Within the past six years, businesses have faced the COVID-19 pandemic, shifting tariffs and a war in Iran, sending consumer sentiment on a roller coaster ride.
For Warby Parker co-founder and co-CEO Neil Blumenthal, riding volatility starts with building trust among customers in the days, weeks, months and years before.
“What can you do to build as much goodwill as possible knowing that you will face a ton of crises?” Blumenthal said at the Semafor World Economy summit last week in Washington. The eyeglass provider aims to deliver value and great experiences every day, and it tracks its net promoter score to make sure it’s on the right path.
“The way you manage through volatility is having a clear North Star and leveraging the goodwill that you have,” Blumenthal said. “What is the metric I look most closely at? It’s net promoter score. It's probably the best measure of customer satisfaction, and if that starts to drop for any reason, we’re going really deep into that.”
Warby Parker measures every stage of the customer journey, whether an adjustment or an eye exam. Each stage gets its own survey and corresponding score, and the company evaluates itself on each measure.
That experience is what makes the store stand out, according to Blumenthal.
“I like to think our stores can be an oasis,” he said. “Those stores need to be calm, they need to be beautiful, they need to deliver an exceptional experience."
Instead of putting glasses in a glass display or behind the counter, Warby Parker puts them at eye level with well lit full-length mirrors and transparent pricing.
“These little details are what contributes to great customer experience, and that contributes to humanity because you're actually designing an experience based on empathy, putting yourself in the customer’s shoes,” he said. “I want people to come into our stores to browse and linger.”
