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Uncommon Service How to Win by Putting Customers at the Core of Your Business

Uncommon Service: How to Win by Putting Customers at the Core of Your Business

By Frances Frei and Anne Morriss

Most companies treat service as a low-priority business operation, keeping it out of the spotlight until a customer complains. Then service gets to make a brief appearance - for as long as it takes to calm the customer down and fix whatever foul-up jeopardized the relationship. In Uncommon Service, Frances Frei and Anne Morriss show how, in a volatile economy where the old rules of strategic advantage no longer hold true, service must become a competitive weapon, not a damage-control function.

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Book Information

Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
Publish Date: 02/07/2012
Pages: 272
ISBN-13: 9781422133316
ISBN-10: 1422133311
Language: Eng

What We're Saying

December 11, 2012

Over the course of this week, we will be posting the shortlist selections for our 8 business book categories: General Business, Leadership, Management, Innovation/Creativity, Small Business/Entrepreneurship, Marketing/Sales, Personal Development, Finance. Then on Monday, December 17th, we'll announce the category winners, and, on Wednesday, December 19th, we'll celebrate the overall winner of the 2012 800-CEO-READ Business Book Awards! Stay tuned. READ FULL DESCRIPTION

November 26, 2012

The season of lists is upon us. The first ornament up on the tree was Steve Coll's Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power, published by The Penguin Press, which took home the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year earlier this month. And there was another large nonfiction title related to economics—Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty by Daron Acemoglu and James A. READ FULL DESCRIPTION

February 09, 2012

Uncommon Service: How to Win by Putting Customers at the Core of Your Business by Frances Frei & Anne Morriss, Harvard Business Review Press, 272 pages, $29. 95, Hardcover, February 2012, ISBN 9781422133316 As a service company, when we receive feedback about a negative situation, we immediately act to resolve the conflict and then try to put a process in place to avoid such a thing happening in the future. Most books on service describe ways to do this: how to react to or plan for customer service breakdowns. READ FULL DESCRIPTION

Full Description

Most companies treat service as a low-priority business operation, keeping it out of the spotlight until a customer complains. Then service gets to make a brief appearance - for as long as it takes to calm the customer down and fix whatever foul-up jeopardized the relationship. In Uncommon Service, Frances Frei and Anne Morriss show how, in a volatile economy where the old rules of strategic advantage no longer hold true, service must become a competitive weapon, not a damage-control function. That means weaving service tightly into every core decision your company makes. The authors reveal a transformed view of service, presenting an operating model built on tough choices organizations must make: - How do customers define "excellence" in your offering? Is it convenience? Friendliness? Flexible choices? Price? - How will you get paid for that excellence? Will you charge customers more? Get them to handle more service tasks themselves? - How will you empower your employees to deliver excellence? What will your recruiting, selection, training, and job design practices look like? What about your organizational culture? - How will you get your customers to behave? For example, what do you need to do to get them to treat your employees with respect? Do you need to make it easier for them to use new technology? Practical and engaging, Uncommon Service makes a powerful case for a new and systematic approach to service as a means of boosting productivity, profitability, and competitive advantage.

About the Authors

Frances Frei is UPS Foundation Professor of Service Management at Harvard Business School, where she developed the school's successful Managing Service Operations course.

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Anne Morriss is an entrepreneur, leadership coach, and founder of the Leadership Consortium, a first-of-its-kind leadership accelerator that works to help emerging leaders thrive. Her collaborators have ranged from early-stage tech founders to Fortune 50 executives to public-sector leaders building national competitiveness.

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