John Tschohl - Achieving Excellence through Customer Service

WHAT THIS BOOK WILL DO FOR YOU

If youve heard and read all you want to know about how bad service is in the world and how important service is to customers and to your bottom line, you may be ready for a little action. This is the 8th edition and has been updated with 2011 information.

After many recent articles and books dealing with the need for quality service, few business managers remain unconvinced. Many, however, remain unequipped to express their commitment in action. The mission of this book is to equip the already convinced to implement the already proved: service is a strategy as powerful as marketing and as potent as a quality product itself in the ongoing effort to realize the full profit potential of a company.

This book gives you detailed, step-by-step knowledge that you can use in establishing profitable customer service strategies.

The profit-producing capability of an organization derives from impressions made by all employees on the organizations customers. The means of creating these impressions are the quality and efficacy of the product or service that the employees sell: the quality, accuracy, dependability, and speed of their service and the warmth of their human relationships with customers. All employees, from CEOs to minimum-wage hourly workers (some more than others), influence a companys reputation and form the attitudes of customers both internal and external. Therefore, these employees especially front-line service employees must be trained to deliver service. The service mentality and the desire to provide service are not native traits. Once trained, employees motivation (commitment) must be renewed.

In 1979, long before customer service came into vogue, I designed a customer service training program that organizations could use to change the attitudes and the behavior of employees. This was my ninth year in the consulting and training business.

I saw organizations spend millions on advertising, trying to attract customers. But then they used baseball bats (figuratively) to drive them away. This was bizarre behavior, I felt. If these organizations would just provide good service, making their customers feel special, wanted, and appreciated, they would keep the customers their advertising attracted.

The learning system I developed in 1979 has been used by millions of people throughout the world. It is cost effective and user friendly, and it is written to be understood by the employee participants, not just management and trainers.

This book is written for managers for senior and middle managers who influence the service quality of a company by deciding what employees who deal directly with customers will do, how they will do it, and, initially, whether they will do it at all. They tell employees what is expected of them in terms of customer service; and they evaluate and report to them their service performance.

Service leaders and champions of service can use this book to drive a service strategy. Entrepreneurs who want to grow their businesses through a service culture will find these ideas valuable.

But, to imply from the significance of management in the service scheme that only management needs training would constitute a significantly counterproductive oversight, no matter how elegant the rationalization supporting it. The reason is that an estimated 95 percent of the factors that determine reputation of a company among customers and prospects are in the hands of front-line service employees. Even though a manager may harbor low esteem for the personal qualities of front-line workers, a grossly uninformed and unfair view, the fact remains that they still are primarily responsible for delivering service. They create impressions that form an organizations reputation. They especially must be trained. And money must be spent training them.

But, today, many organizations dont train front- line employees in service at all. Instead, they advertise that they have service. Apparently they hope that employees will read the ads and feel compelled to live up to the promise.

Training and motivation for people who actually deliver service and how-to-do-it implementation instructions are the twin I-beams supporting the substance of this book. They are:

The reason this book was written.

The features that distinguish this book from other books on service.

Among key benefits to readers of this book are:

Hands-on ideas, skills, and techniques that can be used immediately.

Knowledge about shaping employee attitudes, a powerful competitive force moving a firm toward greater market share, customer loyalty, and profitability.