CMSWire TV
The Gist
- Legacy in focus. FedEx CX leader Neil Gibson reflects on founder Fred Smith’s vision and how it continues to shape customer experience.
- Culture of quality. From military lessons to QDM’s six guiding principles, Gibson explains how FedEx operationalizes “1% better every day.”
- Digital-first mindset. With thousands of daily interactions, Gibson underscores the push for personalized, digital-first experiences over 800-number frustration.
Customer experience at FedEx is about more than on-time deliveries — it’s a philosophy rooted in people, quality and continuous improvement. In this episode of CMSWire TV’s Beyond the Call, I join CMSWire contributors Amir Hartman and Jeb Dasteel to speak with Neil Gibson, senior vice president of global customer experience at FedEx Services. Gibson shares lessons from founder Fred Smith’s enduring legacy, how military discipline translates into CX excellence and why digital-first personalization is non-negotiable for FedEx’s future.
Editor's note: This transcript was edited for brevity and clarity.
Table of Contents
- Remembering FedEx Founder Fred Smith
- Military Lessons in Leadership and CX
- Broad Business Perspective Fuels CX
- Balancing Scale With Personalization
- Embedding Quality-Driven Management (QDM) Into Culture
- Six Guiding Principles of QDM
- Operationalizing Philosophy Into Practice
- Turning Customer Feedback Into Actionable Improvements
- Finding Insights in Customer Channels
- Living in the World of Exceptions
- Celebrating Above-and-Beyond Moments
- Owning Failures as Opportunities
- Navigating Trade Policy Impacts
- Balancing Business and Household CX
- Customer-Centric Technology
Remembering FedEx Founder Fred Smith
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: I want to start on a somber note, but also a chance to celebrate what an incredible legacy FedEx founder Fred Smith left. He passed in June and we're sorry for that, Neil. But we know how much of an impact he had on your career and the FedEx family. You both have military backgrounds, so there must be some connection there as well.
Neil Gibson: I really appreciate that, Dom. All of us at FedEx — over 500,000 team members — continue to mourn the loss of our founder and executive chairman. He created an industry from what the story goes was a C-minus paper at Yale, and turned it into a company that now delivers 16 million packages around the world every day. On our first day of operations in 1973, FedEx moved 186 packages to 14 cities. Now we connect 220 countries and territories and have become a verb in the global lexicon.
Neil Gibson: Personally, I owe my career and even my family to Mr. Smith — I met my wife at FedEx and started my family here. And I’m just one of hundreds of thousands of employees with a similar story. His philosophy was always: what are we doing today to support and deliver for customers, and what needs will customers have tomorrow that they don’t even realize yet? That focus on anticipating needs shaped how FedEx connected communities and fueled global prosperity, especially across regions like Asia Pacific. We all stand on his shoulders and now it’s our turn to carry that legacy forward.
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Yeah.
Neil Gibson: We stand on the shoulders of greatness, Dom. His loss is tremendous not just for FedEx but for the world. In my view, he was the greatest entrepreneur of my lifetime, and I’m grateful I had the chance to learn from him so closely.
Amir Hartman: Absolutely.
Military Lessons in Leadership and CX
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Very well said, Neil. And since I mentioned your military background, let’s transition into that. At first glance, military service and customer experience don’t seem connected — but from what I’ve read, you see real parallels. Can you walk us through your background and how you ended up in CX at FedEx?
Neil Gibson: Sure. I was fortunate to attend Clemson University, where I earned a math degree and received my Air Force commission through ROTC. I served six years, from 1993 to 1999, focused on testing and developing new weapons systems — everything from chemical warfare suits to up-armored Humvees to bunker-buster bombs. That work taught me the importance of taking care of your team first. In the military, the phrase was “troops eat first.” At FedEx, Fred Smith translated that into our People-Service-Profit philosophy: take care of your people, they’ll deliver great service, which drives profit that you reinvest back into the team.
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Ha ha! Yeah.
Neil Gibson: I joined FedEx in 1999 in IT and over 26 years I’ve worked across seven functions: IT, digital product, e-commerce marketing, international product marketing, corporate communications, and now customer experience. The common thread has been leading teams, building culture around PSP, and making FedEx a place where people want to bring their best selves to work. That’s how we deliver the “Purple Promise” — keeping our word to customers every day.
