Inside Your Customer’s Imagination: The Leadership Side
NEW BOOK GIVEAWAY!!
20 copies available!!
Leave a comment on this guest post by Chip Bell to become eligible for one of 20 complimentary copies of his new book, Inside Your Customer’s Imagination: 5 Secrets for Creating Breakthrough Products, Services, and Solutions.
(Deadline for eligibility is 9/13/2020. International winners will receive electronic versions.)
Organizations need breakthrough products and services to effectively compete. Nailing what customers want is tough since today’s customers are more complex, with ever-changing needs and constantly climbing expectations.
Forward thinking enterprises are going inside the customer’s imagination to discover innovative offerings. Want proof?
Who came up with the Egg McMuffin, Starbucks cake pops, splash sticks, or the Frisbee? These products and solutions didn’t come from corporate!
Wise organizations invite customers to help co-create as true partners. Nurturing a “customers as co-creation partners” culture takes leadership that exhibits five features.
Display Eccentric CURIOSITY
Co-creation leaders maintain keen attentiveness on their partners—customers and associates. They ask partners questions that yield insight (aha), not just understanding (un-huh). They work to “be the customer,” just like a youngster at bat is encouraged to “be the ball.”
Lead ON PURPOSE
Co-creation leaders maintain solid grounding and a clear target to direct inventive energy. They ensure values guide collaboration, not just rules and procedures. They unearth root opportunities, not just root causes. They backwards lead from a future state to the present moment.
Un-govern DAREDEVIL LEARNING
Daredevil learning accelerates breakthroughs by turning tryouts into bold learning adventures. Co-creation leaders avoid the quest for perfection since it is the enemy of innovation and growth. They practice unconditional acceptance.
Pursue TRUST Through TRUTH
Co-creation partnerships thrive when all involved act as custodians of the partnership. Co-creation leaders tell the truth with complete transparency. They shape the etiquette of collaboration and facilitate authentic co-ownership by requiring only trust-worthy actions.
Exhibit Sincere PASSION
Passion fuels the co-creation partnership with actions of consideration that keep the alliance spirited. Pass-I-on is passing on the best of who you are to another. Think of passion as a “never stop courting” action verb, not a noun. It means leading with exhilaration.
How might leaders form strong and co-creative relationships with their customers?
ABOUT CHIP BELL
Chip R. Bell is a renowned keynote speaker and the author of several award-winning, best-selling books. Global Gurus in 2020 ranked him for the sixth straight year in the top three keynote speakers in the world on customer service. His newest book is Inside Your Customer’s Imagination.
I like the idea of co-partnering with customers for innovative solutions.
I love Chip Bell. Always delivers!
By reaching out to your customers and asking them what they need and what you can do to help them solve the problems they’re facing will help you succeed.
I love the term co-creation. I often encourage feedback from our customers (in my case, students) all the time, but that doesn’t elevate them to equal partner status like co-creation.
The enemy of innovation is perfection. So true. How can our values reflect this as organization since it is counter cultural?
We use feedback from customers to discover missing elements of service and programs. Now we need to change our mind-set to think about that next step – in terms of sustainable co-creation.
Love this post. I found it inspiring. Thank you for sharing and for the giveaway contest!!
I work in an industry where we manage a public trust resource as a government agency. We are always working to bring our customer more deeply into the process.
Combining “corporate diplomacy” with the discipline of influence strategy—designing strategies to influence key opinion leaders, competitors, or anyone else in your ecosystem—is another a facet of co-creation, and together they offer positive synergies.
I am in the field of education with curriculum writing, and the statement, “Daredevil learning accelerates breakthroughs by turning tryouts into bold learning adventures,” is what we have been doing since Covid 19 started with the close of schools on March 16! We used teacher feedback to improve what is currently being rolled out to teachers to start the school year. I view the teachers as our customers and we need to continue to grow and be innovative to stay current for our students – now more than ever! I am considering a teacher advisory group for even more co-creation. Thanks for the ideas.
We have done this in survey’s but I think that is too passive. I like the idea of “co-partnering” – sounds more pro-active
Co-creation with customers is a must, how else can products/services be the best they can be? By opening up the conversation to customers, you can easily glean pain points and insights that might not otherwise come out from sheer observation.
Our customers are the members in our program. We are intentional about getting feedback from them with almost every interaction, and more formally through listening sessions with leadership. I look forward to learning more from this book (even if I don’t win one!)
