The Frontline of Fandom

The people with the most power to turn customers into Fans are usually nowhere near the boardroom. Here is how I learned that from Taylor Swift, and why it matters for your organization.

Eleven years ago this month, Taylor Swift made me a fan for life

It’s hard to believe it’s been eleven years. On October 24, 2015, I met Taylor Swift backstage, in the very bowels of the Georgia Dome. As President of the Atlanta chapter board of the Recording Academy, I was invited, along with the rest of our board, to meet Taylor before her 1989 World Tour show.

That tour marked Taylor’s transition to stadiums. The next one would mean two nights in most cities. The one after that, the Eras Tour, set every box-office record ever made, with multi-night stands in cities worldwide. In 2015, she was already on top of the world, and she was about to show everyone she was just getting started.

When she walked into the room for our meet-and-greet, she walked right past everyone who could do anything for her and went straight to my two daughters. She dropped to her knees so she could look them in the eye and have a private conversation with them both.

I was so struck by it that I wrote about it then in a piece called 10 Ways to Run Your Business More Like Taylor Swift. Eleven years later, that single act still affects me daily. I am an unashamed Swiftie. I was converted in that moment of service and delight into a fan for life.

The boardroom sets the tone. Someone else delivers it.

Every organization has people capable of that exact kind of moment. The question is whether we know who they are.

On LinkedIn, at conferences, and in a stack of leadership books we have all consumed, the idea of delivering a great customer experience seems to be something we try to tackle in the boardroom.

Leadership matters. Leaders set the tone. They help shape the culture that spills over into the customer experience. But the associates with the most power to transform customers into Fans are often nowhere near the top of the corporate ladder.

I just finished The Power of Customer Experience by Elizabeth Dixon, and one story jumped off the page. Disney trains its characters to do exactly what Taylor did with my girls. In the theme parks, they always crouch down to eye level with the children they meet. It isn’t improvised. It’s a moment of delight, designed and repeated thousands of times a day by people most guests will never know by name.

A front line that isn’t just a metaphor

Earlier this summer, I led an all-hands session for Company X, a Nashville-based merchandise production and tour vending company. Their brand name is intentional. They don’t want to overshadow the artists they represent.

In that talk, “front line of fandom” wasn’t a metaphor. The people I got to pour into are literally on the front line, interacting with thousands of fans every night on multiple tours.

My argument to that room was simple. Even at a THIRD DAY show, they have just as much, if not more, opportunity than we do to take our customers up the ladder of loyalty to fandom. The band gets ninety minutes on stage, singing to a crowd. Vendors get face-to-face moments with thousands of individual customers and have just as much ability to move that customer up or down the ladder of loyalty.

You see this in practice every day

In restaurants, in retail, in experiences of every kind, the smallest repeated moments do the heaviest lifting.

Chick-fil-A’s “my pleasure” moves the needle for more customers every day than any decision made at corporate HQ. Walk into a Moe’s, and you hear “Welcome to Moe’s!” before the door closes behind you, a quick but effective moment of joy.

None of these are grand gestures. They are tiny, unglamorous, and repeated millions of times. Delivered with joy, those little touchpoints create the atmosphere that turns a customer into a loyal one. Sometimes into a fan for life.

The lesson is that we must determine who is on our front line of fandom. Who in our organization has the most touchpoints with the customers we’re trying to serve? And have we created a culture where how they treat the customer isn’t subject to a good day or a bad day, but is standardized, the way Chick-fil-A and Moe’s have done it?

The front line isn’t always who you think

At Supreme Lending, it was natural to think of loan officers as the front line of fandom. And it’s true. They have the initial contact with a customer and walk them through the qualification process to get approved for a loan.

But by the time a customer reached the closing table, our operations staff had far more interaction with them. I’d argue their commitment to service had a greater impact on whether that customer ever came back and, certainly, whether they talked about us to their friends and neighbors. Period.

Don’t get me wrong. No matter your role in an organization, you can help take your customers down a path where their relationship with your brand becomes more than a preference. It becomes part of who they are. That’s fandom.

It’s a bold claim. That’s why I wrote a book to explain it.

So I have a question for you

Who is on your front line of fandom?

Who in your organization regularly does the most to build customer loyalty? Odds are they aren’t in the boardroom. They’re at the counter, on the phone, at the closing table, or behind the merch table.

If you want help finding your front line of fandom and equipping them, that is exactly what my keynotes, workshops, and leadership sessions are built for. Learn more at taianderson.live/keynotes.

Originally published on LinkedIn, October 8, 2026.