An Open Letter to the CEO of CLEAR and Why "Human Touch" is Killing Your Service
From one of your longest-standing customers who really wants to see you succeed. This isn't about the line being long because more people have signed up. This is about how to make your technology and experience 10x better, so there are no lines.
Tim Ferriss wrote a blog post almost 20 years ago about his experience with what was formerly "Fly Clear" and how much time it saved him. It seemed too good to be true. The first thing I did when I moved to San Francisco was sign up for CLEAR.
It felt like magic.
- Skip the line.
- Scan your eyes. (Funny how controversial it was at the time. Reminds me of the same controversy with World today. Turns out removing friction always wins.)
- Walk straight to security like the future had arrived. Kinda felt like a smug asshole when they used to cut CLEAR members in front of people waiting in the standard line. (Glad they solved this!)
I’ll never forget the trip that sealed it forever for me:
I was leaving Denver after a ski trip, running late. It was a Monday morning during ski season. The line was out the door. Literally the longest line of people all carrying the largest and max amount of carry on bags I’d ever seen. I was just going to rebook and go back to sleep.
Then I looked up, saw that blue CLEAR logo, and four minutes later I was on the infamous Denver Airport tram to Terminal B. Made my flight with plenty of time to spare. That moment made me a Clear customer for life.
In 2015, I gave CLEAR memberships to our entire company. It wasn’t a luxury — it was a productivity tool. I’ve always believed saving people time is the greatest perk a company can give. It’s why we started Squared Away, to give people their time back.
But something's changed. It's not that a lot more people now use CLEAR, and the line is always longer (this is true), it’s that CLEAR forgot to innovate to make sure they give a lot more people what they want. They confused a sales force with a better customer experience. The truth is, they could handle a lot more people if the product innovation were driven by removing human friction, not adding it.
Over the years, CLEAR got obsessed with growth. As companies do, and should. Grow or die, I believe that. But they forgot the innovation part, even if they are innovating on the "hardware." Innovation is what the customer feels, full stop.
The sales kiosks multiplied. “Would you like to join CLEAR today?” became the soundtrack of the airport.
And yes — it worked. I can assume the business has grown a lot. There’s a ton more people using CLEAR for sure, I see it every time I get to the airport. And it's in a ton more airports, which was awesome. Until the TSA line became faster. What started has access and feeling special, has turned into an internal dilemma to use the service I pay for or just jump back in the TSA-pre line. Any now, TSA-Touchless ID actually is 10x better than CLEAR.
Here’s where CLEAR lost their way, and unless you really understand innovation and human friction, very smart people get this wrong…
Somewhere along the way, whoever is leading product and customer experience for CLEAR got the single most important detail wrong:
Someone believes that human touch = better service.
The hard part is that leadership's intentions are always well-meaning. Many people believe great service = human touch. People confuse luxury hospitality with great service. But actually, this misguided belief always gets proven wrong. Which I learned from the smartest person I know in the world. ,
My best friend and co-founder of my last company, Robert Stephens (founder of GeekSquad & CTO of Best Buy) taught me this lesson a decade ago when we were building Chatbots and people would always tell me that no one wants to talk to a Chatbot. He said;
“Shane, everyone believes human touch is better service. Everyone is wrong. It’s actually that humans are the friction. But you have to make the technology actually solve the problem. If you can make the technology great, consumers will always take the automated path done well over the human path. (Read the research on this from the '70s. The most important words are “done well” and to realize that if the automation can't finish the task then people would prefer to get to the human faster.
Chatbots weren't good enough in 2015, but you'd better be damn sure they are now. It came down to "done well, the tech, and the experience converged. Now, no one wants to talk to a human."
Based on my last 25 conversations about Clear, literally every - single - person says the same thing about the experience:
“I loved it but now the lines are insane and TSA is usually faster.”
The way to solve this problem isn’t to add more clear kiosks, it’s to redesign the experience to remove the human friction.
Think like Waymo, not the Four Seasons. Your job isn’t to make me feel like I’m so rich I can afford to stay at the Four Seasons and get anything I want. It’s just to get me to my gate faster without bothering me. (might sound harsh, but have you seen people at airports?! Ain't nobody wanting to mess with that.)
Waymo really is the perfect example of what will happen.
Once you experience a car without a driver listening to you, talking to you, interrupting you, slamming on the brakes, you never go back. Just look at the Waymo growth numbers.
In under 2 years, they are doing more rides in SF than Lyft.
Why? Because they removed the human friction.
Waymo should be the warning sign for CLEAR on how fast a competitor can steal your market share simply by removing the single thing that got you most of yours: Humans.
Here’s what it feels like when I use CLEAR today…
A salesperson is wandering around the second I walk in the terminal (this is fine, btw). Then there’s one at the kiosk. One asks me if I have my boarding pass out while I'm still in line. Then again at the kiosk. Then they wanna talk to me. Ask me questions. I take out my AirPods. Ask me if I wanna connect my passport. Remind me about RealID. I've even had people high five me to make it feel fun, and personal. (I understand the intent...) Then I get in the long line behind a bunch of other CLEAR customers who just want to save time. Someone says “you’re Shane right?” while I'm waiting in the second line. I'm sure the CLEAR team built this incredible worker app that shows all the faces in order of who’s in line. It feels like a special human touch. (Just like Lyft and Uber did for their drivers). Then I get up to the TSA agent and there’s another Clear agent there who has the picture of me on their device and says “is this you?” Then scans it for me. Then says “one clear member” to the TSA agent and then the agent says “you’re good to go.”
That's seven people AND waiting in line.
That’s not a line problem. That’s a technology, product, strategy problem. That's a human problem.
CLEAR forgot the first law of innovation:
Innovation happens when human friction disappears.
Before I boarded my flight back to Nashville today, I had to go through SFO security. The line for CLEAR was so long, it felt like that moment from 10 years ago in Denver. Exact this time, I saw a different logo: TSA Touchless ID. And it was magic.
- I walked through the TSA Touchless ID line. (Not even sure I can call it a line since there was no one in it.)
- No people in line. No kiosk. No human pinball machine.
- I kept my AirPods in.
- The camera scanned my face.
- The light turned green.
- The TSA agent smiled and waved me through. Didn't say a word.
That was the magic I felt with CLEAR. But the magic is gone.
When the government’s product feels more seamless than the private one that promised to reinvent the experience, you should call an emergency exec meeting.
I’ve learned over the years that the best predictor of future revenue isn’t historical revenue growth; it’s simply what people are saying about you today, and whether they are happy or not. What’s the current meme about your company?
I will tell you, based on every single person I talk to, they are all questioning whether or not they should keep Clear because everyone feels the same thing I’m feeling.
If I were CLEAR’s CEO, I’d send every person on the product team through TSA Touchless ID tomorrow and make them take a stopwatch with them. Put in AirPods and tell them to imagine they are in a hurry and stressed as all hell. Do it 100 times over the course of a week. CLEAR. TSA. CLEAR. TSA. CLEAR. TSA. CLEAR. TSA. Repeat. Feel it.
The future of more efficient travel won’t be more humans standing at kiosks. It’ll be built by removing them. Don't get Waymo'd. Be Waymo. Rethink it from first principles of removing friction and assumptions about human touch.
Because the next great wave of innovation doesn’t add human touch — it removes it. Innovator's Dilemma has always been the same. The lesser thing, the thing we mock, the thing that removes almost everything - becomes the next big thing.
And the problem is, it’s already here. But the government owns it, not CLEAR.
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