In a world saturated with marketing noise, automation, and AI-driven everything, Jay Baer, Founder of Tequila Report, cuts through with a philosophy that is refreshingly simple: if you want customers to stay, treat them like humans.
A Hall of Fame keynote speaker, bestselling author of six books, and one of the most recognised voices in customer experience globally, Jay has spent decades studying what separates businesses that customers love from those they quietly abandon. And his conclusion? It is rarely about the product.
Customer experience is your product. If what you sell is similar to what everybody else sells in price, all you have is customer experience.
The Moment Everything Changed
Jay did not stumble into customer experience by accident. He arrived there through observation, watching businesses across industries make the same costly mistake over and over again: assuming that a decent product was enough.
He saw companies investing millions in marketing to acquire new customers while doing almost nothing to retain the ones they already had. He watched brands build elaborate digital presences across every channel imaginable, then fail to respond to a customer complaint within 24 hours. He noticed how quickly loyalty evaporates when a business makes a customer feel like an inconvenience.
And he recognised something that the data would later confirm: businesses that genuinely prioritise the experience of their customers do not just retain them. They turn them into advocates. The kind of advocates who bring others with them.
This became the beating heart of his work ,and the central argument of his landmark book, Hug Your Haters, which made the case that customer complaints are not a crisis to manage but an opportunity to win.
The Three Things Customers Actually Care About
Ask Jay what businesses should actually do to improve customer experience and he will stop you before you finish the question.
The problem is when we talk about customer experience, it’s too big. But when you talk about it as if it is a thing ,make your customer experience better, that really does everybody a disservice.
His advice instead is to think small. Specifically, to focus on three things that his research shows customers genuinely care about: speed, clarity, and kindness.
Be Quick
Customers have one resource they are never getting back: time. Jay recommends doing what he calls an “intersections audit”, mapping every single moment in your business where a customer has to wait for anything. A phone being answered. An email being returned. A package arriving. A webpage loading. Once you have that list, ask which of those waiting moments you can make 15% faster. You do not need to leap buildings. You just need to be incrementally better than you were yesterday, and incrementally better than your competitor is today.
Be Clear
Confusion is the enemy of conversion ,and of loyalty. Jay has seen businesses that know their processes are confusing and do nothing about it, assuming customers will figure it out. They will not. Or they will, but they will resent having had to. His advice: take someone who does not work for your company and ask them to navigate your website, your checkout, your onboarding process. If a reasonable person cannot figure it out without help, fix it. Clarity is not just good customer service, it is good business.
Be Kind
This one, Jay admits, should not need to be said. And yet here we are. One of the most powerful findings in customer psychology ,validated across decades of research ,shows that customers who have a problem that a business successfully resolves end up more loyal than customers who never had a problem at all. The act of being genuinely helped, of being listened to and having your frustration acknowledged, creates a bond that smooth transactions rarely do.
“You have zero percent control over what’s already happened. You have 100 percent control over what happens next. And the most important thing you can do is say, ‘That sucks, I’m sorry’ ,and actually mean it.”
The Art of Making It Easy
One of the most compelling threads running through Jay’s philosophy is the power of removing friction ,not just from the customer’s journey, but from every relationship a business has.
He applies this thinking to his own speaking business with characteristic creativity. When meeting planners book him for a keynote, they receive a link to a custom website ,dressjaybaer.com ,where they can choose which of his famously bold plaid suits he will wear on stage. In many cases, planners have sent the options to their entire audience and let attendees vote. The result is not just a suit. It is an experience. It is a story people tell afterwards.
I always try to reduce the things that people can say no about. What are the 10 or 12 things that could get me not hired? How can we use CX to eliminate all of those things so that there’s never any one gripe that can get you disqualified?
It is, as he puts it, playing really good defence. And in a world where almost every market has more competition than ever before, great defence wins.
Why This Matters More Than Ever
Jay is unequivocal about where business is heading. The era of competing on product quality, price, or availability alone is ending. What is replacing it ,what is already replacing it ,is experience.
According to research he cites, 82% of Chief Marketing Officers believe their businesses will be competing primarily on the basis of customer experience. Jay calls this one of the most colossal shifts in business history ,and one that is still being underestimated.
Almost every industry has a ton of competition, more on the way. The barrier to create a business and enter any market has typically been reduced. So if the fundamental offering is not terribly dissimilar from everybody else’s, all you have is customer experience.
For businesses willing to take that seriously, to be quick, to be clear, and above all, to be kind, the opportunity is enormous. For those that do not, the cost will be measured in customers they never knew they were losing.
About Jay Baer, Founder & Editor at Tequila Report
Jay Baer is a Hall of Fame keynote speaker, author of six bestselling books including Hug Your Haters and Talk Triggers, and one of the world’s most recognised experts in customer experience and marketing. Learn more at jaybaer.com.
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