Digital Competition - Laurie A. Tucker

Tucker and her team immediately swung into action, producing a five-minute video for the board of directors. On one side of the screen, a customer was on the phone with a call-center rep, asking a question about a certain page on FedEx's Web site. On the other side, the rep was apologizing profusely and explaining that she couldn't see the page. When the video was presented to the board, "there was an audible gasp in the room," Tucker recalls. She got a green light within a day, and directed her team of technologists to start deploying Web access at the call centers. Even though it was working during the company's peak shipment period, the team managed to get all of the centers online by January 1999. "Internally, the campaign was called Absolutely Online," Tucker says. "We generated a lot of excitement about it. And that's how we were able to get it done so quickly."

Today, she's getting an update on a call-center initiative dubbed FedEx OneCall. Now that customers can answer many basic questions themselves by using FedEx's Web site, the calls that do come in are more complex. But reps in FedEx's old call centers worked under strict orders to limit call time. The reps also were specialized, and to answer tough questions, they usually had to hand a call to someone else. The result, occasionally, was a frustrating runaround and delayed resolution.

At OneCall, reps are cross-trained in various tasks, and they don't work under looming call-time objectives. Instead, reps are praised for helping to solve thorny problems. Tucker listens to the OneCall group's report, and she seems pleased. A pilot program in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, begun earlier in the year, has already generated nearly $10 million in additional revenue from customers thrilled with the higher level of service. She encourages the OneCall executives to pick up the pace, moving more reps and call volume to this new system. She reiterates her vision to them: Within 18 months, all FedEx customer service will be converted to the OneCall system. When the executives explain that one possible barrier is building out the database of customer information fast enough, she lets them know -- no bones about it -- that they should do whatever it takes. "Don't hesitate to get a contractor in here," she says.

On the call-center floor, Tucker gabs with the reps as if she's got all day. It's clear that she's at ease among the rank-and-file, noshing on a few graham crackers that are left over from a buffet lunch and chuckling at one rep's story about tracking down a golfer's pair of lucky shoes in time for an important tournament. "The thing about Laurie is that she is very genuine, very sincere, and very approachable," says Dottie Berry, her longtime friend. "No one hesitates to talk to her -- to tell her both good news and bad."

Tucker also enjoys going out on sales calls -- especially to e-commerce up-and-comers. (She was recently in Santa Monica, California with eToys, talking about how the two will promote each other this holiday season.) Though some of FedEx's e-commerce clients start off with shipping volumes that are so small that they might not even register on a transportation company's seismograph, Tucker knows that the winners get big quickly. "They're the ones that most need our help getting up and running right now," she says. "That's exciting. Their decision cycle is 15 minutes long. They're not buried in minutiae, and their survival is dependent on executing three or four key strategies. We focus on the e-tailers, the early adopters. These companies are just exploding."

That's why, when call-center reps talk about tracking work that they've done for an online florist, Tucker knows that company's COO by name. She has shepherded the florist from a 20-box-a-day customer to one of FedEx's top 10 shippers during peak times. The COO has Tucker's home phone number and cell-phone number, because his business depends on a positive customer experience. Tucker explains: "Our customers are moving at Internet speed, so they need us to respond at Internet speed."

Reminiscing about the Future

The next day, Tucker is in her office at FedEx's World Tech Center in Collierville, Tennessee. She has three offices -- one at headquarters, one at her home, and this one. The bookshelves at all three are lined with business books and techno-tomes: "The Innovator's Dilemma," "Unleashing the Killer App," "The 500-Year Delta." "She has a ferocious appetite for learning," says Berry.

Throughout FedEx's history, much of the company's strategy and vision has emanated from one person: Founder Fred Smith, 55, who now serves as chairman, president, and CEO of FDX Corp. Indeed, Smith's signature accomplishment in the nearly 30 years since FedEx's founding has been to create an operationally excellent army of workers who are responsive to his direction. "Fred is clear on what he wants, and very impatient about getting it," Tucker says.