I Was a Highly-Paid Executive In Customer Experience. Then I Started Working Minimum Wage Jobs, And Realized Everything I'd Gotten Wrong. It wasn't until I started working frontline jobs that I realized the massive disconnect between how CEOs see customer service, and how customers experience it. That showed me how to fix the problem.

If you've ever worked a minimum wage job, you've surely watched a lot of training videos. Narrated training videos are a key component of Learning Management Systems, or LMS, and they're how you learn your job.

I am now ashamed to admit this, but I made a lot of those videos. I spent years in the executive suite of an international company, working as a global senior vice president of customer experience, where I directed and produced many training videos. I thought they were smart and helpful. I assumed they increased efficiency.

And then I left my well-paying job and became a frontline worker making $16 an hour at a big-box retailer in Florida. I spent my first two weeks watching LMS videos, which trained me on the art of customer service and how my store functioned, and then I was thrust out into the store itself. That's when I realized: Most of this stuff didn't help me at all. The videos got me "lawyered up" with cautions and "branded up" with soothing marketing messages, but they left me incapable of doing anything useful on the job. All I kept hearing from customers was, Where's my order? I need a refund! What do you mean you don't know?