The Road Less Traveled: Chapter 2 - The Power of Data, How to Serve Customers, and the Corporate Dance. (Part 3 of 7)
This next chapter of my life is less about risk taking and more about feeding curiosity through learning and being outside your comfort zone; learning how to serve customers; building, scaling and managing at the enterprise level. It’s also about organic growth and discovering some of my superpowers. Let’s start with learning….
Columbia Business School (CBS)
Getting into CBS was empowering, and I figured the most likely path, post B school, would be something that married my love for science/healthcare with big business - Pharma? Or maybe I would go big box consulting or banking, like most of the class. Then came day 1, and talk about impostor syndrome, classmates came from private equity, venture capital, analyst programs - there were even a few Olympic athletes and startup exits in the mix. Was I in the right place? It was like a secret world that had opened up to me, and I was someone’s +1. But, this is where I am supposed to forge lifelong friendships and find out what I want to do when I grow up 🙂.
Many classmates had practical academic and finance experience, and placed out of required classes. I was seeing most of this for the first time. While applying, I didn’t fully understand why “quantitative” skills were stressed so much. Through the first semester, I quickly understood. Marketing was a concept where I thought, “how hard could it be…it’s creative, it’s touchy feely, it’s no big deal.” Wrong. I realized that I had NO clue as to what marketing really entailed, and devoured all the theory and practice around the value and utility of data and analytics used in the practice. This extended to virtually almost all of the classes in some way. The case study method put us in the drivers seat, taking on new roles at new companies, weekly, in order to learn about successes, failures, implications of decisions on business - all backed with data. Now this was cool! Some standout classes I remember are:
- Corporate finance - armed me with the ability to break down businesses and understand the role of finance and the interplay among cash flow statements, balance sheets, and p/l models. It also gave me the foundation to be able to build my own financial models in myriad startups in my future. I cannot tell you how important this understanding is to anyone looking to build and run their own business.
- Operations Management - I will never look at a line in bank or grocery store the same. This class showed me how we can calculate the efficiency of various business operations in order to support operating procedure, customer service, and ultimately revenue and loyalty. This class transformed how I experience almost every physical, customer facing touchpoint. #DavidJuran
- Earnings Quality - this class was a deep dive into earnings statements and financial documents. Think of this like a secret decoder ring for earnings statements which lets you see company skeletons hiding in plain sight or an x-ray of sorts to help you understand how to evaluate the quality of the numbers being offered. Killer class, highly recommend. #AlanBrott
- Retail Leadership - coming off of my retail internships (see next paragraph), this was THE class I needed to take. Anchored by weekly CEOs of major retail companies like Coach and early internet companies like BlueFly, Professor Alan Kane guided us through the world of major retail. The highs, the lows, the mistakes, etc. Unknown to me at the time, but this class was a major source of strength for me during my time in India building new retail startups. #AlanKane
- The Lang Center for Entrepreneurship - having built a few small companies before business school, the Lang Center was a place I wish I had spent more time while in school. I was so busy trying to land the big job, I didn’t have the fortitude to go all in and get to building at the time, but years later, post my own startup adventures, I found the Lang Center to be a home away from home where I was able to reconnect and get valuable advice and intros from the likes of Cliff Schorer .
Anne Klein Official and Prada Group
MBA internships are supposed to be the north star after year 1. Classmates prepared for and chased after coveted spots with the biggest and best names in finance, consulting, and CPG. I found myself caught up in the rat race, initially, but after a few on-campus interviews, I ducked out the race. Why? I was half-assing interviews and didn’t feel commitment to these coveted roles. So, in hindsight, it is easy to see that I, once again, chose the path less travelled.
