geothermal estele: An interview with PayPal president David Marcus: as offline / retail prominence grows, a renewed focus on customer service

Monday, December 10, 2012

An interview with PayPal president David Marcus: as offline / retail prominence grows, a renewed focus on customer service

One doesn't have to look far to find my true feelings on just about any company. PayPal, in particular, has been on the wrong end of many examples of customer service gone horribly wrong. After lambasting the payments outfit once more following a gaffe I discovered while interviewing Infinitec co-founder Ahmad Zahran, I did something I rarely do: I reached out to the company's president on Twitter. A few hours later, the 39-year old David Marcus responded. At the time, I was floored to get anything more than a passing sigh, but after visiting his new home - a nondescript office at PayPal's headquarters in San Jose, Calif. - I learned that my experience wasn't a unique one.

Marcus, a tall, handsome chap who was absorbed into eBay after a $240 million acquisition of mobile-payments provider Zong, was bestowed with the herculean task of running PayPal not long after Scott Thompson departed for Yahoo. Upon walking up to his office, it becomes immediately clear that he's aware of it -- his room is labeled "GSD," which the clever among us would recognize as "Get Sh*t Done." Outside of a few tall windows, there's little more here than a desk, a striking Nixie clock and a personal coffee machine -- seemingly, the bare essentials needed to achieve the three-lettered goal he sees each time he enters. Under Thompson's guidance, PayPal had grown at a rate seen by only a handful of other companies in the world, notching double-digit profit increases like clockwork. As it turns out, Thompson had little choice but to focus almost entirely on risk management and investor relations during his tenure - with millions in transactions pouring in by the hour, and new nations and currencies being added by the month - it simply had to be all about the numbers.

Now, PayPal finds itself thrust into a new era. It's an era led by a startup junkie, tasked with getting a 13,000-plus-member team to buy into an entirely new culture. It's a culture that realizes how sensitive consumers are to financial taboos, how vital it is to iterate before rivals can even plan and how irreparably damaged PayPal's brand could become if customer service isn't a top priority as it soldiers into the world of offline payments.

Gallery: PayPal headquarters visit