Name: The Bold Bets that are Reshaping Customer Experience Today
Uploaded: 2026-06-02
Duration: 15 min 37 s

Today's travelers and consumers expect more and have more options than ever before. The companies winning their loyalty aren’t just keeping pace—they're making big operational bets and executing under pressure. The operational leaders of Southwest Airlines and MGM Resorts have both been inside major transformations: reinventing legacy systems and reimagining the guest experience end-to-end. They'll share what it takes to stay ahead of shifting consumer expectations and bring an entire organization along for the ride. 

Ayesha Molino, Chief Operating Officer, MGM Resorts International
Tony Roach, Executive Vice President and Chief Customer and Brand Officer, Southwest
Moderator: Ruth Umoh, C-Suite and Leadership Editor, Fortune; Co-Chair, Fortune COO Summit

The Bold Bets that are Reshaping Customer Experience Today

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How they've been saving the best for last. Aisha and Tony, thank you so much for joining us here. We're happy to be here. All right, Aisha, let's start with the news, the big news that broke yesterday. Uh, Barry Diller's takeover bid for MGM at an $18 billion valuation, as you already know, he's essentially saying the market is undervaluing the company and there's more growth to unlock. So from your seat as COO, do you agree? Do you think the market has been underestimated in MGM? So. We did receive a takeover offer yesterday and our board of directors is now going to begin its work of doing its fiduciary responsibility in terms of maximizing shareholder value. And you know, from my perspective, the trick is really to make sure that we keep our 60,000 employees focused on what they need to do every single day, which is deliver the best guest service possible. And at our scale that is, you know, it is a big task to keep that kind of population focused, but I think our leaders are well positioned to do it and everyone is very zoned in on the task at hand. I'm gonna push. Do you agree with the sentiment? I'm not gonna comment on that. Fair enough. Uh, well, let me add this question, you know, because in his April letter to shareholders. Dillard did talk about MGM's combination of real world assets and digital growth opportunities. So as you think about reshaping the customer experience, which of these opportunities excite you the most right now? Oh, you know, uh, we are at MGM Resorts. We're in the business of delivering fun. It is fantastic, and that is something that we truly get to do every single day. And from my perspective as COO, that's where the magic lies, right? And so one of the things that I've been really focused on, especially in a business like ours which is all about delivering experience, is how do I get my leaders laser focused on that proposition, get them back on the floor, get them engaged with the customers, get them anticipating customer needs, and then ultimately differentiate, delivering a differentiated customer experience. We're going to dig into and. What that looks like in practice. Let me turn over to you, Tony, uh, at Southwest, which is also going through its own organizational shifts, certainly another period of transformation. The company announced recently you're now going to oversee not just brand and customer experience but also people leadership and development, fairly unusual combination you don't see all too often. What's the thinking behind putting the employee experience and the customer experience under one sole leader? Yeah it's it's, it's, it is complex in terms of how it is designed from an organization stand standpoint but the actual principle is simple we're trying to elevate the employee experience and their journey so that they can deliver the type of customer experience that our brand and our business essentially is counting on. And so as we've been making transformation, especially on the customer facing side we wanna elevate the transformation for our employees which is, you know, we have 80,000 employees who are the lead actors in everything that we're doing and so this new role just brings these together and essentially joins these two efforts in tandem, uh, so that we don't miss a beat. Southwest is in this period of reinvention. About two years ago, the company pivoted, uh, did away with assigned seating, or it announced it was gonna do it with assigned seat in July 2024. Um, also got rid of course corrected, uh, on its two free checked bags policy which was long known for. For, uh, and was really one of the most recognizable parts of the brand you're now in the process of doing the work actually on the ground doing the work. So what have you learned about leading and bringing customers along through a transformation, especially one where some customers were a little iffy about the changes that were coming to a company that they've known for for decades. Yeah sure if you guys haven't known we've been going through a few changes at Southwest. I don't know if everybody in the room has seen those, um, but it's been the talk of the industry and at the root of it you have to understand what led to the changes you know we are a brand that's been iconic, um. Uh, but we wanna be sustainable and so fundamentally we needed to change our business model so that we have the future to look forward to and so when you anchor into that you then go and pick and choose where you wanna change and our, our, our position on this is you have to change the ecosystem around. Uh, the heart, but you don't change the heart, meaning the heart being the people and the service that we provide. So we went from open seating to assigned seating in, in, in any industry that's like changing the engine in a car from an airline standpoint, um, because it's a revenue change in terms of what you sell, but it's also an operational change. I mean how you turn airplanes and how you seat them matters and so we did both of those at the same time. And I would say when you look at what's going well, both the revenue has, has been exceeding