Post undergrad, though I was med school bound, I became fascinated with the idea of consumer brands, seeing friends move to NY to work with big consumer, retail brands. Could I get internships with big name retail brands as an MBA? I set out to get practical experience in how retail brands operate. With the help of my dear college friend Tina Bhojwani , a retail veteran, I landed an internship at Anne Klein, under the leadership of the famed industry executive, John Idol. I spent the summer learning about and supporting the Global Licensing team and Sales and Marketing team - learning how established brands sold seasonal products to “doors” across the world and how they were able to generate meaningful revenue from the licensing of the brand across non primary categories. This continued into the fall semester with another retail powerhouse, Prada. Here, I supported the US Finance and Logistics team gaining insights into the cash flow, operational costs, and logistics reality for wholesale and retail in the US. Unbeknownst to me, this exposure probably played a role in the formation of my first VC funded startup, years later.
Moving On…
Over time, I came to realize that I could hold my own and flourish in b school, professionally and personally. Now I had to figure out what’s next. I made up my mind to find a middle ground…work for a company of the utmost repute but one that is the gold standard for serving customers. That choice was easy, American Express, a hugely data driven Fortune 100 company that was best in class in financial services for the consumer. It’s premium card portfolio was the envy of the industry and Amex was known for demonstrating how elevated servicing led to quantifiable success, loyalty, and profitability.
Takeaway - top tier MBA programs don’t teach vastly different curricula or have some secret sauce that other programs don’t, but rather, they prepare you to attack a problem or business case, break it down; understand root cause and effect; utilize available, comparable data sets and assumptions (quantitative and qualitative); and ultimately construct a way forward to achieve your goals. This WAY of thinking is much more valuable and applicable to a wide range of professional and personal situations. Each new role, post b school, I put this into practice, time and again. I’ve built myriad business and financial plans since then, leading to business growth and revenue, VC investments, and successful partnerships. This is the GOLD.
American Express
Getting There…
April 2004, most of my friends had lined up their sweet, 6 figure salary roles. I scoured Amex’s job postings (outside of on campus hiring) looking for something that factored in that I had more years of work experience than most of my classmates. Amex typically took MBAs in as Managers. One day, I found an obscure role called Senior Manager, Service Design Solutions. I took a chance and applied. Jennifer Sonnabend , the hiring Director, interviewed me. I can’t remember much about the interview, other than to say that I really had no idea what they did, but Jennifer somehow saw enough in my background and personality that she offered me the job anyway (🙏Jennifer). So what was the role? As it turns out, it was huge. An unsexy monaker for, likely, the most important function in the value chain of Amex’s consumer offering. We managed the relationship between marketing and service delivery (customer service, travel, and concierge) for Amex’s prized portfolio - Platinum and Centurion Charge Cards.
Platinum and Centurion - The Crown Jewels
The next year was akin to working on a large vessel, get intimately familiar with everything that makes the ship run at top performance. My two largest stakeholders were among some of the most visible leaders in the consumer side of the organization. Simon Kahn was above deck and ran the P&C product marketing team while Roseanne Hartman, Marilyn Brown, and several other dedicated leaders were the gatekeepers to the below deck operations that kept passengers above deck happy and coming back for more. These leaders were experienced, passionate, and generous with their time and knowledge to help my get my bearings and flourish in my role.
These were two vastly different worlds and my team was the bridge between. The main thing we did was to constantly balance the equation:
Marketing "Promises to Consumer" = Service's "Ability to Deliver Promises"
🙏to a few who played pivotal roles in helping me bridge the gap between my two stakeholders. Doris Daif - took over for Jennifer at some point, and Doris had her hands full with me. She was smart, kind, and patient and helped focus my energies to succeed. Artie Ambrosio , wonder kid who started as a call center rep but rose to be a manager at SDS at an unheard of age. Artie was my walking, talking encyclopedia on how things work and who to network with to get things done. I still speak with Artie today! Andre Graham - one of Rosanne’s right hands in the Ft. Lauderdale service center. He became my go to below deck, and over time I helped him get above deck to HQ 🙂. Thanks guys!
Customer Service is Easy?
