In this episode, we dissect the dramatic 96% stock collapse of Red Robin, a restaurant chain that once boasted a $92 share price but plummeted to just $3.61 after management prioritized "spreadsheet thinking" over the customer. We explore the catastrophic 2018 decision to eliminate all bussers and expeditors to cut labor costs—a move that resulted in dirty tables, ballooning wait times, and an 85% increase in customer walkaways.

We connect this cautionary tale to the core principles of Krishna Raj Raja’s book, "Support Experience" (SX), which argues that sacrificing the quality of service for better margins is often a "death knell" for a business. While Red Robin treated its staff as an expense to be minimized, the Support Experience is actually a strategic revenue center, representing the sum of every interaction a user has with a brand.

Key topics covered in this episode include:

• The Race to the Bottom: Why optimizing for quarterly earnings instead of the customer walking through the door leads to a "death spiral".

• Chili’s vs. Red Robin: How Chili’s chose to "invest in more" by improving operations and customer experience, resulting in a 50x market cap difference between the two rivals.

• The Voice of the Customer: How Red Robin ignored the "thick data" of customer frustration, a mistake the book warns is fatal for companies trying to adapt to the AI age.

• The Cost Center Fallacy: Why viewing support as a "necessary evil" prevents companies from harvesting the valuable insights needed to build a 10x future.

Join us as we discuss why "doing more" is the only way to survive in an era of heightened customer expectations, and how building a robust Support Experience can turn a potential liability into a company's greatest competitive advantage.