Unleashing Excellence [Hardcover]

Dennis Snow (Author), Teri Yanovitch (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 2003

"Customer Service" is not a lost art -- but it surely needs to be rediscovered. With all the books that have been written on the subject, it is surprising how little solid insight has been really offered. That is why Unleashing Excellence stands out from the crowd. Without fluff and puffery, customer service experts Dennis Snow and Teri Yanovitch give a no-nonsense, highly readable, easy-to-understand guide that will encourage readers to take a serious look at their own efforts and make the important changes necessary to create the ultimate customer service for their businesses. By examining some of the world's best customer service organizations, readers will be provided with the keys to implementing programs and changing behaviors that can spell success. As Aritotle said, "We are what we do repeatedly, therefore, excellence is not an act, but a habit." Unleashing Excellence will help determined readers to make excellent service a habit.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"I recommend...to any company needing a 'how to' and 'can do' manual to implement service excellence in their organization." -- Richard A. Nunis, Retired Chairman, Walt Disney Parks & Resorts

"Many authors tell you why great customer service matters; Yanovitch and Snow show you how to make it happen." -- Rich Stamberger, President & CEO, SmartBrief, Inc.

"The customer you save may be your own." -- Don Ogilvie, President, American Bankers Association

From the Inside Flap

Happy customers make for healthy bottom lines. For most businesses, that means customer service is the key to long-term profitability and success. But some companies do it better than others, and it's often difficult to tell what works and what doesn't. If you want to build a customer service culture that gets real business results, you need the reliable, proven guidance in Unleashing Excellence.

Unleashing Excellence guides you through the process of improving the customer experience and gives you practical, effective tools that you can tailor to your company's specific needs and culture. Divided into nine "Leadership Action" sections, it shows you the exact steps to take to create an organizational culture in which service excellence becomes a habit rather than an afterthought.

You'll learn how to train and educate your people in the most advanced and effective customer service techniques, how to measure the quality of the service you deliver to your customers, how to build a culture of personal accountability in your organization, and how to recognize and reward excellence in your people.

You can't build a great customer service organization without having a clear vision shared by everyone involved. Unleashing Excellence also helps you craft that vision, spread it among your people, and imbue those people with the sense of dedication and excellence that spectacular customer service demands. Rather than focusing just on customer service theory or philosophy, this book is a guide to the practical actions you need to take in order to turn service excellence into business as usual.

Changing your customer service practices is tough even in the best of times, but the reward is huge. Unleashing Excellence provides the ideas and tactics you need to keep your customers ecstatic. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 222 pages
• Publisher: DC Press; 1 edition (January 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 193202106X
• ISBN-13: 978-1932021066
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,287,545 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Effective Guide for Executives and Managers, October 31, 2003

By 

Roger E. Herman (Greensboro, NC USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Unleashing Excellence (Hardcover)

Customer service is similar to Motherhood and Apple Pie. Organizations that deliver outstanding customer service as an integral part of their business operation build customer loyalty and bottom line strength. Those that don't...well, we all know that bad customer service can destroy a company, or at least severely limit its potential.

This knowledge is legendary. Techniques for delivering good customer service are well-known. This is not brain surgery. Why another book on the ubiquitous topic?

First, note the title. The book title doesn't talk about Excellent Customer Service or You Will Be Fired if You Aren't Nice to Our Customers. The Unleashing Excellence title-and theme of the book-is directed toward senior executives. Customer service is a corporate strategy that needs to be led from the top. This book needs to be read by senior executives that allege that they don't have time to read it. The downside of mediocre customer service can be career-limiting to executives who don't pay attention to this critical component of their company's business.

The authors, both formerly part of the Walt Disney leadership development programs, are now in private practice. They are active consultants-to a wide range of employers-on customer service issues. In their work, they apply what they learned at Disney and other employment experiences to deliver an executive-targeted message. Toward this end, the book is easy to read, includes shaded call-out boxes, Action Steps and Pitfalls to Avoid at the end of each chapter. The book's concluding chapter presents nine leadership actions to guide readers in strengthening their customer service delivery. A comprehensive index makes the book even more reader-friendly.

Readers will benefit from a continual flow of best practice stories from many employment settings. Many of the examples of good work come from the authors' clients. These illustrations serve to enhance and illuminate the content to bring the traditional concepts to life in ways that leaders can read the book and initiate appropriate actions for individual and organizational improvement. Several sections of the book stand out in my mind, but all chapters are filled with ideas, thought-provoking discussions, and anecdotes to bring the concepts to life.

Yes (sigh), this is ANOTHER customer service book. Do we need more books on this topic? Some of us are beginning to feel overstuffed with this topic---like the bloated feeling we get after a huge Thanksgiving dinner. Thankfully, this book serves a specific purpose of providing how-to advice and insights for executives and managers to consider and implement. Use it as a tool to stimulate customer service conversations in your organization as you inspire increasingly high attention to incredible customer service as a part of your corporate DNA.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This is a standout book!, September 14, 2006

By 

Armchair Interviews (Minneapolis, MN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Unleashing Excellence (Hardcover)

As the title Unleashing Excellence suggests, this book is directed at senior executives. It starts with the premise that customer service is a corporate strategy (just as technical competence is) and needs to be cultivated from the top.

Companies that build customer service as a vital part of their business model also build customer loyalty and strengthen their bottom lines. Those that don't, end up limiting their potential in the marketplace. The first chapter develops a framework to understand the essential ingredients of customer service, and the second chapter outlines the rest of the book. The remaining chapters focus on making customer service part of the "corporate DNA."

These remaining chapters go through the steps of institutionalizing customer service as part of corporate strategy. Topics range from setting up a service improvement team, and also setting service philosophy and standards, communication, training, measuring program effectiveness, recognition, and accountability.

The clean layout without footnotes, endnotes or a bibliography is clearly aimed not at the academician but at the practitioner. The fluid writing style makes the book easy to read.

The numerous anecdotes from a wide variety of settings peppered throughout the text help bring the concepts to life. The ideas and thought-provoking discussions in the chapters are supplemented with shaded call-out boxes, Action Steps, and Pitfalls to Avoid. The book's concluding chapter presents nine leadership actions to help readers strengthen customer service delivery.

While reading this book is the first step, the authors' intent is for readers to implement their ideas and suggestions. To evaluate "success" by this criterion, I need to ask if I would now implement the ideas and suggestions presented. In all honesty, I would not implement all the suggestion presented. However, I will consider all the overarching ideas presented and strive to make improvements where needed, within the context of my organizational culture. In this sense, I have bought into the authors' intent of writing this book.

This customer service book stands out as it sharply focuses on the nuts and bolts of implementing customer service company wide and truly making it part of corporate strategy.

Armchair Interviews says: Customer service--what a unique concept!

5.0 out of 5 stars Very Good, June 5, 2011

By 

Marc Bowers - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Unleashing Excellence: The Complete Guide to Ultimate Customer Service (Hardcover)

This book shows that Dennis Snow and Teri Yanovitch totally get customer excellence and the importance for all businesses. If your company needs help unleashing excellence for your customers then this should be a must read.

It's great the way Teri and Dennis lay out very detailed and specific plans on how your company can make this happen. The state of customer service is bad right now and this book can help.