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Purple promise, the purple promise.
Neil Gibson: Exactly. That focus, drawn from Fred Smith’s two tours in Vietnam, is what attracted me to FedEx and what keeps me grateful to be here 26 years later. It’s about solving problems for customers and making their experiences better.
Jeb Dasteel: It must help that you’ve seen every part of the organization and how they connect to customers. That kind of connectivity seems invaluable.
Related Article: Building a Customer-Centric Organization: Turning Vision Into Reality
Broad Business Perspective Fuels CX
Neil Gibson: I appreciate that, Jeb, and it has. Seeing different parts of the business, no matter what company you're in, brings the perspective necessary to run organizations as large as this one. You need to understand how the transportation systems work. You need to understand how to price and sell to a customer. You need to understand how to communicate with customers. And you need to understand the purpose, vision, and mission of the company.
Neil Gibson: That breadth of experience helps bring it all together for something like the customer experience team. I always encourage colleagues and new hires at FedEx to move their career through the company to gain that broad perspective. It makes you a better teammate, a stronger leader, and a more effective advocate for the company.
Amir Hartman: Neil, I've got a follow-up. You’ve got staggering numbers of customer interactions — about 700,000 a day. With that volume, there has to be standardization, but how do you balance that with empowering employees to do what’s right for the customer? Standardization can sometimes depersonalize things. How do you manage that nuance?
Balancing Scale With Personalization
Neil Gibson: Great question, Amir. Let me level set on the numbers. The global CX team handles about 700,000 transactions a day — just 0.05% of FedEx’s overall package volume of 15 million packages daily across 220 countries and territories. But Fred Smith’s expectation was clear: every one of those 700,000 interactions has to deliver the Purple Promise and meet the highest satisfaction standards.
Neil Gibson: Put another way, we move $2 trillion worth of global goods annually. Some competitors move potato chips — we move semiconductor chips. To make that happen, we need tools, training, insights, and processes to support our team members. We’ve worked with data and technology teams to build algorithms that predict potential delays, so we can act ahead of time and avoid customer issues altogether.
Neil Gibson: We also consolidated multiple systems for our contact centers into one streamlined platform, giving agents everything they need without juggling dozens of applications. That’s helped us deliver greater consistency and efficiency. But we’re not done. I challenge my teams worldwide: be 1% better every day. Improve one process, go above and beyond for one customer. Those incremental gains add up.
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Okay.
Neil Gibson: Customers’ expectations are constantly changing — and increasingly, they want digital-first experiences. No one enjoys calling an 800 number. The only person I’ve ever met who does is my mother. So, we’re focusing on giving customers digital resolution — anticipating delays, proactively communicating, and making sure answers are readily available online. That’s where the new FedEx Support Hub comes in. It’s a one-stop shop for customers, and it’s already earning rave reviews.
Neil Gibson: Also have the information and data that they need to anticipate when their packages are arriving. And if they don't, what are the steps we can help with that? So Amir, to your question, how do we bring that scale to what we do every day? It's consistency of tools. It's how do we bring the right insights and information to our customers and to our team members? And then how do we enable our team members to fulfill that purple promise to go above and beyond for our customers when those situations arise?
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Neil Gibson: I know that was a long answer, but I hope I got to the point or the question you were looking for and you got an answer there. So I'll turn it back over to you.
Related Article: From Analytics to Action: How Contact Centers Are Getting Smarter
Embedding Quality-Driven Management (QDM) Into Culture
Amir Hartman: Neil, I want to ask about QDM — the idea of being 1% better every day. It sounds like more than an operating model; it’s a philosophy. How do you get new hires to understand what this really means in their first 90 days, rather than just reading it in a handbook?
Neil Gibson: Great question, Amir. QDM stands for quality-driven management. It’s a FedEx methodology that originated with Fred Smith’s military background and focuses on improving quality, customer satisfaction, and cost all at once. Some say you can’t reduce costs and improve quality at the same time. You can — and we’ve proven it.
Neil Gibson: At its core, QDM is about applying the science of quality to our work every day. The goals are simple: deliver the Purple Promise — making every FedEx experience outstanding — and minimize waste, cost, and effort. From day one, new hires are immersed in our culture, where quality is central. Our culture attributes include taking care of one another, and a principle I love: “own outstanding.” That means everyone — drivers, package handlers, analysts, IT specialists — wakes up thinking, “What can I do in my job today to deliver an outstanding customer experience?”
