On Great Service: A Framework for Action

By Leonard L. Berry

Book Overview

Improving service quality has finally become a top priority of management today, yet according to service quality expert Leonard Berry only a handful of companies have managed to determine exactly what to improve and how to improve it. For the past two years, Berry studied dozens of companies of all sizes renowned for their capacity to deliver what they promise and more. From his on-site observation of the strategies and practices of such companies as Mary Kay Cosmetics, Tattered Cover Book Store, Longo Toyota & Lexus, Lakeland Regional Medical Center, and Hard Rock Cafe, Berry has constructed a dynamic new framework for improving service.
This framework provides a roadmap for implementation found nowhere else in the service quality literature. In every chapter Berry draws on his twelve years of research in service quality to explain each part of the framework in detail. He provides rich insights and inspiring examples of great service -- including numerous examples unique to this book as well as the classic success stories of USAA, Taco Bell, and many more. Berry shows that a company must (1) develop service leadership skills and values -- a concept substantially different from developing general leadership; (2) build a service quality information system; and (3) create a comprehensive service strategy based on the four principles of great service: reliability, surprise, recovery, and fairness. He demonstrates how these four principles, when adopted by the leadership and infused into the systems of a service company, are the building blocks of the framework and form the anchor for implementation.
Berry shows how the "artistry" of great service can be systematically created from this foundation through a company's organizational structure, technology, and often under utilized human resources assets. He challenges service managers to set their service quality aspirations higher, and his innovative, practical ideas will help them achieve those higher standards. Linking service excellence to value creation, Berry provides solid financial reasons for the necessity of great service. Here, at last, is the book for which managers in every service industry have waited: Leonard Berry's "operating manual" for turning plans for great service into action.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0048EL8GE
• ISBN13: 9780029185551
• Release Date: April 1995
• Publisher: Free Press
• Length: 292 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.5" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Great Book on Service

This is as good as it gets on service quality. Leneord Berry is great!

Insights and counsel even more valuable now than ever before

I recently re-read this book (1996) and Berry's subsequently published Discovering the Soul of Service (1999), curious to know how well they have held up since they were first published. My conclusion? Rock-solid. In fact, both books are even more relevant - and more valuable - now than they were when Leonard Berry wrote them. That is amazing...and commendable. In this volume, he presents what he characterizes as "a framework for action" to provide and then sustain great service. The word "sustain" is critically important. Those organizations whose people always provide great service (e.g. Nordstrom, Ritz-Carlton, The Container Store) consider perfection break-even. Berry carefully organizes his material within 13 chapters. In the first, he introduces the aforementioned "framework for action" (Exhibit 1-1 on page 5); in the last, he shares his thoughts about "the artistry of great service." As he convincingly explains, great service is both an art and a science...and is the result of several factors which include a total commitment, enterprise-wide, to specific principles. "The purpose of this book is to teach the lessons of service quality [begin italics] implementation [end italics]. The book focuses exclusively on [begin italics] how [end italics] to improve service quality." With regard to the aforementioned principles. Berry observes that customers are most likely to do business with companies that "are reliable, excellent in interactive service, prepared to cover if the service fails, and eminently fair. These principles are the essence of service excellence." And they always will be. I especially appreciate Berry's focus on real-world situations in which these principles are clearly demonstrated. Specifically, in a variety of companies which include Longo Toyota and Lexus, Mary Kay Cosmetics, Hard Rock Café, Lakeland Regional Medical Center, Bank One Texas Trust Division, and Harold's. These exemplary organizations illustrate how to deliver great service, one customer at a time, day after day, month after month. Of course, that is not easy to do. "Nothing in this book suggests that the excellent service journey is easy. It is not. But it is immensely rewarding, not just financially, but spiritually. Excellence nourishes the soul." In the final chapter, Berry explains what "the artistry of great service," not only to customers and service-providers but indeed to entire organizations and even industries. With the passion of an evangelist but with the precision of a surgeon, he reviews all of the essential ingredients of great service. They include leadership enterprise-wide, a fundamental belief in human potential, having a reason for being...and doing, informed decision-making, collaborative, and an inspiration to excel. Are these "old fashioned values"? Of course. But keep in mind that Fortune magazine's annual list of the most profitable companies includes the names of many which are also on its annual list of the most highly

An Always Actual Framework To Action!

Even though this book was first published on 1996, the framework presented by Mr. Berry to achieve Extraordinary Customer Service is still valuable and actual. It has 13 chapters and each one gives a pure meaning of every treated subject. It's not another Customer Service book...It's an strategy customer service book. Mr. Berry's insights can be applied from Face to Face to Call Center environments and it's a must-read to Top-Executives that have started a company focus change and are wondering why it's the innitiative failing or getting down the hills. The answers could probably be: Your company it's not competing for talented people, has not embrace the technology, has not empowered your front line teams or the most elementary one...maybe have not created yet a Customer Service strategy since the beginning (Of course, where everyone in the company was included, not only you). All this answers are ON GREAT SERVICE.Extraordinary book.

BERRY SE LUCE

LEONARD BERY SE CONSAGRA COMO UNO DE LOS PRINCIPALES AUTORES SOBRE EL SERVICIO Y LA MERCADOTECNIA DE SERVICIOS. MEJORAR LA CALIDAD DEL SERVICIO AL CLIENTE ES HOY UNA PRIORIDAD Y BERRY ES UN VISIONARIO DE ESTO. NO LO DEJEN DE LEER.