Inside the Customer Experience with Chip Bell

“I have to create a kind of relationship with the customer where they go, ‘Oh, let me tell you this cool idea I had’, well, they've opened the door. So what do I do to create a kind of relationship that makes them feel safe to open that door?,” explains Dr. Chip Bell. Dr. Bell is a world renowned authority on customer loyalty and service innovation and has been ranked in the top 10 keynote speakers in the world on customer experience for the past 8 years. Today, Dr. Chip Bell gives a peek behind the curtain into the customer experience and how business owners can make improvements by getting customers more involved.

There is a lot of untapped potential residing in the customer that many business owners overlook. Typically when a company attempts to include the customer in improving their experience, they will ask for feedback or send out a survey. In order to really capture the full value of the customer relationship, it is important to gain access to the customer’s imagination and give them some role in helping actually design your products and services. To do this, you must first create a psychologically safe environment where the customer feels they can approach you with their ideas without fear of negative judgment. Tapping into your customers’ and employees’ own curiosities for learning will help to drive innovation farther than it ever could have gone without those unique perspectives.

The customer experience is more important than ever to the success of a business. The pandemic reignited people’s desires for more personalized experiences and human connection. By getting the customer involved in helping design the experience, business owners can create a much more loyal customer base while gaining access to incredible ingenuity.

• “It's important to go much deeper and find ways to get the customer to co-create products and services with you. That means their fingerprints are all over what you create, not just that they're assessors of it, which they already are. But they actually have some role in helping you design it, because one of the things that it does is one, it gives you a chance to capture their imagination, their insight, their ideas. But second, you build a much more loyal customer.” (4:20-4:52 | Dr. Bell)
• “The more you have a CEO willing to sit with a person in a contact center, or ride with somebody in the front line, the more you ask them about their experience and what they hear from customers, the more they listen, because they know you're gonna be asking.” (7:28-7:44 | Dr. Bell)
• “There's a limit to generosity, but there's no limit the ingenuity.” (13:13-13:16 | Dr. Bell)
• “In those organizations that feel a sense of character, a sense of wholeness, I don't have to worry about looking over my shoulder. I don't have to worry about being judged in a negative sort of way. I'm accepted, I'm valued, I'm important. All of those features created that atmosphere where innovation happens.” (16:51-17:11 | Dr. Bell)
• “I have to create a kind of relationship with the customer where they go, ‘Oh, let me tell you this cool idea I had’, well, they've opened the door. So what do I do to create a kind of relationship that makes them feel safe to open that door?” (18:10-18:23 | Dr. Bell)
• “Ultimately it's not about you, your opponent. You're a tool, you're an instrument. It’s all about others, it's what you bring to others.” (20:36-20:44 | Dr. Bell)
• “Every day I get up and say today I'm going to make a difference and I'm gonna have a blast. If I'm just having a blast, not making a difference, ultimately, the fun comes to an end. If I work hard to make a difference, but I'm not having fun, it comes to an end, because I can't sustain that from a motivational standpoint.” (20:48-21:09 | Dr. Bell)