How To Love a Customer

Chattermill

How to Love a Customer explores how great brands transform surprising customer moments into unforgettable experiences, with Chattermill CEO Mikhail Dubov interviewing the leaders who truly listen to their customers and understand the human behavior that drives loyalty.

Episodes

  1. JAN 26

    How a "love your customer like your wife" mantra shaped decades of CX philosophy | Rufus Weston (Insights Consultant, formerly BBC, Nike, Just Eat)

    In this episode of How to Love a Customer, Rufus Weston—insights leader with decades of experience at BBC, Nike, Just Eat, HarperCollins, and now running his own consultancy—shares how one powerful mantra from a CMO changed everything: "Love your customer like you love your wife." What started as a simple phrase became the foundation for how Rufus thinks about building customer-centric cultures, proving the value of insights, and turning CX into a business driver instead of a cost center. Rufus walks through the evolution of customer insights—from telephone surveys to AI—and explains why, despite all the technological change, the fundamental challenges remain the same: getting a seat at the table, communicating impact, and making insights actually matter to leadership. He breaks down the three ingredients every insights team needs to succeed (strong team, customer-focused culture, and listening leadership), and why most companies still get it wrong by treating customer experience as an expense rather than an investment. Drawing from his time at Just Eat under Adrian Blair (now CEO of Trustpilot), Rufus reveals how leadership sets the tone for customer obsession, why ROI calculations for CX are often misleading, and how treating your customer experience as your business model—not a budget line—is the real path to sustainable success. He also shares unexpected CX heroes like Abel & Cole and the Dutch government, proving that great customer experience doesn't require flashy gimmicks—just reliability, empathy, and genuine care. Tune in to learn why loving your customer isn't just good ethics—it's good business. And why sometimes, the simplest advice is the most powerful.

    45 min

  2. 12/17/2025

    How a “root beer in a cola can” moment shaped CX philosophy | Eli Weiss (VP Advocacy, Yotpo)

    In this episode of How to Love a Customer, Eli Weiss — longtime DTC operator and now a leader at Yotpo — shares how a single customer email at OLIPOP exposed a major production error: root beer accidentally canned as Vintage Cola. What could have been written off as a confusing complaint instead became a defining moment in how fast, empowered CX teams can protect a brand from disaster. Acting quickly prevented the wrong product from hitting shelves nationwide — and reinforced just how much customer insight matters long before dashboards detect a problem. Eli unpacks how that moment shaped his philosophy on customer experience: meet expectations before you try to exceed them, move quickly when customers raise alarms, and build cultures where CX voices carry all the way to the founder. He contrasts meaningful listening with performative “surprise and delight,” explains why most brands try to build peaks before filling the valleys, and shares how expectation-setting — not gimmicks — is the real engine of LTV in DTC. Drawing from his time at Olipop, Jones Road Beauty, and now Yotpo, Eli breaks down why some brands scale sustainably while others burn through cash, how DTC has evolved across three generations, and why CX is often the invisible differentiator behind profitable growth. He also offers candid takes on AI, why most metrics miss what customers actually feel, and how brands can avoid delighting the wrong people with the wrong gestures. Tune in to learn why listening deeply, acting fast, and empowering CX teams isn’t just “good service” — it’s a competitive advantage. And why, in Eli’s words, sometimes the customer isn’t wrong… you just haven’t caught up yet.

    42 min

  3. 12/03/2025

    How a dumpster-top usability test reshaped HelloFresh’s UX culture | James Villacci (Head of Global UX Research, HelloFresh)

    In this episode of How to Love a Customer, James Villacci, Head of Global UX Research at HelloFresh, shares how one scrappy usability test—run on top of a New York City dumpster—uncovered a critical friction point in the signup flow and proved just how directly customer problems can impact revenue. James explains how that moment helped shift HelloFresh from seeing research as “nice to have” to building a company-wide culture where insights drive decisions. He describes his “research restaurant” model, where teams across the business become chefs of their own small studies, and insight “meal kits” empower product, engineering, and commercial teams to de-risk ideas quickly and at scale. He also reveals how the unique complexity of meal-kit UX—balancing choice, simplicity, personalization, and global eating habits—informs everything from menu filters to the launch of new meal occasions. And with tools like Chattermill and new AI workflows, his team now uncovers patterns and trends in minutes that once took weeks, helping HelloFresh evolve as fast as customer expectations. Tune in to learn how James built a research practice that’s playful, memorable, and relentlessly customer-obsessed—and why sometimes, one fast insight can shift an entire organization’s mindset.

    42 min

  4. 11/12/2025

    How listening to one unhappy customer changed how we support thousands | Olga Arsenii (Head of Customer Insights, Qonto)

    In this episode of How to Love a Customer, Olga Arsenii, Head of Customer Insights at Qonto, shares how one frustrated customer exposed a weakness in their onboarding experience—and sparked a company-wide movement to fix it. While analyzing feedback with her team, Olga discovered that many new users felt alone and overwhelmed during account setup. Support agents were reading scripts instead of solving real problems, and language barriers only made things worse. Within weeks, cross-functional teams—from frontline support to C-suite leaders—came together to redesign the process, proving that at Qonto, everyone owns customer experience. Olga explains how a culture of curiosity and action, not rigid frameworks, helped her young insights team turn data into change. She reveals how they use tools like Chattermill to uncover pain points at scale, why “customer delight” isn’t fireworks but simply things working right, and how balancing speed, reliability, and empathy defines great CX in modern FinTech. Tune in to learn how Qonto built a company where customer insights drive every decision—and why sometimes, one piece of honest feedback can transform an entire organization.

