THE KINGS OF CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Whether you’re arguing with your cable company or trying to rebook a flight, awful customer service encounters are a disheartening part of daily life. But Union Square Hospitality Group restaurateur Danny Meyer—who wrote the influential 2006 statement of customer-care purpose Setting the Table—and Warby Parker’s Neil Blumenthal are helping inspire a new generation of companies to overhaul how they think about interacting with the public. Meyer and Blumenthal have both turned their unusual philosophies into booming businesses with enormous loyalty, as they explain to Fast Company’s Noah Robischon.
How do you decide where and how to implement technology in your business? Danny, you’ve said that you’re going to have employees at the Union Square Cafe wear Apple Watches.
DANNY MEYER: First of all, the goal should not be to remove humans from the equation, but [to] empower human beings who actually have a beating heart and who are caring people to achieve a greater degree of hospitality. The moment you tell me that tech should be used to remove people, that’s just not
