Leading the Way Podcast: Chip Bell, Author, Customer Loyalty & Service Innovation Expert
If you thought you knew what great customer service is, think again. Better yet, tune into this special edition of Leading the Way as Chip Bell shares powerful cutting-edge ideas and unique strategies for improving the customer experience. The author of nine national best-selling books on customer-innovation, Chip enlightens the audience on real life examples of how organizations are enchanting their customers and creating experiences people tell stories about.
Listen to this entertaining and informative interview that covers customer-centric topics such as how social media impacts customer service today, whose responsible for capturing the customer experience within an organization, and what customer focus will look like well into the future. You’ll enjoy Chip’s stories, especially how a life-threatening lesson of this incredible leader and Vietnam veteran helped him realize his resiliency and life purpose.
Whether you were lucky enough to catch Chip Bell’s keynote at the i4cp 2018 Conference or not, you will certainly appreciate his insights, his humor and his contagious love of life in this week’s episode of Leading the Way.
Key Soundbites
- On curiosity – “Humility and curiosity are the secrets to not only success, but progress. I think the more we have a sense of wonderment about us as opposed to being self-righteous, I think we open the door for progress, we open the door for innovation, and we open the door for success.”
- On balance – “We need to keep that balance of high-tech and high-touch or we’ll create a situation where we’ll lose the soul of the customer. Customers still like the old-fashioned, humanistic, emotional connection. When it gets really, really, really techie, it needs to be really, really, really touchy. We’ve got to bring the other one up to balance that.”
- On value - “The concept of ‘value add’ is great. It’s a great generosity, but there’s a limit to it. ‘Value unique’ is taking it in a totally different, unexpected direction. It’s something the customer didn’t expect. There’s a limit to generosity, there’s absolutely no limit to ingenuity.”
- On leadership– “It’s leaders who not only talk the talk, but walk the walk. When you try and transform a culture to be customer-focused, you’re going to spend 20% of your time doing just that. If you’re not willing to spend that much time, don’t do it, because you’re going to set it up to lose and you’re going to leave behind a lot of cynicism because, well, we tried it and it didn’t work. It takes a lot of commitment to transform an organization, but it’s the actions that leaders take, that role model.”
- On customer focus - “You’re going to have some people always in the organization who are going to do a great job at customer service no matter what you do. That’s just who they are. But if it’s something that’s to be consistent throughout the organization, creating a brand, an emotional brand that people value, it needs to be lead from the top. I am teaching people to be customer-centric around an attitude that says, when you’re out there you’re on stage. I’ve never seen Mickey Mouse have a bad day at the theme park. He’s always on.”
About Leading the Way
Leading the Way is a weekly radio show and podcast series that highlights influential business leaders and leading people practices from i4cp. Co-hosted by Emmy award-winning television anchor and radio host, Scott Murray, and i4cp’s Angel Carlton, the show features interviews with respected business leaders from the world of business, sports, entertainment, healthcare and philanthropy.
The show airs live every Sunday at 4 pm CT on KLIF 570 in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area, the global audience is invited to listen live on www.klif.com and the weekly podcast debuts on iTunes or Google Play and the i4cp website the following week.