Hugh Molotsi

This post was first published on LinkedIn . At Amazon, all senior leaders are required to take two days of customer service training every other year. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in this fireside chat describes one experience he had while being trained. Bezos was taking calls from customers and had an experienced customer service agent listening in and available to jump in if he needed help. On one particular call, as soon as the customer’s order appeared on the screen, the experienced agent leaned over to Bezos and whispered “She’s going to want to return that table”, pointing to one of the previous orders. Sure enough, the customer told Bezos “I want to return the table”. It turned out the top of the table was scratched because it had been packaged poorly. After handling the return and finishing up with the customer, Bezos turned to the agent and asked “How did you know that the customer was going to return the table?” “Oh that table always gets returned,” replied the agent. W...

This post was first published on LinkedIn . There have recently been several incidents reported of black customers of Airbnb being denied lodging.  Particularly disturbing was this story involving a host in Charlotte that was so egregious it elicited a response from Airbnb’s CEO. Sadly, there have been enough of these stories that #AirbnbWhileBlack is now a trending topic. How much should we hold Airbnb accountable for these problems? Haven’t they strongly condemned racism and published an anti-discriminatory policy which all hosts are supposed to abide by? Shouldn’t we just chalk up these incidents as Airbnb reflecting the sad state of bigotry in our country and that in spite of all our progress, we still have a long way to go? I propose there is much more that Airbnb can do to address these problems and that we should expect no less. I say this even though I’m a huge fan of the Airbnb story.  The hustle and creativity Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia exemplified in ...

Sorry, we don't sell tulips. You're the fifth person to ask today. Team, what are we going to do about the stagnant revenue from our flower shops? This post was originally published on LinkedIn . A very common scenario in corporations is when senior leaders realize the business is facing challenges the company is not on track to overcome.  They decide they need to take a step back and re-examine their strategy.  At this point they will typically hire an expensive consulting firm to help them work through their new strategy.  The consulting firm works for several months gathering data, interviewing employees and customers, and eventually delivering their recommendations.  When the turnaround strategy is unveiled with much fanfare, many employees are unimpressed – “We already knew this and it wouldn’t have cost the company millions of dollars if they had just asked us.” Because many employees have a front row view of customer and product issues, they ...