Leadership on Point

For Whom the Bell Tolls

June 6, 2011 Chip Bell - Guest Author



Now, here is the best part!  Jerry’s is not just all-purpose—it is all-pleasure.  You can get the Wall Street Journal, not just the local gossip rag!  You can buy lottery tickets.  You can buy the typical beer and wine…but, Jerry has a few bottles of the pricey wine—for that special occasion when you forgot to pick up the really good stuff.  He has unexpected items like a flash drive, odd battery sizes, windshield wiper blades, or a wrench to remove a water filter.  If you need it on Sunday afternoon when every other store is closed, Jerry just might have it!   It’s a way of delivering a surprise to a customer who thought they were in big trouble!

Great service providers don’t just provide service convenience.  They insure customer-centric convenience.  They think about the moment-to-moment experience through the customer’s eyes and emotions.  What are you doing to take an empathy walk with your customers?  How can you make certain service delivery processes are crafting with the customer’s experience in mind?


Chip R. Bell is a customer loyalty consultant and the author (with John R. Patterson) of the best-selling new book, Wired and Dangerous: How Your Customers Have Changed and What To Do About it.  He can be reached at www.wiredanddangerous.com