The current state of CX with Chip Bell

As a CX leader or practitioner, could you imagine doing your job without customer journey mapping or customer forensics?

If it wasn’t for the work of Chip Bell and the late Ron Zemke back in the 1980s, this would be just one of the challenges you face at present.

With that piece now solved, Chip Bell talks to CX Network about the current state of CX, “value-unique” and taking inspiration from beyond your industry.

CX Network: What is your take on the state of CX at present?

Chip Bell: CX is in a big transition. When we look at the customer experience it stared out as “I need to be nice to customers and thoughtful in how I serve them”. It was about making sure frontline people were friendly and all those things we think about as great, traditional service.
Then, as the customer developed a desire for effortless and faster service, more ease of access and all those other things, we moved lots of new technology into the CX space.

This made CX more sophisticated and gave us much better tools, but along the way, many organizations forgot that at the end of the day CX is people serving people. The human side got lost, or downplayed, as we focused on technology.

Alvin Toffler’s 1970 book Future Shock talks about high-tech and high-touch and the importance of having that balance between human and technologically powered interactions.

"We have got really good at high-tech and now I see we are on the threshold to transitioning into being more high-touch and humanistic in how we serve customers, and more concerned for the emotional side, not just the quantitative side."

My area of expertise is all about creating great cultures that support long-term customer loyalty.

I have a bias, admittedly, toward the more human side of service over technology. For example, I love self-service when it works but it troubles me when I have worked with organizations that provide this great self-service but forget about what it looks like when it does not work and there is no back door or access to somebody who can help.

It is like being stuck in an elevator with no phone.

I think that is where we are seeing a transition and return towards the people serving people side.

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CX Network: You co-created the concept of a customer journey and you have also trademarked the term customer forensics, but there is another term in your glossary today, value-unique. Value-added is about giving customers more; value-unique is about giving customers something different. How do you scale value-unique when there are thousands of customers?

Chip Bell: It is all about attitude and attitudes are definitely scalable. In fact, there are many large organizations that have scaled this.

The largest hotel company in the world today is Marriott International and it has figured out how to create a memorable experience for guests.

It is grounded in the culture, how people are treated, how to lead people and how you ensure they are resourced and trusted – we sometimes call that empowered. The bottom line, however, is how do we make sure associates have what they need and are trusted to create memorable experiences?

It is easier when you are a mom-and-pop shop and you control most of the variables. Nevertheless, the organizations that have figured out how to do that are the most successful.
Marriott started out as a mom-and-pop stall and grew to become the largest hotel chain in the world through acquisitions, not organic growth. transferring culture to other brands is an interesting parallel.

Then there is the wide range of customers they serve. From the Courtyard to Ritz-Carlton brands, you have customers paying US$80 a night and others $400 a night, but they all recognise there are things that make Marriott ‘Marriott’ and must filter into everything they do.

Economy or luxury, it is distinctly Marriott.

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CX Network: In light of the current trends seen around employee experiences, engagement and retention, EX is a huge focus at present. What can CX leaders and practitioners do to spark customer first attitudes, remotivate employees and create a great customer and workplace culture?

Chip Bell: This is a cliché but I think it is still true: the organizations that are trying to keep people in today’s challenging economy are those that have an attachment to a noble purpose. This is who we are, not just what we do.

The smart organizations want to be purpose-driven with a compelling vision, a mission. How do they make sure employees understand and feel that is an important thing for them to do?
People put a lot of effort into things they believe in so this starts with asking how we get people engaged in our mission not just our task.

It takes leaders who can set an example to lead with vision and purpose. Whatever the label is it represents the idea that work has a higher calling than being a means to an economic end.
We need to compete with our own standards. If I put my energy into our noble purpose, I will not be preoccupied looking at what my competitors are doing.

"We have to reinvent what we do and the person most impacted by that, the employee, needs to be a part of the solution."

The more we can help organizations zero in on that mission – the work we do, what it means to work here, the commitment and dedication to the customer, the more people focus and feel that they are doing important work – to me, that is the key to attracting and keeping people even in tough economic times.

Underneath all that, is a situation where people are coming out of an era where they could work virtually – their supervisor wasn’t around and nobody was checking their work. When people return how do you translate that spirit into the workplace where the supervisor is down the hall, not on the other side of the country? After two years, these employees bring an expectation for trust and freedom to the workplace, so we have to be able to translate those features to traditional work sites.

We are in a new era with new kinds of employees. We have to reinvent what we do and the person most impacted by that, the employee, needs to be a part of the solution.

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CX Network: This new era is just one of the many changes that have occurred over recent years and had a direct impact on CX. How should CX practitioners mine these changes for opportunities and when it comes to experience management where do the main opportunities lie?

Chip Bell: It means thinking like an entrepreneur not like a bureaucracy.

Organizations that are winning today are entrepreneurial in their approach to the marketplace.
Entrepreneurial means you have to be in a constant state of change because the market around me is changing all the time and I have to get people used to change, prepared for change, comfortable with change.

Again, people do not resist change but do they anticipate change will be painful and that is where the resistance occurs.

Entrepreneurial also means innovative. If I am constantly changing I am staying ahead of my competition. To continue to thrive in the marketplace I need an innovative spirit, people who bring new ideas and think about new ways to do things, and I have to provide training, support and encouragement for that.

Then, we have people who are invested in the future and are constantly helping us to make the changes that will be key to success.

That whole entrepreneurial spirit is about freedom, change, innovation – and it is about fun.
Getting people to find fun in their work is also part of that entrepreneurial spirit. In bureaucratic or traditional organizations, their employees think they go to work, but in entrepreneurial companies they forget to go home because they are having so much fun. That, to me, is the architecture of the successful organization of the future.

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CX Network: Speaking of the future, how can organizations look to it through a new lens?

Chip Bell: We tend to think about what our competition is doing, where it is going and how we can be better than that. But sometimes that perspective misses the unique aspect we can bring to our organization. Let me share an example.

I have been researching luxury brands and I am looking specifically at the characteristics of the experience when you spend US$150mn on a private jet or yacht, or $250,000 Rolls Royce.
If you think about that, for $150mn what should the experience look like? More importantly, what does it look like at a bargain basement brand or in an organization where customers are paying typical rather than luxury prices?

One of my favourite brands out there is Kimpton Hotel & Restaurant Group, part of IHG Hotels & Resorts (IHG). Kimpton does a lot of novel things for its customers and to do so it brought elements of a luxury experience to the Kimpton brand experience.

If the most expensive hotel in the world is $3,000 a night, what is that experience and are there features of that experience which can be brought to Kimpton?

Other practitioners can benefit from simply looking outside their world. Are there lessons to learn from other environments that may be completely different in terms of the customers they serve that is applicable to what you do?

Do not watch your competition, look beyond your competition, sector or industry and innovate on other ideas.