silence." [00:00:48] "We're giving people an opportunity to go 62 miles above the earth, and you know that somehow, some way, that experience is going to change you, and it's going to change how you see the world moving forward. For me, it's how do we build an experience around that?" [00:05:34] "One of the most surprising things to me was the ascent—how beautifully slow it felt." [00:06:57] "The first time you get to look out these windows down at Earth, you just see this delicate, finite, beautiful planet. And in that moment, you just realize how connected we all are." [00:09:41] "This thing is an 11-minute flight. It's basically a half-million-dollar roller coaster ride." Additional Resources Watch a full replay of Allie's Blue Origin New Shepherd Mission NS-33 flight here: https://www.blueorigin.com/news/new-shepard-ns-33-mission [https://www.blueorigin.com/news/new-shepard-ns-33-mission]

Ep. 262 | Megan Riggs: From Farmers Market Fav to Supermarket Staple: How a Lean Juice Company Scaled Fast

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 you high-pressure pasteurize or heat pasteurize. I had a ton of stores reaching out to carry it, but I couldn't sell it to them," Megan said. So, Crunchy Hydration made a series of smart choices. They swapped fragile glass bottles for shelf-stable cans and kept pivoting in lockstep with consumer feedback. They unlocked national distribution after moving from perishable juice to functional sparkling water. Next, they saw velocities spike to 150 units per store per week—nearly 20 times the buyer's benchmark. They weighed pay-to-play math like $5,000 per SKU per store slotting fees or free-filling 12,000 cases across 4,000 outlets. They learned distributors wouldn't merchandise for you and that maintaining relationships was imperative. To succeed, they needed to choose a leaner path. Today, they're a coast-to-coast operation with just 12 employees. They juggle DTC subscriptions, retail velocities, and cash-flow gaps that can stretch four months. The result? A community-driven beverage that competes on flavor, cultural relevance, function, and customer devotion, all in one. Guest: Megan Riggs [https://www.linkedin.com/in/megancarterriggs/], CEO and Founder, Crunchy Hydration Host: Rob Markey [https://www.linkedin.com/in/robmarkey/], Partner, Bain & Company Give us feedback: Customer Confidential Podcast Feedback [https://bit.ly/CCPodcastFeedback] Send us a note: Contact Rob [https://www.robmarkey.com/contact-rob] Timestamped Topics [00:00] Early juicing company origins and the product's shelf-life problem [00:03] Switching to shelf-stable functional cans [00:07] Pricing trust at $2.50 a can: too expensive? [00:12] Their first big grocery win and stock-out lessons [00:20] Slotting fees vs. free-fill economics [00:25] How their lean, 12-person team managed national reach [00:29] Picking partners and saying no to bad money [00:31] The new vision for 2026 and the evolution of the ongoing direct-to-consumer push Notable Quotes [00:01] "I wanted to create something on another level, from the flavor portfolio to the smoothness that you're tasting. People were spending hundreds of dollars a month on their juices because it truly was different." [6:00] "I'm grateful that I have access to clean water, and I take a sip. And even just those five seconds of mindfulness, it's going to change the trajectory of your day, plus all of the benefits that are actually in this water. You really will feel different." [00:16] "Our net promoter scores of 10 are the people really diving into being the brand ambassadors that are then talking about how Crunchy is part of their identity." [00:38] "I did everything from the start with Crunchy, from driving the forklift, being the delivery person, learning how to build websites, doing socials, creating graphics. I learned all of that, but I also know what I created was not what was going to help us get to the next level." [00:40] "We're big believers in time-blocking and knowing what metrics define success before you even start."