our expectations operation actually is running better than it was before and now you have customer and people sentiment that typically trails those. And so what you see is doing now is really turning our attention to post-transformation. It's about the transformation of the brand and the culture, um, and I think when you look ahead that remaining piece I think really puts us in a position for the next 50 years to be. Uh, just as beloved as we were in the 1st 50, let me follow up with you before I turn to you, Ayesha. There's what I call this like corporate dead zone where a company is no longer cheap enough to be a budget retailer, but they're not seen as elite enough yet to compete with the legacy first class experiences. So how are you defining Southwest's unique version of premium, uh, so you don't get trapped in this forgotten middle. Yeah, and travel is occasion based, especially the airline, and so there's enough occasions to meet, uh, different needs. And so when you think about the Southwest product, it's always been middle basically middle class to lower class in terms of what we've been adding and all we're doing is widening in the aperture to be able to add more premium into the mix doesn't mean we're trying to be Delta because we don't think we need to be Delta to be successful, but when you look at how people travel. Travel, you may have a different product that you prefer by the occasion, and we think that we can add some more premium into the mix that will serve those needs and be accretive to a kind of the base business that we've been, uh, that we've created over time. Aha, you have a similar balance and act that you're navigating. I mean, MGM owns a massive portfolio of hotels on the Vegas Strip, and especially as consumers are more cost conscious travelers, they're scrutinizing the cost of a Vegas. Yet they still expect more luxury, more personalization, more entertainment, more convenience. How are you thinking about delivering value for price sensitive guests without also diluting this premium brand and and alienating some of those luxury customers you have? Yeah, absolutely. Differentiation such as we have in our portfolio creates complexity but also opportunity, and we had to really redefine what value means in the context of our portfolio. And that redefinition is what? So at a property like Bellagio, um, it really means, again, an ultra luxury customer experience that is personalized and unparalleled for Luxor and Excalibur, which were, which are two of our more value. Oriented resorts. We actually launched an all-inclusive earlier this year. It's a package we're very proud of, and it includes room, resort fee, parking, 3 meals a day for 2 people, including alcoholic beverage, show tickets, roller coaster rides, so really the entirety of the Vegas experience at one fixed price. And we understood, we heard loud and clear last year from our customers that they felt like they weren't getting that value proposition from Vegas anymore, particularly at our core properties. So we, we listened, we heard it, and we changed. Following up with you, you know, guests don't think in terms of hotels and restaurants and rewards apps and loyalty programs. They think about whether this trip felt effortless. Um, so how do you design an experience that feels seamless across so many different touch points from beginning to end? Just think about the full customer journey. Yeah, it's a real challenge, you know, the customer journey, of course, begins when the customer starts actually searching for their destination, searching for their trip, right? And so it's from that point on that we really think. About how we make the customer journey as smooth and frictionless as possible. So that's everything from looking at our marketing to redesigning and reevaluating our booking flows, to once the customer lands at the airport, we work very closely, Tony and I were just talking about this, with our airport authority to make sure that facilitation of passenger traffic through our airports and on our roads is smooth and seamless. Every part of it has to be considered when they enter the property, and the all-inclusive was A great example of this, you know, we are a massive company that is not designed to be an all inclusive. We had to reverse engineer that and at the back end stitch every piece of that together to really create a product that to the customer felt like that, felt seamless and was technologically enabled, but we really went through every piece of it as a customer would to make sure that we could deliver on that promise. Of course deployment of standard technology like mobile check-in, kiosk, check-in, check out. Um, but also enhancing the in-room experience in terms of making sure that In-im requests that go to our housekeeping team, for example, are delivered faster and that service can be delivered smoother and quicker as well. So you just have to look at every part of it but walk, walk it as a consumer would. So it definitely has become more complex. Yeah. Similar question for you, Tony. Southwest has also said the customer journey extends far beyond the flight itself. So as you also look at that entire journey, where are you most focused right now and what tells you where you need to invest in the future? It customers clearly tell you where you need to invest because you're looking at where behavior is changing. You can also look at what makes or makes the trip in terms of retention and growth and so we, we follow that very closely, um, and for us it's similar to ISIS. I mean you customers travel and there's a lot of time in between travel where they're considering traveling again and so for us the journey is that entire ecosystem. Um, so the way that we prioritize though how to make sure we're getting the seams correctly is really where the commercial side of the business has to partner with the operational side because that's usually where the seams are broken. It's something we are selling that the operation has to deliver and we created a team that that that is their sole job is to create a joint