Customer Reviews

The Service Profit Chain

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As a former student of Heskett's and Sasser's in the early '70's, I have followed their research in the field of service management. As a student and consulting practioner of "high performance service management" for 18 years, I have over 50 books in my library on "service management" with publication dates going back to 1976. This book provides not only a refined summary of all of the best service management theories, but it breaks new ground as far as making a new service order happen within a business.

If you want to truly achieve - distinctive and sustained levels of service, lower total costs, higher everyday margins, and happier, more loyal employees and customers, then this book is for you. It is well written and organized, but it is a process book instead of one with a lot of quick-fix, anecdotal stories that have been unproductively popular for too long. You will have to work intellectually to get through this book, but you will be conceptually re-oriented down the right path towards true competitive advantage.

The book does update and improve on the authors' own research and publishing - notably Heskett's book entitled "Service Breakthroughs" (Free Press, 1990). In the "what's new" department, what I liked best was the third part of the book sub-titled "Putting It All Together". To go from a top-down, financial management company to a bottom-up, service excellence performer takes a total transformation starting with the dated, unspoken core assumptions or beliefs of the CEO. The authors illustrate with case studies that big change is necessary for big gain, but it most often will involve some big pain. They do an excellent job, however, of preparing the would be change artist for the transformational bumps ahead.

D. Bruce Merrifield, Jr bruce@merrifield.com http://www.merrifield.com

In "The Service Profit Chain," the author uses extensive case studies and empirical data to demonstrate how successful companies can achieve customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, and at the same time, profit and customer growth. Too many companies are focused on the next quarterly earnings release that they don't ever see the lifetime value of their customers. Finally, managers at service industries won't have to keep trading off employee satisfaction in order to achieve customer sastisfaction, and customer satisfaction won't be viewed as a cost factor and a drag on profit growth. Service companies that just don't understand these concepts won't be around for long! As we embark into the e-commerce age, service and technology companies that can quickly apply these concepts within their business models (where there is no direct, face-to-face, contact with the customers) will build a truely competitive advantage. Let's review the successful ecommerce companies in 5 years, and see how many have adopted the principles in "The Service Profit Chain."

This is the type of book that can change an entire corporate vision. The authors are meticulous in presenting their philosophy, and back every word with carefully researched examples from best practice companies. Unlike many of the "quick read" publications that present a superficial view of service (particularly from a marketing perspective), this book is clearly the result of several years work in the field. Every corporate manager who is serious about customer value management needs to take some time out to study the Service Profit Chain.

I think the authors provide a powerful and empirical approach to designing and analyzing a service organization for success. The recommendations are not always intuitive nor easy to implement, but, based on my experience in several industries, I think they are nearly always correct. With a partner, I am starting a own company and have read this book twice very carefully, with lots of notes in the margins, to make sure we do the important things well.

This should be everyone's bible. 6 stars! It is the best business book available . . . If you're going to read one book this is it...forget "one minute manager" or "good to great", "freakonomics" or "world is flat". Read this and know it and undersand its implications.

The multiple examples that use about 50% of the book's volumes are lengthy, tedious and at times redundant. This book would have been as valuable if it occupied half the number of pages. Also, whoever edited the book needs to know that 'insure' is the act of providing insurance, whereas 'ensure' is the act of verifying or 'making sure'.

I use this book as text for a Quality Service course in a Master of Science Program (Master in Science in Quality and Productivity). I consider it very interesting and useful to cover most of the topics included in the program.

A practical book on important topics to make money through services.
Pertinent examples and well designed links between Employees satisfaction/loyalty, customer satisfaction/loyalti, growth stability, operating strategies: to put it bluntly, results don't come by chance!
A bad point: the Typographical Structure is not good as the contents and a cross topics index would have been welcome.

A must read book if you are working in the service industry. Heskett, Sasser and Schlesinger all from the Harvard Business School, have put together a great book. The service profit chain model at first glance seems simple enough. Make employees happy, who in turn make customers happy, who in turn give you more business and you have a great top and bottom line. Simple? Yes, but the book takes you on a journey, using similar methodology to the balanced score card to show how to design service delivery processes, which targets to target, and most important of all, how to deal with service failures. Numerous other models and their use are depicted. To top it of, there are numerous examples from the airline, hospitality, insurance and other industries. Exec or MBA level readers will really appreciate this book. Jim Kayalar is a certified management consultant and has consulted for tourism development organizations, hotels and resorts. His corporate web site can be found at [...]