Ep. 261 | Andy Pierce: False Confidence at Machine Speed: How to Make Synthetic Customers Useful

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 them like magic. Left ungrounded, large language models tend to be overly positive, can drift over time, and may reflect bad data rather than real human behavior. To put theory into practice, we'll explore a 24-month telco case study that ran in parallel with a synthetic panel and hit ~85% overlap with human survey responses after confronting both bias and brown-nosing behavior. Guest: Andy Pierce, [https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewpierce1] Partner, Bain & Company Host: Rob Markey [https://www.linkedin.com/in/robmarkey], Partner, Bain & Company Give Us Feedback: Help us improve the podcast here: https://bit.ly/CCPodcastFeedback [https://bit.ly/CCPodcastFeedback] Time-Stamped Topics: 00:00 — Value proposition basics and the design target question 00:05 — Pricing as the most natural lever and why finance often doubts research 00:09 — Early LLM experiments 00:10 — Telco case study 00:12 — Over-positivity and tuning to an ~85% survey overlap 00:14 — Quarter-by-quarter improvement 00:35 — Rational vs. experiential vs. emotional Time-Stamped Quotes: [32:00] "We've already started to see a world where I can train an LLM on a new idea, develop a new value proposition—or an extension to an existing value proposition—and instead of trying to predict the research outcome, I'm trying to predict actual sales in the marketplace." [37:00] "It's not good enough to just create the persona … you still have to test against real humans." [38:00] "Synthetic customers are here to stay. It's not a fad. And clients are already using them to build a competitive advantage." Resources Referenced on Today's Show: * Generative Agent Simulations of 1,000 People — https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.10109 [https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.10109] * Simulating Human Behavior with AI Agents — https://hai.stanford.edu/assets/files/hai-policy-brief-simulating-human-behavior-with-ai-agents.pdf [https://hai.stanford.edu/assets/files/hai-policy-brief-simulating-human-behavior-with-ai-agents.pdf] * How Synthetic Customers Bring Companies Closer to the Real Ones — https://www.bain.com/insights/how-synthetic-customers-bring-companies-closer-to-the-real-ones/ [https://www.bain.com/insights/how-synthetic-customers-bring-companies-closer-to-the-real-ones/] * UXAgent: A System for Simulating Usability Testing of Web Design with LLM Agents — https://arxiv.org/html/2504.09407v2 [https://arxiv.org/html/2504.09407v2] * The Rise of Synthetic Respondents in Market Research — https://nielseniq.com/global/en/insights/education/2024/the-rise-of-synthetic-respondents [https://nielseniq.com/global/en/insights/education/2024/the-rise-of-synthetic-respondents] * Synthetic Users: If, When, and How to Use AI-Generated "Research" — https://www.nngroup.com/articles/synthetic-users/ [https://www.nngroup.com/articles/synthetic-users/] * A Tale of Two Identities: An Ethical Audit of Human and AI-Crafted Personas — https://arxiv.org/html/2505.07850v1 [https://arxiv.org/html/2505.07850v1] * Luxury in Transition: Securing Future Growth — https://www.bain.com/insights/luxury-in-transition-securing-future-growth/ [https://www.bain.com/insights/luxury-in-transition-securing-future-growth/]

Ep. 260 | Jeannie Walters and John Abraham: A Company with No Memory: When Your Systems Don't Remember the Customer

