Verwandte Artikel zu Service Breakthroughs

Service Breakthroughs - Softcover

Heskett, James L.

 
9781416576860: Service Breakthroughs
Softcover
ISBN 10: 141657686X ISBN 13: 9781416576860
Verlag: Free Press, 2007

Inhaltsangabe

What Do Citicorp, UPS and Marriott have in common? They are "breakthrough" service providers,
firms that changed the rules of the game in their respective industries by consistently meeting or exceeding customer needs and expectations. To find out how these companies do it, service management experts James Heskett, Earl Sasser, and Christopher Hart put the question to the chief executive officers of fifteen of America's leading service firms attending a workshop at the Harvard Business School. Breakthrough leaders, they discovered, think very differently about their businesses than do their competitors, in distinct and well-defined ways. Now, in Service Breakthroughs, based upon five years of exhaustive research in fourteen service industries, Heskett, Sasser, and Hart show exactly what enables one or two companies in each industry to constantly set new standards for quality and value that force competitors to adapt or fail.

At the heart of breakthrough performance, the authors contend, is a sometimes intuitive
but thorough understanding of the "self-reinforcing service cycle" that replaces traditional management of "trade-offs." The "cycle" is a paradigm derived from the research results suggesting direct links between heightened customer satisfaction, increased customer retention, augmented sales and profit, improved quality and productivity, greater service value per unit of cost, improved satisfaction of service providers, increased employee retention, and further heightened customer satisfaction. With detailed examples and dramatic case studies of Mark Twain Bancshares, American Airlines, Florida Power & Light, Federal Express, McDonald's and many other companies, Heskett, Sasser, and Hart show how this self-reinforcing cycle of behavior differentiates breakthrough leaders from their "merely good" competitors.

The authors describe how breakthrough managers develop counterintuitive, even contrarian, strategic service visions. These companies define their "service concept" in terms of results
achieved for customers rather than services performed. They target market segments by focusing on
psychographics -- how customers think and behave -- instead of demographics. And instead of viewing a
service delivery system as a facility where the service is producted and sold, breakthrough firms see it as an opportunity to enhance the quality of the service.
These profound differences in thought and action have brought spectacular results. For managers who wish to set the pace in their service industries, Service Breakthroughs will be essential reading.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

James L. Heskett teaches at the Harvard Business School and is the coauthor of Service Breakthroughs. 

Von der hinteren Coverseite

What Do Citicorp, UPS and Marriott have in common? They are "breakthrough" service providers, firms that changed the rules of the game in their respective industries by consistently meeting or exceeding customer needs and expectations. To find out how these companies do it, service management experts James Heskett, Earl Sasser, and Christopher Hart put the question to the chief executive officers of fifteen of America's leading service firms attending a workshop at the Harvard Business School. Breakthrough leaders, they discovered, think very differently about their businesses than do their competitors, in distinct and well-defined ways. Now, in Service Breakthroughs, based upon five years of exhaustive research in fourteen service industries, Heskett, Sasser, and Hart show exactly what enables one or two companies in each industry to constantly set new standards for quality and value that force competitors to adapt or fail. At the heart of breakthrough performance, the authors contend, is a sometimes intuitive but thorough understanding of the "self-reinforcing service cycle" that replaces traditional management of "trade-offs." The "cycle" is a paradigm derived from the research results suggesting direct links between heightened customer satisfaction, increased customer retention, augmented sales and profit, improved quality and productivity, greater service value per unit of cost, improved satisfaction of service providers, increased employee retention, and further heightened customer satisfaction. With detailed examples and dramatic case studies of Mark Twain Bancshares, American Airlines, Florida Power & Light, Federal Express, McDonald's and many other companies, Heskett, Sasser, and Hart show how this self-reinforcing cycle of behavior differentiates breakthrough leaders from their "merely good" competitors. The authors describe how breakthrough managers develop counterintuitive, even contrarian, strategic service visions. These companies define their "service concept" in terms of results achieved for customers rather than services performed. They target market segments by focusing on psychographics -- how customers think and behave -- instead of demographics. And instead of viewing a service delivery system as a facility where the service is producted and sold, breakthrough firms see it as an opportunity to enhance the quality of the service. These profound differences in thought and action have brought spectacular results. For managers who wish to set the pace in their service industries, Service Breakthroughs will be essential reading.

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Chapter 1

Creating Breakthrough Services

Outstanding service organizations are managed differently from their merely good competitors. Missions are stated differently. Managers act differently. Actions are based on totally different assumptions about the way success is achieved. And the results show it, both in terms of conventional measures of performance and the impact these services have on their competitors.

Recently one of us visited the Tyson's Corner Mall in northern Virginia. The visit resulted in one surprise after another as salespeople in large stores and small exhibited unusual interest in providing unexpectedly outstanding service. At first we attributed it to Southern hospitality. But the experience wasn't consistent with others we've had in the same area. And then it dawned on us. Among the four department stores which the huge mall contained, one was Nordstrom. And Nordstrom's level of service exceeded even that provided by other retailers that same day. The experience was a clear reflection of a strong conviction often expressed by Nordstrom's service managers that a store manager's primary responsibility is to satisfy customers.

