America's service meltdown : restoring service excellence in the age of the customer

XXIII, 167 S.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [155]-160) and index

America's Service Meltdown: Restoring Service Excellence in the Age of the Customer; Contents; Preface; Introduction; I. Leadership from the Top; Leadership in the Service and Information Age; Buggy-Whip Accounting Is Obsolete; Industrial-Age Myopia Is Not Dead by a Long Shot; What to Look for in a Customer-Focused Leader; Where to Find a Customer-Focused Leader?; What Customer-Focused Leaders Must Do; A Customer Focus versus a Blurred Vision; The Principal Leadership Challenge: Overcoming Inertia; Streamlining the Organization for a Customer Focus; Leaders Must Live Their Own Mandate

The Greatest Service Story Ever ToldComing Full Circle; II. A Customer Focus Trumps All Other Strategies; The Winds of Change Favor the Customer; Strategic Planning Cannot Yield Strategy; Strategic Planning Is All about Control; Finding the Customer's Voice; Customer Survey Design and Administration; Bring in the Planners; No Customer, No Strategy; Ignoring the Customer Is Fraught with Peril; III. The Service Ethic; What Is Ethical Behavior?; Ethics in Business; Regulation Is Not a Proxy for Ethical Behavior; The Service Ethic in Action; Service Is a Non-Zero-Sum Game; Customers Are First

Quality as an Ethical StandardService: Quality versus Quantity; Customers as Partners; A Partnership Can Be Sabotaged by Legalisms; Communication: A Key Weapon of the Ethical Provider; Customers from Hell!; Service Is Not Surrender; Is This the End of Personal Service?; IV. Power to the Front Line; Frontline Skills That Make a Difference; Vetting the Frontline Worker's Background; Aligning Frontline Performance to the Service Ethic; Supporting the Front Line with Education and Training; Deploying Computer Systems That Inform the Front Line; Business to Business: Enter Service Management

The Customer Account ManagerAccount Manager in Name Only; Service Leverage Comes from the Front Line; Everyone Works for the Customer; V. Musings on the Economics of Service; Service as a Differentiating Strategy; Customer Satisfaction and Profitability; Service Quality, Value, and Price; Quo Vadis Customer Satisfaction?; Survey, Survey, Survey; Customer Satisfaction versus Customer Loyalty; J. D. Power, Where Have You Been?; Considerations in Customer Acquisition and Retention; Don't Fire That Customer-Yet!; Poor Service Places a Heavy Tax on Business; Purchasing as a Competitive Sport

Auctions in ReverseOutsourcing: Improved Service or Economy?; What's Service Got to Do with It?; Epilogue; Notes; Index

Electronic reproduction; Available via World Wide Web

ECONIS - Online Catalogue of the ZBW