Customers Rule and You Have to Manage Their Experience

The first rule of a successful CEO is «know your customers and personalize your service to the customer», says Bill McDermott, CEO of SAP, in the latest installment of Executive Chats, the video series in which Rector Gianmario Verona meets top executives in the frontline in facing the challenges of the digital century.

In an entertaining way, Bill McDermott tells how he's been keeping to this rule along his entire career, since he was a teenage entrepreneur at a corner store in Amityville, Long Island. He's equally entertaining when he tells how he got his first job and his first sale and how he realized one of the most amazing turn-overs as the country manager of Xerox in Puerto Rico. «I trusted my employees and trust is the ultimate human currency», he says.

It doesn't matter if you have 500 customers in a corner store or 7bln potential customers as the CEO of SAP, you always have to manage the experience of your customers, Bill McDermott concludes.