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 execution plan, it's harder to agree on what "great" customer experience actually means. Learn how AI-assisted listening (for things like tone, behavior, and patterns) surfaces exhaustion signals that surveys miss, why sentiment analysis becomes a dead end without action, and how to replace tool-chasing with cross-functional fixes that stick. We'll also cover the danger of becoming a "company with no memory," and the simple prompt leaders can use to ask, "What can we learn … without a survey?" The goal? When you stop celebrating case-by-case resolutions, you eliminate those frustrating repetitions that drain trust. Guests: Jeannie Walters [https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeanniewalters/], CEO, Experience Investigators, and John Abraham [https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-abraham-customerguru/?originalSubdomain=fr], Customer Experience Consultant Host: Rob Markey [https://www.linkedin.com/in/robmarkey/], Partner, Bain & Company Give us feedback: Customer Confidential Podcast Feedback [https://bit.ly/CCPodcastFeedback] Send us a note: Contact Rob [https://www.robmarkey.com/contact-rob] Timestamped Topics [00:00] Shiny tools derail real outcomes [00:02] Learn without a survey mindset [00:04] The company with no memory [00:07] AI listening, beyond survey bubbles [00:12] Repetition, not incidents, drives exhaustion [00:14] Trade-offs beat vague promises [00:18] Redefine success beyond scores Notable Quotes [00:02] Jeannie: "The siloed nature of organizations is still here, and that's just the nature of how big organizations work. What I am more excited about is that it's not just about that holistic idea, but really helping individuals understand where they fit." [00:07] John: "The big debate [used to be] around driver questions and how long should the survey be. Now, the debate is much more, 'What can I learn without a survey?'" [00:08] John: "It's one thing to take a large data set and say, 'Okay, anybody can log in and play around with it.' It's very different when you see data, and you work in a frontline team or at a location." [00:15] Jeannie: "We have to say, 'This is who we are, and this is the promise we're making to you.' If we say we're gonna be all things to all people, we're saying we're nothing to no one." Additional Resources - Jeannie reveals how any leader can win with her proven method to drive performance, retention, and revenue by making customer experience their greatest competitive advantage in her upcoming book, Experience Is Everything: Making Every Moment Count in the Age of Customer Expectations [https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/experienceinvestigators.com/experience-is-everything-book/__;!!AbgBjg!0SqH4zft6rsG-K0cK9MZA6p9xBGn8pgJWqwc3UEnaty0_10HCCEbmjyDP3tiELQ0osRGtynZXLJB1LLfOHAQBxPetSvxzIv8qAeYMUPb$].

Ep. 259 | Rachel Bicking: Customers' First Micro-Frustration Makes or Breaks the Next Purchase

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 rewards liability so that investment can follow behavior change. Journey maps freeze a tense customer moment. A live atlas shows where small failures block the next purchase and coordinates fixes across channels. Inside the business, spending becomes about precision. Simulators forecast lift, break-even, and profit impact by segment and moment, so finance are able to see trade-offs before money moves. The payoff? Practical programs that grow trips, expand categories, and raise lifetime value. Guest: Rachel Bicking [https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachelbicking], EVP of Innovation, Kobie Marketing Host: Rob Markey [https://www.linkedin.com/in/robmarkey/], Partner, Bain & Company Give Us Feedback. Help us improve the podcast here: https://bit.ly/CCPodcastFeedback [https://bit.ly/CCPodcastFeedback] Time-Stamped Topics: * [00:03] First-trip friction that kills repeat purchases, with examples and fixes * [00:10] Personalization that simplifies the customer experience * [00:12] Emotional Loyalty Scoring, habit, status, and reciprocity * [00:21] Coordinating recovery across store, app, and site for the same customer * [00:23] Using precision to avoid incentivizing the wrong customer base * [00:27] Designing redemptions to expand baskets, categories, and trip frequency * [00:31] Accounting for redemption cost and liability without derailing good decisions * [00:34] Using simulators to forecast lift and break-even before spending a dollar * [00:36] The moment modeling convinces finance to reallocate the budget Time-Stamped Quotes: * 00:05 — "What we're trying to do at scale is identify those moments that matter and those micro-moments that then lead to a negative or positive experience. Because we want to amplify the positives and we want to make sure that we intercept the negative ones." * 00:07 — "I think there's been a broader inclination to say, 'Hey, if it's below a certain amount, people don't care.' And this is where personalization becomes really important. If I get delayed checking into my hotel room and I have to go to the next meeting and I don't have time to put my stuff down, ten minutes matters." * 00:08 — "Data-wise, we're always trying to break down customers' interactions [and] rewards into a series of metadata, into a series of features, so that we can make them more explainable at scale." * 00:13 — "If personalization is done well, the experience from a customer perspective should be very simple. It should be guided. It should be deliberate."