Frontline employees have the most information about customer needs, while leaders have all the authority. To deliver exceptional service, empower the people interacting with customers to make decisions in the moment. This closes the gap and allows the organization to be truly responsive.

The founders of billion-dollar companies like Wealthsimple and GoBolt demonstrated an insane level of focus on customer contact. This included calling every free user within 30 seconds and personally answering the 24/7 support line. This unscalable behavior generates deep customer understanding and powerful word-of-mouth.

To stay connected to frontline operations and customer sentiment, former EasyJet CEO Caroline McCall made it a ritual to help cabin crew collect trash on every flight. This simple, repeated act provided invaluable, unfiltered feedback from both employees and passengers that she couldn't get in the office.

A new CEO’s first few months are best spent gathering unfiltered information directly from employees and customers across the business. Avoid the trap of sitting in an office listening to prepared presentations. Instead, actively listen in the field, then act decisively based on those firsthand insights.

Brainstorming cannot reveal the true friction in your customer experience. Following JetBlue's example, leaders must regularly become their own customers. This practice uncovers how high-level decisions inadvertently create flaws in the customer journey that are invisible from the boardroom.

Feedback often gets 'massaged' and politicized as it travels up the chain of command. Effective leaders must create direct, unfiltered channels to hear from customers and front-line employees, ensuring raw data isn't sanitized before it reaches them.

Instead of focusing on call center efficiency metrics like average handle time, James Dyson reframed the interaction entirely. He instructed his team to treat it as an honor when a customer reaches out, fostering a culture of deep service that builds immense trust and brand loyalty.

Georges Salomon, founder of the legendary French company, personally sought out a young racer's critique of their ski boots, demonstrating the value of leaders connecting directly with ground-level users and employees for honest feedback, bypassing corporate hierarchy.

To get genuine interactions, the CEO of Malwarebytes often tells people he's 'just an engineer.' This approach stems from a servant leadership philosophy and allows him to receive unfiltered feedback about the company and its products, avoiding the pretense that comes with the CEO title.