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highly recommended |
Insightful! 
Leonard L. Berry takes an in-depth look at how service can sustain the success of a business in this detailed, footnoted exploration that includes plenty of interviews and examples from the business world. Written authoritatively, yet conversationally, this book outshines similar works because of its thoroughness. Far from a quick-fix, self-help business guide, the book is thoughtful and doesn't rely on the obvious. We [...] recommend it to managers and leaders in all businesses, particularly if your competitive edge rests on pleasing your customers.
Great companies must give great service
I read this book for a graduate marketing class, but it is a good read for any business professional out there. Why do companies succeed in the long-term? They find a way to put the customer first, time after time. And not just customers, but employees, suppliers, and other stakeholders as well.
Solid summary of Basics of Customer Service
"Excellent customer service" is a the frequent promise, which is SELDOM achieved. This book is a good guide to how the elements of really great customer service can be identified and cultivated in an organization. While it is directed more to the larger enterprise, the principles can be applied to small business also.
True, sustainable recipe for sucessful Customer Service
It is very difficult for me to work with "interviews and case study" based books since they are almost invariably full of "brilliant" quotes and "success and beyond-duty" stories that, to say the least, sound too good as to be of a sustainable nature in real world. This book is based on experiences and what seems very solid research and, for sure, is not free of this type of passages; and yet, it is one of the most useful and often-referenced books that I own and work with. So, if you will yourself through it, you'll find one of the best and most down-to-earth books on Customer Service. The author identifies nine drivers that can make any organization successful, all of them emphasizing the human nature of the relationship with customers (customer-centered). It is truly a recipe for success, more easily applicable to on-going enterprises rather than to start-ups. From this book the reader can produce very useful check-lists to diagnose the company and its strategic practices regarding their service approach. It can also be used as a guiding document to move a company to a truly customer-awareness territory and, most important, to keep it there. Of special relevance is the author's brilliant exposition in the final chapter "Lessons from World-Class Service Companies", where the reader obtains a rarely seen synopsis of all the good things that excellent companies do "to sustain their excellence". If nothing else, this chapter by itself justifies buying this book and incorporating it to your professional library.
How and why humane core values sustain human service energy 
I recently re-read this book (1999) and Berry's previously published On Great Service (1996), curious to know how well they have held up since they were first published. My conclusion? Rock-solid. In fact, both books are even more relevant - and more valuable - now than they were when Leonard Berry wrote them. That is amazing...and commendable.
With regard to the title of this book, consider this brief excerpt from the concluding chapter: "Great service companies have a soul that underlies their strategies and day-to-day operations. The company's soul - its value system - is its foundational center, its inner core." Berry fully understands how difficult it is to achieve and then sustain a great service company, noting that such companies are "humane communities that humanely serve customers and the broader communities in which they live." Decision-makers, especially in companies which have problems attracting and then retaining the talented, skilled, and principled people needed, would be well-advised to consider very carefully the meaning and significance of Berry's concluding observation. The same can be said for companies which have problems keeping valued customers and don't know why.
As Berry explains, his purpose in this book is to identify, describe, and illustrate the underlying drivers of sustainable success in service businesses. Creating a successful service operation is unquestionably a difficult task...The greater involvement of people in creating value for customers, the greater the challenge." He examines 14 outstanding service companies which include The Container Store, the Charles Schwab Corporation, Chick-fil-A, Enterprise Rent-a-Car, the St. Paul Saints AAA baseball franchise, and USAA. He suggests what lessons can be learned from them. Although quite different in terms of their size and nature, they demonstrate the same nine drivers of success, to each of which Berry devotes a separate chapter.
One of his key points is that humane core values sustain human service energy as organizations grow and mature. When the "product" is a human performance, values-driven leadership is at the center of sustainable success. He focuses on often-neglected or under-appreciated basics and explains how the superior service to which the exemplary companies are wholly committed creates for each of them a significant, perhaps decisive competitive advantage. The core strategies seems obvious: focus on serving a specific market need rather than on marketing a specific product for that need, focus on serving underserved market needs, and focus on serving the chosen markets with executional excellence. When stressing the importance of "trust-based" relationships, Berry includes everyone involved in the given enterprise. Hence the importance of what he characterizes as "humane organizational values" and he correctly insists that such values depend on values-driven leadership which must permeate the organization, at all levels and in all areas of operation. Stable leadership stabilizes values and propels all other success sustainers.
Of special interest to me is what he has to say about Cora Griffith in Chapter 8, "Investment in Employee Success." She is a long-time waitress for the Orchard Café in Appleton, Wisconsin. According to Berry, she implements each day the nine rules of success: she treats each customer like family, she is an alert listener, she strives to anticipate her customers' wants, she is attentive to significant details ("simple things make the difference"), she "works smart" by constantly scanning all the tables, maintains an on-going effort to improve her skills while learning new ones, and is contented in her work. "Cora is a team player, an all for one, one for all employee." She takes great pride in her work. And credits her employers, Dick and John Bergstrom, for convincing her how important it is to take good care of each customer and who gave her the "freedom" to do it. How many service providers have you encountered lately who measure up to Cora Griffith's standards? The sad fact is that most service providers could but, for whatever reasons, don't.
It is to Berry's great credit that he recognizes the importance - and significance -- of the Cora Griffiths in this society at a time when most books which discuss superior customer service focus almost entirely on companies such Nordstrom, Ritz-Carlton, and Southwest Airlines. They are indeed exemplary organizations but two points need to be made: Each has its own significant number of Cora Griffiths, and, the same high level of customer service can be provided by all other organizations, even by a hotel restaurant in a small midwestern town.
With all due respect to Mies van der Rohe, God may not be in the details but "the soul of service" certainly is.
reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4
Service is the key differentiator between competitors in any field. With this pathbreaking study of fourteen successful, labor-intensive companies comes an astonishing revelation: the single most important factor in building a lasting service business is not a matter of savvy business practice, but of humane values -- the soul of service.
discovering, service, soul
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