To balance the equation above, I cultivated two personalities:
- The first was a staunch advocate for the service delivery team by learning as much as I can about how service is delivered, the pain points, the successes, the gaps, and the opportunities. I spent countless hours at the service centers listening to calls, understanding and optimizing service delivery capabilities, and surfacing important front line findings back to HQ.
- The second was that of the HQ product marketer, with their own set of goals, targets, and realities. I worked with marketing to be at the forefront of new benefits, features, offerings, etc. Ensuring that the right processes and information were given to service delivery teams.
This was a tricky role, but it gave me a unique perspective in the organization and helped me learn that at it’s core, there are some simple truths to how Customer Service is easy…or can be. I met some front line reps who showed me how it can be easy by following these simple rules:
Customers want to be heard. Listen to the customer. Really listen. Ask questions to get as much information as you can.
You don’t have to have all the answers but you should leave the customer feeling like you are on the case and set expectations for the way forward towards a solution.
Deliver to those expectations. Don’t shy away from calling the customer when you’ve committed to, even if you don’t have all the answers. Your customer will appreciate hearing from you and knowing you are working on the solution, without them having to follow up.
Don’t sound like a robot reading from a script. When I hear “I’m sorry for the inconvenience” from a rep, I cringe. We don’t need a scripted “sorry”, we need to know that the rep understands the issue, empathizes, and takes ownership!
Don’t take customer frustrations personally. It’s hard, but once you learn this part, servicing customers can be done with empathy and conviction.
Of course, there are a ton of ways CS can go wrong, from a gross misalignment of the equation above to things as simple as not providing the right information, at the right time, for reps. But, most things can be overcome given the right mindset, training, and most importantly, attitude.
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New Product Development, Co-Brands, Portfolio Management
Soon, I was the defacto POC for myriad customer service related strategic initiatives for the company. The Office of Kenneth I. Chenault (CEO and Chairman) sent us high touch and sensitive customer service issues that made it to their office. Talk about pressure! But we had a special team, super committed, and highly effective.
I was invited to join the US New Product Development’s (NPD) committee as the service delivery expert. Here, we were responsible for developing Amex’s organic card products as well as Co-branded card products, and I was providing the strategic guidance for the backbone of each product. My commitment to service delivery paid off and organically put in the right place at the right time to get noticed by my next set of business mentors and start building enterprise products.
After a few months working with mostly VPs and Directors on the NPD committee, I was approached by Nicholas L. and Justin M. , the dynamic duo leading the charge to ideate, analyze, sell, and create new cobrand card products for the US. They were building a small team of 4 or 5 “hitters” who could lead the next wave of product and revenue building for the card giant.
Lessons About the Corporate Dance
I was mesmerized by the “way” that they thought about creating partnerships and joint value. We set out to analyze multiple industries and leading consumer companies that enjoyed large and loyal customer bases. From Virgin Atlantic to Apple Apple to ING Bank, we prepared business cases and led discussions on potential card partnerhips for Amex. This was at a scale I hadn’t seen yet. We were attempting to build new products that would generate billions over their lifetime.
Nick and Justin taught me the “corporate dance” - the importance of building internal stakeholder support, the ability to be creative in constructing innovative partnerships through lengthy and hotly contested negotiations; the ability to craft a stories and visions, and the ability to focus on the collective good versus “being right.”
💁 Being right can be wrong... During one internal stakeholder meeting, where we were selling in our vision for a particular cobrand, I remember getting stuck on what I knew to be “right” in a meeting. Nick pulled me aside later that day, and he said “Dude, what I love about you is that your instincts are great and you are usually right, but it doesn’t f@#king matter!” Nick’s tough love and simple lesson was game changing and helped start to understand that being right isn’t the metric that I needed to be chasing. If you ask many of the younger minds I have had the pleasure of mentoring, they will have most certainly heard this quote! Thanks Nick!