Six Guiding Principles of QDM
Neil Gibson: QDM has six guiding principles:
- Customers define quality. That’s the starting point for everything.
- Be scientific. Base decisions on facts, measures, and metrics.
- Measure, measure, measure. Data drives improvement.
- Optimize for business performance. Balance customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.
- Teamwork is essential. Everyone contributes to quality outcomes.
- Failures are opportunities. Every mistake is a chance to learn and improve.
Neil Gibson: New hires spend their first 90 days absorbing these principles and learning what it means to deliver the Purple Promise. Culture comes first, then functional training. But in practice, they overlap — culture informs how you do the job. Soon, QDM stops being a program and simply becomes “the way we work.”
Operationalizing Philosophy Into Practice
Jeb Dasteel: It sounds like QDM operationalizes your cultural traits and Fred Smith’s philosophies throughout the company. Can you share examples of how incremental improvements have come from applying QDM day to day?
Neil Gibson: Exactly, Jeb. QDM turns philosophy into action. By consistently measuring, optimizing, and treating failures as opportunities, we’ve seen incremental improvements across the organization. For example, in customer support operations, QDM has guided us to streamline digital tools, cut down redundant processes, and create faster resolution paths — all while aligning with what customers define as quality. Those small daily improvements compound to transform how FedEx delivers on the Purple Promise.
It’s a reminder that CX innovation doesn’t always come from massive shifts. Often, it’s the culture-driven, methodical improvements that build resilience and customer trust — the kind of improvements also reshaping industries like retail and financial services, as we’ve covered in this piece on Voice AI.
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Turning Customer Feedback Into Actionable Improvements
Neil Gibson: Jeb, I’ll give you two examples of how customer insights led directly to operational changes. First, picture proof of delivery. Customers told us: “You say you delivered the package, but where?” So we introduced photo confirmation, giving customers a visual record of where a package was left. That not only reassures recipients, but also allows us to cross-check GPS data internally. If something looks off, we can proactively send a driver back out before the customer even calls.
Neil Gibson: Second, in early 2024, a major ice storm shut down roads and the airport in Memphis. This threatened delivery of life-saving medications from a St. Jude pharmacy. We realized we lacked visibility into both inbound and outbound shipments. Within 30 days, we built a new tool to track that flow. Since launch, it has monitored 22,000 packages, triggered 950 interventions, and ensured 100% on-time delivery of critical medications to children fighting cancer. That’s QDM in action — solving real customer problems and delivering on the Purple Promise.
Dom Nicastro: Neil, as great as that is, you’ve taken away one of my excuses. Now when my wife asks about a missing package, I can’t say, “It’s not here.” With the photo proof, I have to walk outside and get it!
Neil Gibson: Just helping you get your steps in, Dom.
Finding Insights in Customer Channels
Dom Nicastro: With millions of interactions, is there one channel that delivers the most actionable insights? Or is feedback spread evenly across digital, phone, social, and email?
Neil Gibson: Great question, Dom. Here’s the reality: 82% of phone calls we take worldwide start on FedEx.com. Customers begin digitally — asking “Where’s my package?” or “When will it arrive?” — but when they don’t find answers, they pick up the phone. To me, that’s already a failure. No one wants to call an 800 number, yet we’re forcing customers into that channel because digital didn’t deliver.
Neil Gibson: That’s why “digital first” is a top priority. We’re working with marketing, data, and technology teams to stitch together customer history, shipping patterns, and package movement so we can deliver more personalized answers online. Seventy-five percent of customer interactions boil down to one question: “Where’s my package?” Solving that digitally will reduce frustration, increase trust, and set a new bar not only for logistics, but for customer experience overall.
Neil Gibson: Every one of those 700,000 daily interactions matters. Whether it’s a wedding dress, medicine, a birthday present, or an e-commerce order, it’s meaningful to the customer. And our job is to get it right every time.
Related Article: The Omnichannel Disconnect – Why Customers Still Feel Frustrated
Living in the World of Exceptions
Dom Nicastro: I can imagine many customers are being driven to FedEx.com through emails or tracking notifications, not just randomly landing there. Right?
