What I Learned from this Month’s Customer Feedback
Last week, I shared the core message from a recent keynote I delivered: AI is for tasks, but people are for relationships. It’s a simple idea, but putting it into practice is where the real work—and the real magic—happens. It’s easy to talk about being customer-obsessed from a stage. What’s more important is to live it, every single day.
For me, that means staying incredibly close to the unfiltered voice of the customer. Every month, the team sends a deep-dive into the feedback for RedBalloon to all directors and executives.. It’s a non-negotiable ritual. This month, our customers gave us a 4.8-star rating, a number our team has worked incredibly hard to earn. It’s a moment of pride, because not everything went right in the month - and some things took an incredible amount of effort to turn around. Never a moment to be complacent. Because true customer obsession isn't about basking in the good reviews; it's about having the courage to lean into the difficult ones. Of course we jump all over those where we have not met expectations and they have said so in their reviews. But what about those who say nothing… when we never know - this is where the gold might truly be.
This month’s feedback was a perfect illustration of the balance between brilliant systems and the messy, emotional reality of human relationships.
The Win: When a System Creates Effortless Joy
The vast majority of our feedback was overwhelmingly positive, and it centred on a single theme: ease. Customers consistently praised how simple the online experience was, from purchasing to redeeming vouchers.
“Easy and quick!!! Great gifting options available as I was stuck as to what to get my husband for his birthday. Highly recommend.”
“Such a smooth process, easy to navigate and great support.”
This is the power of getting the "tasks" right. A seamless, frictionless digital experience respects the customer's time and removes anxiety from the process. It's the foundation of a great relationship. When the technology works perfectly, it becomes invisible, allowing the joy of the experience to shine through.
This is exactly where automation and great systems should excel—in making the transactional parts of a business so smooth they feel effortless.
The Hard Lesson: When a System Breaks Trust
But no system is perfect. This month, we also received a cluster of frustrated comments around a specific promotion. A discount code for newsletter subscribers wasn't working as people expected.
“You’re offering promotion codes and insider codes however they don’t work.”
“That is false advertising as it said get $50 off when you sign up, which was my incentive to sign up. It did not then say spend 200."
This is where the rubber hits the road. Our investigation found the system was working as designed—the terms, including a minimum spend, were in the follow-up email that delivered the code. But the initial website banner lacked that crucial detail.
From a purely technical standpoint, the information was provided. But from a human perspective, we had broken a promise. We had created a feeling of being misled, which instantly erodes trust. This is a classic example of where a "task" (delivering a code) failed a "relationship" (making a customer feel valued and respected).
This is the messy middle where so many businesses fall down. It's a powerful lesson that clarity, transparency, and managing expectations are not just copywriting issues; they are fundamental to the customer relationship. We are, of course, taking this feedback and using it to ensure our promotional mechanics are crystal clear at every single step.
The Ultimate 'Why': It's All About Connection
So why do we do all this? Why do we celebrate the wins and dissect the failures? A final piece of feedback from this month brought it all home for me.
"Finding the perfect gift for my partner is never easy; he has everything and wants nothing! For our anniversary, I decided to give him a RedBalloon voucher. What made it truly special was not just the experience itself, but the time we spent together choosing something we’d both enjoy. The whole journey, from picking the experience to actually doing it, made for a memorable and meaningful celebration.”
This is it. This is the real "job" our customers hire us to do. Not just to provide an activity, but to be a catalyst for human connection. The entire business, from the website's code to the handling of a complaint, exists to serve that one, deeply human outcome.
Bringing These Lessons to the Stage
As a keynote speaker, my passion is to move beyond the theoretical and share these kinds of real, unfiltered lessons from the front line of Australian business. The world has enough speakers who can talk about the future of AI and marketing in abstract terms. My commitment is to show what it actually looks like in practice—the wins, the failures, the messy middle, and the human truths that drive real growth.
My goal on stage is to be an inspiring keynote speaker who equips other business leaders with the courage and the frameworks to be truly customer-obsessed. It’s about building organisations that are not only technologically advanced but also deeply human.
Because at the end of the day, that’s what builds a brand that lasts.