Building a $3B Portfolio
A year in to the role, our hard work started paying off. We started closing BIG deals for the company. Goldman Sachs Private Wealth Management and First Republic Private Wealth Management were two standouts I led with Nick. These were ground breaking for Amex. This was the first time Amex allowed cobranding with it’s most coveted card product - The Platinum Card. These deals were hard fought, internally and externally. We spent months on single negotiation points like Change of Control and Branding. This was my first lesson (and major accomplishment) in how to contruct enterprise level partnerships build with mutual value and longevity. Last I checked, the Goldman Sachs PWM portfolio still remains over 15 years later, having delivered billions in charge volume and hundreds of millions in revenue to Amex. This is something that I am super proud of…
We ended up building a new cobrand vertical called FSI (financial services institutions) for Amex which folded in a few more deals we closed and resurrected an old partnership with Ameriprise. Now that the deals were closed, we needed someone to handle to the internal build, training, and deployment of these new products into the market. I was the natural candidate given my intimate knowledge of the deals and service delivery background. Nick and I were both promoted for our efforts, and I took on the FSI portfolio management role.
I led a 300+ person team to stand up and launch the products in market. It was my first enterprise level product lead role. I wasn’t sure that I was ready to lead this large of a team for something so big and visible to leadership, but with Nick’s support, I jumped in. Over the next year, we successfully launched the products and managed a $3B charge volume portfolio!
The Customer Lifecycle and Beyond….
The last year with Amex was instrumental in teaching me about the value of the Customer Lifecycle.
While we had teams focused on each part of the customer lifecycle (Acquisition, Engagement, Loyalty, and Retention), I was charged with the success of each part of the journey. I got to work closely with teams to understand the levers, pain points, channels, tools, and wins with each part. This certainly added to my growing bag of tricks, and served as the foundation for my future success building startups selling directly to customers around the world.
But alas, all good things come to an end. I had been at Amex for 4 years, longer than any role to date. The average tenure at Amex was something ridiculous like 15+ years, and I was getting too comfortable in the role. I was extremely fortunate to have a leadership training type tenure at Amex getting experience across the major functions in a relatively short period of time. I had also been awarded the coveted Chairman’s Award for Innovation - Premier Level for my work on the Gold Card Events Platform. This was awarded annually to less than 0.05% of employees globally.
I was not in a relationship at the time and a little bored of my personal life in the city. I started to get that "itch" to learn something new or challenge myself in a new way...but what?! In 2008, I traveled to India for a friend’s wedding. I came back and decided to take a leap of faith and bet on myself. That trip changed the course of my life in so many ways. Stay tuned, next week we go to India!
📢Next Up:
Chapter 3 - Namaste India!, Part 4 of 7 - 09/18/23
Chapter 4 - India and the 3 C's - Commerce, Content, and Community, Part 5 of 7 - 9/20/23
⬇️ To go back and read Part 1 or 2, please click below:
If you enjoyed this story, follow me Sujal Shah. I’ll be publishing the rest of “my story” weekly, followed by a bi-monthly newsletter I am starting with BandraRoad AI tentatively called, “AI and the Future of Digital Families”
Head of Global Consumer Loyalty | Customer Experience, Interactive Marketing I MBA Finance & Marketing
11moSujal Shah !! What a crazy special time for us, Amex, and its consumers! Forever changed from that time onward. Glad to have played a small part in your wild ride of life ❤️
Founder & Director at Global Peak Wealth | Specialising in Private Banking and Asset Monetisation to Enhance Wealth for High-Net-Worth Individuals
1ySujal Shah great page you have! I'd love to explore any synergies.
Sujal- nothing short of fabulous! What a journey you have been on. I’m honored to be included in your reflection and believe that each experience helps us grow as leaders and paves the way for our endeavors going forward! Keep it up rock star!!!!
Vice President of Business Relationships at Peopletek Coaching l Relationeering I Leadership Development I Culture Change I Change Agent I Career Coaching l Public Speaker
1ySujal - Congratulations - I appreciate the call out and am impressed that I share the space with who I consider to be some of the best leaders I had the opportunity to work along side with!