By: Daniel Burris In order to make the invisible future visible, make a list of both the Cyclical and Linear changes that have a high potential to impact both you and your customers and ask yourself, “What am I certain about?” Based on the certainties, what are the problems you are not having today, but [...]

BY CHIP R. BELL AND JOHN R. PATTERSON 1- Outline Relevant Rules for Engagement. Productive meetings start with an agenda and effective training sessions open with learning objectives. Such examples point to the power of having guidelines to help govern how parties will work together. The discipline of partnership is bolstered by working out in [...]

The model below outlines a new framework that has the counter person and the warehouse person working together on behalf of the real customer. The operating philosophy shifts from deference to partnership. Influence is grounded in an allegiance to equality and interdependence making “selling and yelling” completely unnecessary. Communication is conversational rather than that of [...]

By: Chip R. Bell Service warriors know ordinary service leaves customers only satisfied. Seventy-five percent of customers who leave an organization to go with a competitor say there were satisfied with the one they abandoned. Being a service warrior means delivering a service experience that is remarkable—one that makes customers remark positively to others. Chanaka [...]

By: Chip R. Bell Warrior lessons started as soon as I exited the helicopter that had flown me to a remote part of Viet Nam. I entered the only tent at the field command post for the infantry unit to which I had been assigned. At the far end of the tent stood a noticeably [...]

By: Chip R. Bell Bill’s first “every Thursday” yard cutting was invisible to the owners. They left for work early one morning and returned that afternoon to find it immaculate. A pale green index card left in the mail box — the agreed-upon spot for written communication — had one line written on it in [...]

By: Chip R. Bell It is the season of giving and expressions of gratitude. Customers know they are valued and important when the service they receive comes with extras and thank you’s. One Boston family adopted an Asian girl. No sooner had she arrived in the United States than the family learned that she needed [...]

By: Chip R. Bell Add to Your Customer’s Service Scrapbook A day trip to the mountains put us in a quaint village for lunch. After the meal, we needed to walk off the too-large helpings. Window shopping down the winding street, we stopped in a store devoted completely to the pastime of making scrapbooks. Who [...]

By: Chip R. Bell As customers, we are not always right, we are sometimes dead wrong. As customers, we can occasionally have bad days when someone trying to serve us becomes the unfortunate target of our negative baggage or venomous agenda that is completely unrelated to either the server or the service situation. As a [...]

By: Chip R. Bell The deep, gravelly voice of Leonard Cohen sings his hit song “Dance Me to the End of Love” to a lingering Hungarian-like melody. A single violin makes the experience haunting. The mystery of the tune matches the romance of the words. Its theme is about keeping a relationship charged with engagement [...]