Customer Reviews

Ownership Quotient: Putting the Service Profit Chain to Work for Unbeatable Competitive Advantage

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Good news! The best researchers and writers in the service-value innovation space, over the past 30 years- Heskett and Sasser- have collaborated with Wheeler to take their inventions like "the service profit chain" and "the service value equation" to the next level. As a successful practitioner of the authors' past works, I urge both existing fans and anyone interested in reinventing their service value proposition to buy this book. It is well researched, written and breaks new ground.

For those unfamiliar with the authors past work, they do a nice job of summarizing the "service profit chain" (think: "people, service, profits" or: 1) attract and keep great people in order to 2) deliver great service value which delivers 3) superior results through customer retention, penetration, good pricing and word-of-mouth).

This time around the authors, who have continued to deepen and broaden their research and development, use 12 new, case-study companies for most frequent, how-to references and supporting their new, general guideline advice. Because the dandy dozen represent a robust, cross-section of service companies -retail, consumer and industrial/commercial services, lodging, technology - most readers will be quite inspired by at least 2 or more of the cases that may have especially analogous connections to your specific business experience and needs.

I think, for example, that everyone will be inspired by how Harrah's, the casino giant: identified their most profitable customers; reinvented and diagrammatically mapped a next-level, round-trip experience for them; and then continually improved their execution of the service vision to the end that the highest-lifetime-value slice of customers not only increase activity, but attracted, in 12 months, a new group of customers (most likely their best gambling friends) who's lifetime value was greater than the original customers!

The biggest value takeaway, though, is that the authors are so adept at seeing and articulating common, underlying processes, principles and practices that emerge from all of the stories. They continue to turn the seemingly random luck, art and hard work that is behind the great service company stories and turn it into scientific guidelines that can work for all of us. Some key new conceptual models, for example, are: the ownership hierarchy and mirroring between customers and employees; strategic value visions and equations for both customers and employees; cycle of capability for employees; etc.

After reading this book, I would hope that every service firm manager would decide to at least explore the author's roadmap through these steps:
1. Rank their customers by profitability
2. Identify the most profitable historical customer niche(s) and a handful of the most open and innovative customers within that niche to sign them up as "owners" to help...
3. ..better define the historical "service value equation" that you thought you were delivering to then do it better, and to..
4. ...co-create a next level of value.
5. Then, go to work on applying many of the personnel best-practices that the case study companies use for finding, hiring, keeping and motivating the best employees to make the service value vision/equation(s) happen.
The vision leads and makes the best-practices happen, because all employees can get very excited about delivering true value which they realize they substantially don't get in their own service experiences as customers. The best, in fact, get so excited that they recruit other new employees, like themselves to the company just as Harrah's best customers were compelled to recruit other folks like themselves to switch to Harrah.

If more firms in the U.S. service sector could put this book's wisdom to work, we could grow the economic-value pie for all stakeholders - customers, employees, shareholders and suppliers. The economic times demand it; put this book to work for everyone's benefit.

D. Bruce Merrifield, Jr.
www.merrifield.com

Dear Joe,

What a surprise it was running into you a few weeks back. Candidly, I thought, well you guys have probably developed a few new techniques and tricks. I so totally underestimated this book. No, I should say I underestimated what could become the new bible of customer and associate experience excellence.

Joe, as I have pondered about what Banking 3.0 should be, I have been struggling with getting at the frameworks to both design the new business model and then build on those models to get to the right tactical actions. They were in the BOOK. Then I have been trying to think through how to take the service profit chain research I have been working on to the the next level. It was in the BOOK. I desperately need a new language to articulate concepts in a way that non-customer experienced focused team members could get it. They were in the BOOK. Then I needed techniques to develop and communicate what changes needed to be made in leadership and organization development. They were in the BOOK.

You really should have called this the Field book for Organic Growth and Loving Innovation For Terrific Extraordinary Renewal aka FOG LIFTER. This book is not good, itttttt"''sssss GGGGGrrrreaaattttt (Think Tony the Tiger).

Joe, if I were master of the customer experience universe I would make it required reading (aka the new Six Sigma for revenue growth). Listen, in my first pass I dog-eared 34 pages and footnoted such concepts as key business design questions (p. 26),value driven organizations as great places to work (p. 33), putting customers to work (Ch. 4), "If you treat employees as if they make a difference to the company, they will make a difference to the company" (p. 81), and the top ten questions for building an ownership culture (p. 162). I felt I had missed so much that I am actually going through the book a second time. The first time I have done that with any book in almost a decade.

Any one of these concepts would have been worth the price of the book, but there are literally dozens of ideas that ANY business could and should be putting into practice to navigate through the current business environment and come out on top where it really matters - with customers and associates.

Joe, thanks for a really powerful holiday gift.

Rick Otero,
EVP, Services and Customer Experience
Capital One Bank

True confessions: I bought this book because my company, Communispace, was mentioned in it as an example. I expected to read the little blurb about us and put it on the shelf. Instead, I got absorbed. The book is a great reminder of the powerful relationship between employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction, but it goes much further than that. It describes a relationship state (ownership) that transcends "loyalty" -- and then it lays out strategies and actions and examples to create that kind of ownership. We've seen Ownership in our organizations when we are at our best. It's inspiring -- and in this age of social media where your employees and customers are more important to your reputation than ever, it's required reading. Or at least, required skimming. :)

James L. Heskett, W. Earl Sasser and Joe Wheeler write with authority as pioneers in the concept of building the "service profit chain," a "working environment in which carefully selected, highly capable, engaged employees interact with customers to create customer value far superior to that offered by the competition." Companies worldwide have adopted their philosophy since its introduction almost 20 years ago. In this book, they expand on the concept, and provide new material plus case studies about companies that excel. These exemplars include ING Direct, Rolls Royce, IBM, Fairmont Hotels and Whole Foods, all of which demonstrate the ideas in this short, very readable, if somewhat repetitive, book. getAbstract recommends this manual to business owners and managers who want to build on their most important assets: their customers and employees.

With The Service Profit Chain we learned about the relationship between employee satisfaction and loyalty and customer satisfaction and loyalty, the relationship between the two, and the immense benefit this relationship has to all facets of the organization. Now, with The Ownership Quotient, the authors take us beyond satisfaction and loyalty into employee and customer ownership, the OQ--a measure of effectiveness and a predictor of future performance. The advantages of this knowledge are great. The Ownership Quotient represents some of the best thinking on the subject and should be read by all!

The Service Profit Chain was revolutionary in its eloquent argument that proper management of employees is essential to creating sustained value for customers and owners. That book alluded to an aspirational state where employees and customers would act like owners - employees going the extra mile for customers and customers who not only remained loyal but also helped solicit new business and offered improvement suggestions. The Ownership Quotient is an in-depth investigation into this phenomenon, offering concrete guidance on how to cultivate this incredible behavior in employees and customers alike. To my mind, this is a must-read book for managers.