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When Mike Taylor mentions the customer experience during our talk, his intent\u2014unlike that of many of his CFOs peers\u2014is not to boast of some vast reservoir of data from which customer insights are routinely being gleaned.

Instead, he brings this up to let us know that there are some things that finance still struggles to see and measure.

This is a startling admission from a finance leader who has already drawn our attention to his sharp lines of sight into the CFO role with the comment \u201cMaking certain that I am grounded in data is what has helped me to be a better CFO.\u201d

Still, Taylor seems to distance himself from this bit of data wisdom for the moment in order to make a broader point about the customer experience and financial analysis.

Having served in several CFO roles over the past two decades, Taylor has a rich career portfolio from which to extract CFO lessons. Nevertheless, he quickly turns our attention to his nearly decade-long tenure at electric car manufacturer Tesla, where he held a number of senior finance positions, including vice president of finance and treasurer.  

It was during the early years of Tesla\u2019s groundbreaking Model S, Taylor recalls, that a financial analyst shared with him some analysis that revealed how a door handle modification could result in a per-car cost saving of hundreds of dollars.

\u201cIn the car industry, you\u2019re looking to save quarters and dollars all through the bill of materials, so when you\u2019re talking hundreds of dollars, this is just a fantastic moment,\u201d reports Taylor, who credits the analyst with providing the required analytical firepower to prompt Tesla\u2019s finance team to advocate for the adoption of \u201cidentical handles\u201d for the Model S instead of the original ones, which had been designed individually with unique geometric shapes that were flush with each door.

Taylor continues: \u201cThe idea got shot down, and we scratched our heads. So, I went and talked with some of the designers. They asked, \u2018Mike, what\u2019s the first tangible experience that you have with a car?,\u2019 and I replied, \u2018Well, you know, I see it and I walk up to it, and then I touch the door handle.\u2019\u201d Thus, Taylor adds, this exchange served up a lesson in product design and how it is often the unseen levers of customer impact that ultimately drive sales.

\u201cYour spreadsheets can tell you a whole lot about any business situation but focus first on what the customer impact of your product is,\u201d observes Taylor, who also credits customer impact with having been the key determining factor in his original decision to join the car manufacturer.

At the time, Taylor notes, Tesla had sold only a few hundred cars, sight unseen, at more than $100,000 per vehicle.

\u201cAs part of my due diligence, I spent hours and hours on blogs and inside customer online forums,\u201d he remembers. \u201cI ended up thinking, \u2018If this product has this type of customer passion, how can I not take this leap?\u2019\u201d \u2013Jack Sweeney