Neil Gibson: Some of it is both. It might be a notification through FedEx Delivery Manager, our mobile app, or even an SMS alert. But often, customers simply log in directly to FedEx.com to track a package. Then come the deeper questions: “Why is my package still in Memphis?” “Will it arrive between 10 and 1?” “Do I need to be home to sign for it?” or “Can it be delivered a day earlier?”
Neil Gibson: Those scenarios cross my desk every day. I see team members in CX and operations doing incredible things to solve them. And while FedEx delivers 96–98% on time, my job lives in the 2–3% exceptions. I want those exceptions to become the best experiences our customers ever have.
Celebrating Above-and-Beyond Moments
Jeb Dasteel: At Oracle, we curated both the best and worst customer stories and shared them internally. It helped employees understand when things went wrong — and when things went spectacularly right. How do you propagate those stories at FedEx?
Neil Gibson: Great question, Jeb. I approach it twofold. First, I send a note to the entire CX team called “Tall Tales” — a play on one of our ad campaigns. In it, I highlight examples of team members going above and beyond. Recently, I shared the story of a colleague in Malaysia who drove 90 minutes on a weekend to hand-deliver a package for a family event. In Memphis, a team member even picked up a customer’s prescriptions at Walgreens — with consent — and delivered them personally. No manager asked them to. They just did it.
Neil Gibson: Second, we celebrate formally. Mr. Smith started the Purple Promise Awards, where we honor employees worldwide who embody the FedEx promise to “make every experience outstanding.” Winners are recognized at a global ceremony in Memphis. We also have Humanitarian Awards, which acknowledge life-saving actions on the road. I’ve seen drivers pull passengers from burning cars or rescue people from house fires. Those stories embody FedEx’s culture of service and responsibility far beyond package delivery.
Dom Nicastro: Wow. That’s powerful.
Related Article: Empower Employees, Empower Customers
Owning Failures as Opportunities
Neil Gibson: We recognize successes globally, but to your point, Jeb, about where we fall short, we use that as an opportunity — back to QDM — to view failures as opportunities. We break them down from beginning to end. Not to roast anyone, but to ask: what broke down? Was it technology? Was it process? Did we not set the right expectations? We use those cases in meetings to ask, “How do we get 1% better?”
Neil Gibson: Leadership also requires vulnerability. You have to admit when things weren’t good enough and commit to improvement. That means accountability, but also ownership as leaders: where did we fail our teams by not giving them what they needed to deliver? We celebrate wins, but we’re equally open about failures — because that’s how we build trust and get better for our customers.
Navigating Trade Policy Impacts
Amir Hartman: You mentioned FedEx’s role in moving semiconductor chips. With shifting U.S. export policies and global trade changes, does that trickle into your CX organization?
Neil Gibson: Absolutely. Tariff rules, de minimis changes — these affect us and our customers. We work on digital solutions to help shippers anticipate and avoid delays. We make sure documentation is accurate and customs runs smoothly. For instance, the de minimis change from $800 to zero impacted expectations on duties and taxes. That led to a small uptick in inquiries. Our job is ensuring team members have the best information to answer questions and helping customers manage their businesses more effectively.
Balancing Business and Household CX
Dom Nicastro: Final question: in the Gibson household, if someone not named Neil has an issue with FedEx, do they call customer service or walk over to the global CX leader in the living room?
Neil Gibson: It depends on the family member! Personally, I use FedEx tools like any customer — I want to experience the same pain points so I can fix them. If I run into a problem, I know hundreds of other customers will too. Of course, if my wife needs something urgently, I may pull a few strings. As they say, happy wife, happy life!
Customer-Centric Technology
Jeb Dasteel: Having worked with Rob Carter, your long-time CIO, I was always struck by how much FedEx’s technology strategy was centered on customers. It was unusual and powerful — always about customers first. That must make the difference, especially with your scale.
Neil Gibson: Exactly. The first principle of quality-driven management is “customers define quality,” and that’s infused across our technology and our culture. It’s what sets FedEx apart.
Dom Nicastro: Perfect way to wrap. Neil, thanks for letting us behind the curtain of both FedEx and the Gibson household.
Neil Gibson: Thank you, Dom, Jeb, Amir. It’s been an honor to join you.
Amir Hartman: Thanks, Neil.
Jeb Dasteel: Take care, everyone.
