I’ve always thought Bloomberg LP’s success was driven as much by customer service as technology. 

There’s a good story that illustrates the emphasis Mike Bloomberg puts on clients that I heard this week.

It came from Lloyd Blankfein, the ex-CEO of Goldman Sachs, who shared the take on Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast with hosts Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway.

Blankfein said that early in his career the firm where he worked leased a Bloomberg terminal and put it on his desk. It was meant to be shared with others and initially he couldn’t figure out how to operate it.

So instead of leveraging the terminal for data, Blankfein started using the screen real estate as a kind of bulletin board to tack up Post-it notes and calendar reminders.

One day the trading desk got a call from someone at Bloomberg asking to speak with Blankfein. Initially, Blankfein declined to take it, probably assuming it was a sales rep. 

But the colleague who answered the phone explained it was from Bloomberg the man, not Bloomberg the company.

“We noticed you haven’t turned on your machine,” Blankfein recalled Mike saying.

Blankfein said he was shocked that a) Bloomberg the company was monitoring the lack of terminal usage and b) that Mike would take the time to call him directly.  

Blankfein remembers telling Mike that it didn’t seem like an “efficient use of his time” to call a junior trader.

Mike explained that the company had a policy of calling every client to check in. He said the lessons gained from those calls were invaluable in improving the product. 

Blankfein walked away from that call with two lessons in leadership that I think are invaluable.

First: “Everybody on our floor knew that Mike called and that he cared. The guy whose name was on the door cared about whether we were using or not.”

Second: “Here I am 35 years later, telling the story and so now you’re hearing about it.”

His conclusion: “That was a very good use of three minutes of Michael Bloomberg’s time.”

Blankfein said that that story explained to him “how Bloomberg got built.”

It’s a management and leadership lesson that works at any time in any industry.

And it’s particularly timely during the age of AI because it’s a reminder that a personal touch has a long-term impact that can’t be replaced by a machine. 

That story rings true based on the three decades I spent working at Bloomberg. I saw and experienced Mike make internal calls to employees when he had questions and those calls had a similar effect.

I ran the News Product team for almost a decade and Mike would on occasion call with feedback about applications our group oversaw. Oftentimes, the observations or questions were about the smallest of details. 

But the impact was immense. 

Everyone on the team was aware of those calls because it reminded them that “the guy whose name was on the door cared.”

(Part of a series about leadership lessons I learned from three decades at Bloomberg.)