I love the idea of building trust through truth. Amazing
I love the idea of building trust through truth It is the only way!
Customer service is of the utmost importance, just ask Anthony Melchiorri. Thanks for these daily posts.
Glad to see another view that is not just “be innovative”. A culture of innovation is much easier to talk about than to cultivate.
Combining innovation with “Co-creating with your customers” is a much better idea than just being “innovative”.
Customers vote with their wallets. If you don’t earn their vote (purchase) maybe you need to some reconsidering.
Who better to do it with than your customers?
What better way is these to do it than with Curiosity, Intention, Trust, Passion, and a bit of Daredevilness (not recklessness)?
Thanks for this insight.
I love the daredevil learning section! It’s so true to not be misguided by the lure of a perfect product or service. Perfection is such an arbitrary standard that is unattainable due simply to the mass of opinions In the world. We all know the 80/20 principle. Often times it’s the 20% that speaks up the loudest. If we were to always cater to that demographic we could also run the risk of effecting the 80% that love what we do.
Awesome post! Thank you for sharing!
Trust through truth is the best way forward with customers external and internal!
Chip Bell’s article was enthralling. Every point is packed with insight leaders need, especially now. Can’t wait to read his book.
Customer service will set your company apart from your perceived Competitors. Would like to read Chip Bell’s book on Your Customers imagination.
Great post! Un-govern DAREDEVIL LEARNING… wow.
i think I’ve been guilty of wanting perfection before presentation, worrying about everything from perceptions to litigation to my own OCD for everything being just right…
I needed this today! Thank you Dan!
Love the focus on co-creation leadership and values.
I am in healthcare and taking this approach is the reform we so deeply need! Listen to the consumers of healthcare, not the insurances and government! We need to be collaborative in our approach to come alongside the consumer with healthcare expertise to form true partnerships. Can’t wait to learn more about this perspective!
This sounds AMAZING!!! I work in government entitlements and we work hard to treat those who come to us as customers rather than clients. It is a shift in how you think about those you serve when you treat them as customers and some staff really struggle with this because the folks we serve come to us because they need us – they don’t have alternatives. I would love to read this book and apply it to our approach!!
Wow! That clearly put into words what was only a “gut feeling” for me.
PASS-I-ON…. I LOVE THAT. Bring the best of who you are… That drives progress and helps to develop strengths more than picking out the weaknesses… LOVE IT…
Great Topics to develop customer relationship
Now retired after 40 years in sales and marketing in the entertainment industry ( theme parks and attractions), just reading the executive summary of topics has inspired me to keep learning more! The copy : we are the custodians”, really hit home. Thanks!
Love the concept of daredevil learning!
I need to be more curious in my conversations!
Excellent ideas, many of which I will try immediately.
Thanks for the great post.
Lovely insight
This sounds tremendously interesting, thanks for the chance to win a copy of Inside Your Customer’s Imagination. crs(at)codedivasites(dot)com
Daredevil learning in enabled by team members who have been given expectations and boundaries and feel free to take risks within them. Thank you for the thought today.
Outstanding article, collaboration with the customer to help guide the direction.
Awesome reading! Love how articles are short, sweet, relevant, and easy to implement.
I like the leading part !!
Imagine that. a great way forward!
Create a vision with a customer centric focus. Communicate, collaborate, coach the team to develop this approach within the organization. Collaborate and partner with customers to understand their challenges and help with right innovative solutions or products.
Hi Chip,
I use to say, as a leader you may not have a plan, but if you have a purpose you are half way through it…
Being customer centric is the key to ensuring that what we create is user worthy. Without input from the customer we go ahead and supply what we think they need. Then the fact that we don’t really know what they need becomes very apparent in any user testing or in take-up of the end product.
“They backwards lead from a future state to the present moment.” That’s a powerful statement that is way too easily overlooked when developing a product or working to address a client concern. I once worked through a workshop where we found various ways to innovate current products and negative customer feedback points into new offerings that addressed issues. We pushed the organization to think radically against ‘the way we have always done it’ and what our competition was doing.
I always reflect on the quote from Henry Ford that goes something like ‘if I listened to everyone else, I would have worked on finding a faster horse.’ Finding a partner in a client that uses your services can be a highly mutually beneficial scenario to develop and refine a product or service offering that both sides can benefit from. Positioning the offering, I’ve found, can be the most challenging. Having the right client, with the right mindset on developing something new is the catalyst to start the process. There is always a ‘what’s in it for me’ question that can be addressed if modeled the right way!