Naturally, we had seen many of the things written about the high level of service provided by this fashion retailing organization. But we had not witnessed the impact it could have on an entire shopping center, one of the largest in the United States. The experience triggered a line of thinking about those one or two firms in every service industry that stand out from the pack. Firms that seem to gain momentum, almost as if they are propelled by an added force not available to their competitors. Firms that seem to have broken through some sort of figurative "sound barrier," that have passed through the turbulence that precedes the barrier into the relatively quiet, smooth zone beyond in which a management action produces exaggerated results, results that often exceed reasonable expectations. Firms that alter the very basis of competition in their industries.

We began to think of the offerings of these firms as breakthrough services and set out to try to capture in words, numbers, and diagrams the essence of what managers do to break the figurative sound barrier.

We started with three simple, beliefs: (1) it is possible to manage a good firm through the barrier that distinguishes the good from those that are moving beyond Mach 1; (2) outstanding services and the firms that provide them are made, not born; and (3) breakthrough services managers don't think like their merely good counterparts in competing organizations.

Having tested these ideas through numerous field observations, we are convinced more than ever that our starting beliefs hold up. But we have found out a great deal more along the way about how managers think and act in designing and delivering breakthrough services. They invariably start with the service encounter.

THE SERVICE ENCOUNTER

At the heart of every service is the service encounter. Everything flows from it. A service encounter, is the event at which a customer comes into contact with a service provider, its people, its communications and other technology, and the services it provides. It is the point in time at which especially marketing, operations, and human resource management are brought to bear on the process of creating and delivering a service that meets customers' needs, perceived risks, and expectations. It has been termed by Jan Carlzon, CEO of SAS (Scandinavian Airlines System), the "moment of truth" at which the representatives of a service company must prove to their customers that their company is the best alternative.

The most important relationships in a service encounter, based on research done to date, are summarized in Figure 1-1. We have purposely been selective in choosing elements of this model. The first is based on research findings; the others follow from it. They are:

1. The quality of service (customer satisfaction) = service quality delivered - service expected.

2. The value of a service to a customer = service quality (both the results realized and process by which they were achieved) divided by (price and other customer costs of acquiring the service).

3. Potential profit "leverage" in providing the service = value to the customer - cost to the service provider.

4. The profitability of a service to its provider = margin x repeat usage ÷ investment.

It occurred to us that most service managers understand these relationships. Why then do so few use this understanding to produce services that achieve true competitive superiority? The primary reason, we've concluded, is that most view these relationships as a set of trade-offs to be designed and managed in traditional ways that have been handed down from one generation of operating manager to the next for years. This is the view that assumes that nearly all decisions involve trade-offs. That higher quality requires greater investment or higher costs, or that lower costs naturally are associated with lower quality. That higher prices naturally reduce demand. And that the primary avenue to higher profits is higher margins. While these assumptions ignore the way in which customers assess the value of a service, they represent conventional, accepted management thinking.

Breakthrough managers look at the same relationships and see something else. They see the service encounter as a dynamic force with a potential for fueling a set of Self-reinforcing relationships shown in Figure 1-2. They take advantage of relationships that propel a firm through the competitive sound barrier, often by defying conventional logic concerning trade-offs. These managers spend less to achieve higher value and higher margins. They lower prices to increase margins. They raise prices and sell more. They understand customer value, quality, and ways of leveraging value over cost. Most important, they understand how to develop fanatical loyalty among customers, employees, suppliers, and investors, loyalty that produces the flow of results bordering Figure 1-2. In short, they frequently astound and often confuse their merely good competitors, who work just as hard but end up being second- or third-best.

Consider, for a moment, the underlying policies of Nordstrom and how management implements them. As we said earlier, everything flows from the mission of providing outstanding service to customers. The way this is achieved is by stocking fashion merchandise in greater depth and breadth than competitors; having pleasant, well-located stores; providing incentives to salespeople and managers to deliver superior service to customers; and then leaving it up to individual store managers and salespeople as to how superior service is to be achieved.

Merely good competitors whose managers practice by the "trade-off" philosophy look at Nordstrom and shake their heads. Because Nordstrom has more complete stocks of fashion merchandise, its inventory carrying costs should be higher than industry averages, right? Wrong. Nordstrom's inventory carrying costs in relation to sales are not higher. Well-designed stores in good locations featuring such amenities as live music performed on a grand piano in each store have to result in higher overhead and occupancy costs than for competitors, right? Wrong again. Nordstrom's overhead and occupancy costs in relation to sales are not higher. Because Nordstrom relies heavily on sales commissions, paying successful salespeople roughly twice as much as they could make at its most serious competitors' stores, it must have the highest labor costs in the industry, right? Still wrong. In relation to sales, Nordstrom's labor costs are at or below industry averages. Delegating the control of service quality to the point of sale must involve risks of achieving highly uneven service...

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Verlag
Free Press
Erscheinungsdatum
2007
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
141657686X
ISBN 13 
9781416576860
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
320
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Van Ditmar Boeken, VDB Sales
sales@vanditmar.nl

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Niederlande