News & Insights
Five Questions with Lyft CMO, Brian Irving
November 20, 2025
For Lyft CMO Brian Irving, customer obsession means more than listening to users, it means building consistency and trust into every interaction. It’s a principle that’s guided his work across Meta, Google, Airbnb, Apple, and Eventbrite—scaling platforms by pairing empathy with product direction. At Lyft, that same mindset drives how teams design and market experiences that reflect real human needs and make every ride feel effortless.
Several years ago, we were fortunate to collaborate with Lyft on shaping a more human-first digital experience for drivers. Since then, the company has continued to sharpen its focus on aligning product design with market demand, translating customer insight into loyalty across both riders and drivers.
Under Brian’s leadership, Lyft has expanded that ethos through new programs and partnerships. Inclusive offerings like Women+ Connect and Lyft Silver bring greater choice and comfort to riders, while its recent partnership with United Airlines makes journey from door to gate simpler and more connected. Read to gain his thoughtful insights on leadership, product thinking, and marketing.
Work & Co
Lyft has long been known for its customer-centric approach. How do you define “customer obsession” at Lyft today, and how does that practically shape product priorities?
Brian Irving
Customer obsession means starting with a simple question: what does our rider or driver actually need right now? Our product teams study actual moments of friction, which led us to rebuild ETAs for accuracy, make pricing transparent upfront, and create features like Women+ Connect, where women and nonbinary riders can match with women and nonbinary drivers, or Round Up & Donate for effortless giving. On the driver side, we learned they don’t just want more rides—they want predictability and respect for their time, so we’re relentless about earnings visibility, showing drivers upfront what they’ll make and where they’re going. Customer obsession only works if it’s embedded in how we make decisions, not just something we say—our product roadmap is literally built around solving the problems that matter most to people who use Lyft every day.
Work & Co
How do you translate a big, human concept like “trust” into product features that riders and drivers can feel tangibly?
Brian Irving
Trust shows up in specific moments—for riders, knowing exactly when their driver will arrive; for drivers, knowing they’ll be paid fairly—and we’ve translated those into tangible features like upfront pricing, clear pickup instructions, and giving drivers visibility into ride details before they accept. But here’s what we’ve learned: trust isn’t built through transparency alone, it’s built through consistency. You can be transparent once, but if you’re not consistent, people stop believing you. That’s why we became obsessed with ETA accuracy, rebuilding our systems to deliver ETAs riders could count on every single time, which earned us the ability to launch our Check Lyft campaign in NYC promising actually reliable rides—not marketing spin, but a promise our product delivered consistently. Trust isn’t built through grand gestures; it’s built through consistency in the details, and every accurate ETA, clear price, and quickly resolved concern is a deposit in that trust account.
Work & Co
How do you personally keep your finger on the pulse of customer sentiment, beyond dashboards and metrics?
Brian Irving
I take rides—a lot of them—because there’s no substitute for actually being in the experience, watching how someone interacts with the app, and having casual conversations with drivers that reveal things that would never show up in a survey. I also use other services to understand the full landscape of transportation options and read raw customer feedback regularly—actual verbatims from support tickets and app store reviews—because someone saying “the app felt confusing today” can unlock a whole thread of thinking. Here’s where AI comes in: it’s not replacing our ability to understand customers, it’s amplifying our humanity by helping us dive deeper into psychographics and behavioral patterns, and what used to take weeks now happens in hours, which means our marketers spend more time on strategy and the freed-up time goes right back into human touchpoints. The paradox is beautiful: the more sophisticated our AI tools become, the more human our understanding becomes—it’s not about better targeting, it’s about deeper empathy at scale.
Work & Co
As you look ahead, what are the next frontiers where customer obsession will shape product innovation at Lyft?
Brian Irving
The honest answer is the frontiers are being defined by what our customers tell us they need, not by what’s flashy, but I’m particularly excited about three areas: personalization at scale, because a commuter taking the same ride every morning has completely different needs than someone catching a ride to the airport once a year; building deeper relationships through partnerships with companies like DoorDash, United Airlines, and Hilton so Lyft fits naturally into the full context of people’s days, not just standalone trips; and using AI to solve actual friction points like making customer support faster, predicting problems before they happen, and helping drivers maximize earnings. The thread connecting all of this is that we’re not innovating for innovation’s sake—we’re building what our customers are asking for, sometimes before they even know how to articulate it, and I’m proud our teams stay focused on that north star.
Work & Co
How do initiatives like Lyft Silver reflect a shift toward designing for a wider range of needs and abilities?
Brian Irving
We could have looked at the data and said older adults aren’t our core demographic, but instead we listened—we spent time talking to older adults and caregivers who told us they wanted to ride with Lyft but needed adaptations like extra time to get to the curb, phone support for booking, and drivers who understood that patience matters. Our teams didn’t retrofit our existing product; they built something purpose-designed that pairs riders with highly-rated, experienced drivers, builds in extra pickup time, and offers phone support, and the feedback has been moving—people telling us it’s given them back their independence. What’s most inspiring is that designing for specific needs often makes the experience better for everyone: when we slow down and think about clarity, patience, and accessibility, we improve the product across the board. Lyft Silver represents a broader shift in how we think about innovation—it’s not just about adding features or optimizing for speed, it’s about asking who we’re leaving out and how we can show up for them.
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