Building a Customer Operating System

Years ago, I had an opportunity that had a much bigger impact on me than I probably realized at the time. I spent four full days at Zappos headquarters in Las Vegas, learning about their company, spending time with the staff across all departments, and getting the opportunity to meet and interact with Tony Hsieh. Tony has since passed away, but I still think about that experience and what I learned there.

Zappos talked a lot about "Delivering Happiness," but when you spent time inside the company, you realized pretty quickly that it wasn't just a marketing line. They lived it. The customer wasn't the responsibility of one department or a group of people answering phones. The entire company was built around creating an experience for the customer. It influenced who they hired, how they trained people, how employees made decisions and ultimately how they built the business.

That experience had a profound impact on me and how I think about building companies. I have always believed that culture has to start on day one, and one of the most important parts of that culture is understanding that the customer has to matter all day, every day. Not just when there is a problem. Not just when it's time for a renewal. And definitely not just when someone from sales is asking for more business.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately as I think about the future of United Transportation and what we are building across Graxon Logistics. Transportation and logistics is an incredibly competitive industry, and there are a lot of companies that can move a pallet, operate a warehouse, or put a truck on the road. The bigger question for me is: How do we create an experience around those services that is truly different?

I keep coming back to this concept of building a Customer Operating System.

I don't mean another piece of software or another CRM. I also don't mean creating a customer service department, giving it a new name and saying we are now "customer obsessed." I mean building an operating system around the customer that connects every part of our business, sales, onboarding, operations, warehousing, transportation, dispatch, communication, billing, technology and customer experience.

Some of that will be done with humans. Some of it will absolutely be done with technology, both AI and non-AI. And quite frankly, some of it can be accomplished with common sense.

Call people back. Do what you said you were going to do. Don't make a customer send three emails looking for an update that we already have. If something goes wrong, communicate it quickly instead of hoping it fixes itself. Own mistakes. Make it easy to do business with us. Give customers visibility into what is happening with their freight without forcing them to ask.

None of that is revolutionary. But consistently doing it across an entire organization might be.

Technology and AI give us an opportunity to take this much further. We should be able to identify exceptions before our customers do. We should be able to proactively communicate changes. We should be able to use data to understand how we are performing for every customer. We should be able to create transparency from the moment a customer engages with us through the completion of their shipment and ultimately through billing and invoicing.

But I also don't believe technology will ever completely replace the human side of this business. Sometimes a customer doesn't want another automated notification. They want someone to pick up the phone, understand the situation and say, "I've got it." There is tremendous value in that, and I don't want us to lose it as we embrace more technology.

There is another part of this that I think is even more important. Our customer has a customer.

When a freight forwarder chooses United Transportation or another Graxon Logistics company, we aren't just moving their freight. We are helping them fulfill a promise they made to their customer. Our performance impacts their reputation. Our communication becomes their communication. Our ability to solve a problem can ultimately help them retain and grow their customer.

That changes the way I think about customer experience.

I don't just want us to provide great service. I want our service to become a competitive advantage for our customers. I want them to be able to sell differently because they work with us. I want them to have better visibility, better information, faster answers, fewer surprises and more confidence because of what happens behind the scenes within our organization.

That's where I think a true Customer Operating System can become incredibly powerful.

We don't have every part of this figured out yet. We are going to build it, test it, learn from customers, probably get some things wrong and continue improving it. But I am incredibly excited about the concept and what it could eventually mean for United Transportation, Graxon Logistics and, most importantly, our customers.

Years ago, I walked into Zappos and saw what could happen when a company didn't just talk about customer service but built its culture and its business around it.

Now I want to take some of that thinking, combine it with what we know about transportation and logistics, add technology, AI, great people and some common sense, and see how far we can take it. Customer experience will never be a department. It will be the expectations of all employees at every level to deliver differentiating service that makes our customers loyal and delighted.