The Definitive Book On Customer Service

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTITIONER

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

Competencies: customer service, strategic planning, visionary leadership

Who benefits: C-Suite

Consultant Usage: must read for senior consultants, executive coaches involved in organizational issues, customer service trainers and coaches

What’s it about? Today is an uncommon day.  It only comes around every four years.  Today’s review is about an uncommon book.  We would be fortunate to get one this good once a decade. 

Today is also the end of my self-proclaimed “Customer Service Month”.  Let’s end at the top … both literally and figuratively.  This month you have read me whining, read me whimpering, read me complaining about poor customer service.  I have lashed out at DirectTV because of negative personal experiences and all other similar organizations that do not have systems, policies and management enlightenment that are customer-centric.

Well hallelujah, here comes the answer.  Here comes a book that puts it all together.  I am joyful.  I am ecstatic.  I am on top of the world.  Uncommon Service is the definitive book on customer service and I am here to render praise.    

I am a sucker for a great opening.  Even better if it can be done in a one liner.  I am fairly certain I have never read a better business opening line than in the sub-title in the Introduction to this book: “If This Is a Service Economy, Why Am I Still On Hold”.

Let me not try to outperform the authors.  Read in their words what this book is about.  I can only offer praise and thanks:  “Here’s what we’ve learned: uncommon service is not born from attitude and effort, but from design choices made in the very blueprints of a business model.  It’s easy to throw service into a mission statement and periodically do whatever it takes to make a customer happy.  What’s hard is designing a service model that allows average employees – not just the exceptional ones – to produce service excellence as an everyday routine.  Outstanding service organizations create offerings, funding strategies, systems, and cultures that set their people up to excel casually.”  The rest of the book is about how you do that.

The book is written around a framework the authors call the four service truths, which they hold as the assumptions behind the basic elements of a successful, high-service model.  I am tempted to elaborate, but no, damn it, if you care even one iota about customer service, you get and devour this book.

The authors know what of they speak.  Frances Frei is a professor of Service Management at the Harvard Business School.  She conducts a class called Managing Service Operations that is so popular the waitlist to get into the class is longer than my average wait time with a call center.  Anne Morriss is the Managing Director of a consulting firm that helps leaders to surface and remove performance barriers.

There is a 16 minute free audio interview with the authors about their book if you care to give a listen.

The book reads like a thriller.  I couldn’t put it down.  Their command of language is astounding.  I will keep this book handy just as a reminder of what great writing looks like.  The combination of great ideas and great writing on an exceptionally important business concept means this book gets my absolute highest recommendation.

Normally I would end a review with the above paragraph, but there are some outtakes from the book I just must share.  Consider this part like the end of a movie where the credits are rolling but there are still some scenes for you to enjoy:

“…call centers are designed to be reliably bad.” 
“For a system to work, excellence must be normalized.” 
If you have many “heroes” and “heroic efforts” in your organization, you have a bad customer service system.
“How do you get your customers to behave?”

Catch you later.

Bill Bradley

Bill Bradley (mostly) retired after 35 years in organizational consulting, training and management development. During those years he worked internally with seven organizations and trained and consulted externally with more than 90 large and small businesses, government agencies, hospitals and schools.