commercial and ops team. And they pick those experiences that often get broken on that handoff, and their job is to try to fix it and remove friction out of that. You were telling me earlier that Southwest is in this era where it's going back to its roots and it has to make its brand very clear. What is the new Southwest? Similar question, what is the new MGM? Well, the new Southwest is the old Southwest. Um, back to your roots, when you look at, people used to, people fell in love with Southwest because we, it was fun. It was fun to fly. The service was great. Before we gave away two free bags. People loved Southwest for the flight attendants and, you know, we had a sense of humor and our, our ads were. etc. and we think that there's a lot of history that actually is the bones of where we have to be back again. So in this, in many cases the the revitalization of what actually created the love we have a heart at the bottom on the bottom of our airplane is that's very rare and so we think that is actually the secret to the future and so you'll see a revitalization of that. So some of the or changes you talked about at the beginning is if we're gonna market that we gotta deliver that. My job is to try to marry those two things together. And very similar for MGM, you know, I think, especially what we're seeing from our customers today is that what they value is a place where they can come and feel special. At our scale, that can be hard to deliver, but our focus is really, really on that. I mean, I said this earlier, but we have spent an extreme, extremely significant amount of time thinking about how we get our leadership teams, refocused on our customers and our employees and not sitting in their offices on teams calls, right? How do we free up the time and how do we create the intention to engage and make sure that when we talk about what our customer wants, we're actually going out there and talking to our customer. Millions of them walk through our doors every single day, and we have this incredible opportunity to get that immediate feedback and that's really so much of where our focus today is, which is much how the industry operated 30 years ago. Much of that customer's feedback, as you already alluded to, is certainly in person meeting with the customer. I meet with those who are coming to your various properties, but both of your organizations also sit on a treasure trove of customer data and feedback. How do you go about turning that information into action, into meaningful improvements? Give some examples. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, like most companies in our industry, we obviously use NPS as a really meaningful indicator of how we're doing, and it provides a lot of empirical data on really key issues about the customer experience and we utilize all. That to engage both in terms of big picture sort of policy and procedural shifts, but also direct engagement with the customer. And so that's a really, really meaningful data pool. Ultimately that will tell one part of the story, but it really is our customers who directly give us the narrative, right? And you need to, in my experience, we need to marry the both of those in order to really compellingly understand how we need to change, especially when we're talking about major shifts in the operating business. very similar, it, you know, NPS data is certainly there. AI allows you to listen to all channels now. I try not to listen to Reddit because it's just inherently negative. We can see everything, and the thing is you see it very quickly. What do you do about it is actually how you prioritize what actually is mattering the most. Our employees adding them into that mix typically leads to the actual solution when we launch. Assigned seating on day one we knew we were not boarding the airplane correctly. People did not like the boarding groups. They hated them. And so we almost the first 2nd day we started working on changes. We're on iteration number 7 now until we get it perfect and that's just a matter of you take feedback, you use the right people and the experts to solve solutions, and you need a mentality in the organization that that's OK. Any questions from the audience? If you have a question, raise your hand. We'll bring a mic over to you. Any questions please remain a few minutes. Let's end with this. Um, if you could leave this audience of fellow operating chiefs with one principle for leading customer centered transformation at scale, what would it be? Perhaps Tony, we start with you. Say, would you repeat the question please? Uh, if you could leave this audience of CEOOs with one principle for leading customer centered transformation at scale, what would that be? Yeah, I think, I mean, for our business and, and very similar probably to yours is the outcome of the experience we want is only what we enable our people to do, and, uh, we can design as much as we want on paper, um, but it's a matter of equipment and empowering our people to be able to do it with clear expectations, the right infrastructure, so they're incentivized to continue to do it. Uh, and then the motivation to give them something to believe in. Please closing salvo. Yeah, absolutely. You know, for us, what we've realized that with our scale and our number of frontline employees, we have to keep it very, very simple, and the core foundation of our operating business is that our employees have to be empowered to say yes. They, at our scale, things go wrong, they go wrong every single day. We know that. We can't always prevent that, but we can 100% influence how we recover from it. And to make sure that that is really the operating foundation that's distilled. Throughout the organization, whether you've been there 30 years or a day is really the core of what we focus on. Yeah, well, both of you are certainly correct in that everyone's always thinking about their next trip. I certainly am itching for my next trip. Uh, Tony, Ayesha, thank you for a thoughtful discussion on leading transformation while still keeping customers at the center. Very much appreciated.