    31 min

  5. 10/13/2025

    How a 10-Minute Mosquito Fix Redefined Customer Experience | Anastasia Zdoroviak (Chief Customer Experience Officer, Snoonu)

    In this episode of How to Love a Customer, Anastasia Zdoroviak—former CX leader at DoorDash and Rappi, now Chief Customer Experience Officer at Snoonu—shares a personal story that perfectly captures what great CX really means. One night in Mexico City, her daughter couldn’t sleep because of mosquitoes. The stores were closed, delivery slots were full, and no quick fix seemed possible—until her own team unknowingly solved the same problem for thousands of users by analyzing failed search sessions and launching 10-minute deliveries from dark stores. Anastasia explains how this “mosquito moment” became proof that data-driven empathy can transform customer pain into product innovation. She discusses how to build CX functions that reduce the need for support, why NPS isn’t enough, and how different cultures—from the U.S. to Latin America to the Middle East—define trust, communication, and “on-time” in completely different ways. Tune in for insights on setting the right success metrics, balancing tech and human touch, and why the best CX goal is to make support almost unnecessary.

    45 min

  6. 09/25/2025

    How an epic delivery disaster became our blueprint for excellence | David McDaid (Director of CX & Studio, END.)

    In this episode of How to Love a Customer, David McDaid from END. Clothing shares the customer story that transformed his company's approach to quality - one where everything possible went wrong. Warehouse delays, customs issues, weather problems, a missing package, and finally the wrong item delivered after a week and a half. Instead of writing it off as bad luck, David's team created an internal "quality score" system that evaluates every order against six common failure points. Their score jumped from the mid-40s to the high-90s, customer complaints dropped dramatically, and the original customer returned to thank them personally. David also discusses why customer service teams shouldn't be cost centers and how challenger banks like Monzo are reshaping customer experience expectations across industries. Subscribe for more insights from leaders who turn customer disasters into competitive advantages.

    23 min

  7. 08/06/2025

    What every hospitality company gets wrong about guest comfort | Julia Zuber (Customer Insights Lead, Limehome)

    In this episode, Julia Zuber from Lime Home reveals how a seemingly minor guest complaint about sleep quality led to one of their most impactful customer experience improvements. What started as scattered feedback about uncomfortable nights turned into a company-wide pillow revolution that transformed guest satisfaction scores. Julia shares the detective work that uncovered the real culprit behind poor sleep experiences across 5,000 properties in Europe. It wasn't the beds, the rooms, or the booking process - it was something so basic that it almost slipped through the cracks entirely. By diving deep into guest feedback patterns and enriching data with room-level insights, her team discovered how one small change could dramatically improve the entire stay experience. Beyond pillows, Julia opens up about building a customer insights culture from scratch in a fast-growing hospitality company, why she believes "delight" is an overrated customer experience goal, and how support teams hold the key to understanding what guests really want. She also tackles the tricky balance between AI automation and human connection in hospitality, sharing lessons from Lime Home's own chatbot experiments. Subscribe for more customer experience insights from leaders who prove that the most powerful improvements often come from paying attention to the details everyone else overlooks.

    33 min

  8. 07/17/2025

    The pig story: How one customer's disaster helped shape my CX philosophy | James McGhee (Operations Director, FOOTASYLUM)

    In this episode, James McGhee from Foot Asylum shares the customer story that completely changed how he thinks about experience design, and it involves a whole butchered pig, a narrowboat, and a freezer that couldn't handle the cold. When James took an escalation call from a customer whose entire year's worth of pig meat had spoiled due to a faulty freezer, he discovered something crucial: the experience you design isn't always the experience customers receive. This self-sufficient customer living on a narrowboat had bought a chest freezer specifically to store his pig, but nobody had educated him about temperature operating limits. What happened next? A ruined investment and a powerful lesson about the gap between what businesses think they're delivering and what customers actually get. James reveals how this moment sparked a transformation at Foot Asylum, where customer feedback became their primary tool for solving operational mysteries that traditional metrics couldn't detect. When delivery partners insisted everything was running smoothly while customer satisfaction plummeted, James used voice-of-customer data to uncover hidden problems like cherry-picked review requests and delayed processing that was invisible to standard logistics reports. The outcome? Improved carrier relationships, better customer experiences, and a culture where every team member is empowered to solve problems with principles, not prescriptions. This episode is packed with insights on building customer-obsessed teams, using feedback to challenge vendor relationships, and why the smallest customer stories often reveal the biggest business truths. Subscribe for more customer experience insights from leaders who turn unexpected moments into lasting competitive advantages.

    41 min

  9. 07/01/2025

    How to build customer love when you only get one shot per month | Abdul Khaled (Head of CX & Digital Product, E.O.N. Next)

    In this episode, Abdul Khaled from E.O.N. Next reveals how they cracked the code on customer engagement in one of the world's most boring industries - energy. With customers only engaging once per month when they receive their bill, E.O.N. Next had to make that single touchpoint count, transforming complaints about high bills into opportunities for deeper customer relationships. Abdul shares the fascinating detective work that uncovered the real reason behind billing complaints: disconnected smart meters that customers didn't even know were broken. By digging beyond the obvious and creating simple solutions like automated alerts and step-by-step meter reading guides, they achieved a 75% increase in customer engagement and proved that even utility companies can create experiences that customers actually care about. This episode is packed with insights on root cause analysis, rapid iteration with real customers, and building customer-centric teams that can move at startup speed within a massive corporation. Subscribe for more customer experience insights from industry leaders who have turned constraints into competitive advantages.

    34 min
  • 9 Episodes

About

How to Love a Customer explores how great brands transform surprising customer moments into unforgettable experiences, with Chattermill CEO Mikhail Dubov interviewing the leaders who truly listen to their customers and understand the human behavior that drives loyalty.

Information

  • Creator
    Chattermill
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    9
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2025 All rights reserved.
  • Show Website
    How To Love a Customer