Chip R. Bell's Blog, page 15
October 12, 2015
Customer Experience – On Purpose
“Every business must serve a social purpose”. These are not the words of a social campaigner or a politician; they are the words of a banker, Ashok Vaswani, the CEO of Retail and Business Banking at Barclays, one of the world’s largest banks. Barclays has been involved in at least one major trading scandal and holds the dubious honour of the most fined bank in Britain. There will be some people who will treat his words with understandable cynicism but that would be to miss the point. The poin...
October 8, 2015
Service for the “Sole”
National Customer Service Week has been this week–October 5-9. After bringing you ten days of ideas, today we end our ten-day celebration countdown. We will have one more thought provoking blog on Monday, October 12th. Don’t miss it!
I took my beloved Lucchese boots to McMillan’s shoe repair store for new soles and heels. Leaving them in the hands of a stranger was no doubt like leaving your hand built, perfectly restored sports car with a new mechanic. When I returned a few days later, they...
October 7, 2015
The Circus Principle
Today is October 8th. National Customer Service Week started on Monday and has run through the week. However, we started the ‘celebration tips countdown’ a full week before. With a hat-tip to former Tonight Show host, Dave Letterman, we have been offering you a way celebrate the week…and, all yearlong! Here is Tip #2. Tomorrow, we will bring you our final tip as we end this special week!
Ringling Bros. Barnum and Bailey Circus came to my small rural town when I was a boy. We knew they were c...
October 6, 2015
Outcome after the Outcome
The outcome in grocery shopping is to get groceries desired as conveniently as possible, but that’s not the final memory the customer has of the experience. Ever gotten home and discovered two eggs were cracked? Or have a bloody cut of meat soil the birthday card you bought for Aunt Molly? Too often the grocery store is in the mix of negative thoughts associated with the “outcome after the outcome.”
Nordstrom is famous for pursuing the “outcome after the outcome” effect. “We try to guess what...
Surprise Your Customers with Hidden Treasure
We had our granddaughters visit one weekend at our lake home. There is absolutely nothing more jarringly creative than a nine-year-old or more innocent than a seven-year old. Grandparents wonder why their grandchildren can’t stay “puppies!!”
One morning we decided to stage an elaborate backyard treasure hunt. The girls decorated their treasure boxes while we drew each a detailed map of the yard. While they were off on a boat ride with their parents, we hid the “treasurers”—foreign coins from...
October 5, 2015
It’s Not Easy Being Green
Kermit the Frog (a.k.a., Jim Henson) sang an insightful song on both Sesame Street and The Muppet Show—“It’s Not Easy Being Green.”It could be about remarkable service. Some of the lyrics (written by Joe Raposo) go,
“But green can be cool and friendly-like; and green can be big like an ocean, or important like a mountain, or tall like a tree.”
Green is code for remarkable, not necessarily related to environmentally friendly.Delivering a remarkable (a.k.a., green) service experience is not ea...
October 2, 2015
Build Customer Loyalty through Participation
“Dinner on the ground” was code for participation in small towns in the South when we were growing up. While this event went with all family reunions, its most special form of community occurred after certain church services. “Dinner on the ground” was a super event for little boys to run, holler and pull ponytails pretty much unsupervised since their caretakers were occupied with set-up and cleanup. For the women, it was a time to show off a new recipe; men told tales of the one that got awa...
October 1, 2015
Share Your Customer’s Affinity
Welcome to October! It’s the month of beautiful autumn leaves, crisp air, and pumpkin spice everything. It’s also the month we celebrate National Customer Service Week (October 5-9). Today, I’m continuing mycountdown to the big week offering my next tip designed to inspire you to celebrate your customer not only next week, but all year long.
I was wearing my SPCA Donor sticker into the hardware store. Down the street from the hardware store situated in front of the Publix grocery the local hu...
September 30, 2015
Service Choreography
My wife and I grabbed a quick weekend in New York City. After arriving at The London NYC hotel on Friday afternoon armed only with advance tickets to a Friday night and Saturday afternoon play, we went straight to the hotel concierge! We needed help with dinner reservations and off-the-beaten attractions not obvious to the typical tourist. Despite the busy, crowded hotel lobby, what we received felt like a private briefing uniquely tailored to our whims as if we were the hotel’s only guests!
September 28, 2015
Are We Having Fun Yet?
Warning: Crude language ahead!
Today, we continue our count down to National Customer Service Week with this great example of winning customers’ loyalty through humor. Michael Dubin used a wacky YouTube video to introduce his company, Dollar Shave Club, to the world. Dollar Shave Club is a Ventura, CA based online business that targets men and sells shaving parapenalia and now toilet wipes. The title of Dubin’s video is “Our blades are f***ing great!” His unique brand of toilet paper was intr...
