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Uncommon Service: How To Win By Putting Customers At The Core Of Your Business (2012)

by Frances Frei(Favorite Author)

3.92 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

1422133311 (ISBN13: 9781422133316)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Harvard Business Review Press

review 1: When a CEO gives you a book, you read it! I interviewed Rhoda Olsen, CEO of Great Clips, for my blog (post coming out next month). As we discussed books she reached into her bookshelf and gave me this one, and I'm glad she did.This book, by two Harvard business profs, lays out the secrets to a good service strategy. One of them particularly resonated with me - to be good at something, you have to decide what to be bad at. If you're going to offer great service you either need to charge more, or sacrifice something else to pay for it. Commerce Bank was one example - great service paid for by offering the worst rates in the industry.If you're running a service, I highly recommend this book.
review 2: THE MAIN IDEAIn order to provide really great customer service ... moreyou need to choose what aspects of customer service you’re going to really excel at and, this is the clincher, what aspects you’re going to put less attention on. Or, in the words of the authors, choosing where you’re going to be bad! The choice to be made is what type of service design you’re going to implement in you organization – and trade-offs will always have to be made. INTERESTING TIDBITThe authors argue that the time has come for this book as: The primary driver of our economy is no longer what we make, but how we serve each other. Eighty percent of jobs in the U.S. are now in service, and service represents eighty percent of the gross national product.WHAT YOU REALLY NEED TO KNOW There are four key ‘truths’ for amazing service. These are: (1) you need to choose what aspects of service you’re going to focus on and which parts you’re not; (2) understand where the resourcing for this extra service will come from; (3) understand that your employees can only ever be as good as the system you establish allows them to be; and (4) you ought to proactively manage your customer’s engagement with your organization. The final point is that it is your organizational culture that allows this to come together as a whole. THE GENERAL OVERVIEW This is a really interesting book which isn’t afraid to ask the hard questions. While much of what the authors advocate could be considered common sense it is often the things that are the most obvious that we don’t notice. What the authors do – and they do it well – is lay out a number of structural decisions that an organization can make to create a service design within the organization to help differentiate your organization from your competitors. These four structural aspects – which the authors call the four service truths – are then made real through the operation of the organization’s culture. And, they do a very good job of both explaining how culture impacts on the operation of an organization’s service design as well as how an organization can work to create the ‘right type’ of culture for success. In the author’s word: Service Excellence = Design x Culture The real strength of the book is the very practical way in which they outline what an organization needs to do to put into practice their ideas while all the while backing it up with evidence from a range of different companies working in a number of different sectors. Part of the interest in the book is the use of examples you wouldn’t normally think of being successful because of service excellence such as their use of case studies from businesses like ‘Bugs Burger Bugs Killers’ – a pest extermination firm! We’ve followed their advice in the creation of modifying the service design model we’re using in our firm and there isn’t a better recommendation of the utility of a book like this than using it ourselves! Definitely a recommended read. less

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