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This is the product of research by a team of Harvard Business School authorities on service-firm management. It provides a model that managers should be able to use - with practical guidelines that have been implemented already by high-performing companies. Directly linking profit and growth not only to customer loyalty and satisfaction but to employee productivity, loyalty, and satisfaction, the authors lay out a step-by-step action plan for managing, marketing, hiring, delivering services, and assessing faults. With in-depth case studies that demonstrate how the best companies do it, this work aims to enable managers to unlock their true potential and secure a place at the forefront of their industry.
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Leonard Berry Professor of Marketing and JCPenney Professor of Retailing Studies, Texas A&M University, Author of "On Great Service" and "Marketing Services" The authors effectively integrate their wide body of research and thinking into an incisive framework for organizational leadership.
First Sentence
How many of us have attended seminars or read recently written books that admonish us to: (1) treat customers like royalty, (2) exceed customers' expectations, (3) either seek low operating costs or some means of differentiating our businesses from competitors, and (4) assume that the customer is always right. Read the first page
As a former student of Heskett's and Sasser's in the early '70's, I have followed their research in the field of service management. As a student and consulting practioner of "high performance service management" for 18 years, I have over 50 books in my library on "service management" with publication dates going back to 1976. This book provides not only a refined summary of all of the best service management theories, but it breaks new ground as far as making a new service order happen within a business.
If you want to truly achieve - distinctive and sustained levels of service, lower total costs, higher everyday margins, and happier, more loyal employees and customers, then this book is for you. It is well written and organized, but it is a process book instead of one with a lot of quick-fix, anecdotal stories that have been unproductively popular for too long. You will have to work intellectually to get through this book, but you will be conceptually re-oriented down the right path towards true competitive advantage.
The book does update and improve on the authors' own research and publishing - notably Heskett's book entitled "Service Breakthroughs" (Free Press, 1990). In the "what's new" department, what I liked best was the third part of the book sub-titled "Putting It All Together". To go from a top-down, financial management company to a bottom-up, service excellence performer takes a total transformation starting with the dated, unspoken core assumptions or beliefs of the CEO. The authors illustrate with case studies that big change is necessary for big gain, but it most often will involve some big pain. They do an excellent job, however, of preparing the would be change artist for the transformational bumps ahead.
D.
... Bruce Merrifield, Jr bruce@merrifield.com [...]Read more ›
This is the type of book that can change an entire corporate vision. The authors are meticulous in presenting their philosophy, and back every word with carefully researched examples from best practice companies. Unlike many of the "quick read" publications that present a superficial view of service (particularly from a marketing perspective), this book is clearly the result of several years work in the field. Every corporate manager who is serious about customer value management needs to take some time out to study the Service Profit Chain.
I think the authors provide a powerful and empirical approach to designing and analyzing a service organization for success. The recommendations are not always intuitive nor easy to implement, but, based on my experience in several industries, I think they are nearly always correct. With a partner, I am starting a own company and have read this book twice very carefully, with lots of notes in the margins, to make sure we do the important things well.