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Leading Mad Scientists
James Cameron is a "Mad Scientist"and director of the two highest grossing movies
ever madeTitanic and Avatar. Apple CEO Steve Jobs is probably
a "mad scientist." So were Ludwig Beethoven, Henry Ford and Amelia Earhart. Who
could deny their gigantic contributions or incredible gifts? We use mad
scientists not as a reference to some evil maladjusted type like Dr.
Strangelove or Frankenstein, but rather as the catch-all phrase for the
gifted eccentric and unconventional wild ducks that occasionally enter
organizations. Some are nerdy, some are whiz kids without manners, and
some are amazing talents marching to their own drum. For organizations
they bring a mixed blessing.
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Title: Leading Mad Scientists
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With Trumps For
How many times have you looked at a product and thought, "I wish I'd thought
of that?" Today's winning organizationsthe ones with the endearing and enduring
products and services, design them with customers rather than for
customers. The for group creates a product or service and then conducts
market research, including focus groups to get customers' reactions for
refinement; "I prefer the blue one over the green one" The customer is viewed as
a judge not as a partner.
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Title: With Trumps For
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Service Leaders Simplicity
"Good Morning! Welcome to our USAToday route. Now, if I should miss you,
please call me at the number below. I'll personally re-deliver your paper as soon
as possible. If you have a complaint that you and I can't solve, you may call
my district manager directly. His name and number are also below. Thanks a lot.
We really appreciate your business." This is the letter to the USAToday
home delivery Chip received with his first paper. It was crafted, copied, and
conveyed by the local delivery person, Hazel. Look at its tone and message! The
top concern of newspaper customers is "not getting a paper."
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Title: Service Leaders Simplicity
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Growing Champions
What do Clint Eastwood in the movie Million Dollar Baby, Tom Cruise in
Jerry McGuire, and Denzel Washington in Remember the Titanshave in common?
They are characters who supported and sought the best in others, even in their darkest
hours. Growing champions isn't necessarily about applause, cheers, or approval. Those
actions may be present, but champion growers go above and beyond run-of-the-mill
recognition. They use the philosophy: if you want something to grow, pour champagne on it.
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Title: Growing Champions
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Imaginative Service
Delight your customer! Provide value-added service! These have been mantras
of customer service gurus. How do utilities avoid sending a mixed message
by telling the front line to "wow" their customers in the morning and
announcing staff cutbacks and expense reductions in the afternoon? How
do you add value when there are diminishing resources to fund the addition?
In a phraseimaginative service.
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Title: Imaginative Service
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Surprising Customers
If you've ever taken the shuttle bus between the Atlanta airport terminal
and the Hertz car rental lot, you may have experienced Archie Bosticka
quirky but highly effective example of how today's business leaders must
provide imaginative service to remain competitiveespecially in tough
economic times. The first thing you notice about Archie is the welcoming
grin on his face. Instead of a tip jar (baited with a handful of bucks
to encourage reluctant tippers), Archie paper-clips dollar bills across
the front of his shirt.
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Title: Surprising Customers
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Imaginative Service: You Need it More in Tough Times
Take the Hertz Shuttle Bus at the Atlanta Airport, and you might meet Archie Bostick. Archie greets
you with a welcoming grin. Instead of a tip jar, Archie paper-clips dollar bills across the front
of his shirt. Nothing subtle about that ployits an attention-getter that announces this is a unique
experience. Once on the bus, Archie delivers a comedy routine and uses any excuse to break into song.
As Archie pulls up to the terminal, he announces, Now, I may never see you again, so I want us all to
say together, I love Hertz! And everyone hollers, I love Hertz! You witness a service innovator
at workhe takes your breath away.
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Title: Imaginative Service: You Need it More in Tough Times
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Spirit Leeches: Learn How to Remove Them
One Hazard of fishing Swampy rivers is the risk of getting a leech. Unlike many parasites, you
cannot feel a leech attaching to your leg. A ritual among river anglers is to always check for
the bloodsuckers after emerging from the water. And, the typical way to remove the slimy
hitchhiker is with a lighted match or lighter.
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Title: Spirit Leeches: Learn How to Remove Them
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Accountability Payoffs Are Impressive
Accountability is both the sweet spot and Achilles heel of most leaders. Leaders learn
early the importance of holding employees accountable for results. Despite its downbeat
reputation, accountability, effectively executed, remains the keystone for trust between
leaders and employees, employees and customers.
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Title: Accountability Payoffs Are
Impressive
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Customer Intelligence: Connecting the Dots
for Service Insight
A map confiscated from an enemy courier revealed the location of shallow caves, each
containing a cache of weapons used to re-supply enemy troops. However, when a wise Army
lieutenant sent the captured map to a friend he knew could provide a deeper assessment of
the terrain covered by the map, he learned that each cave was located on a similar
sitesame type of soil, same typology and same elevation. Checking other areas
comparable to the cave sites produced another major discovery: there were many more caves
not marked on the map that contained even larger collections of weapons.
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Title: Customer Intelligence: Connecting
the Dots for Service Insight
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Attracting Loyalty From All the New
Customers
Today's customers get terrific service in pockets of their life, and use those experiences
to judge everyone else. When the UPS or FedEx delivery person walks with a sense of
urgency, we expect the mail carrier to do likewise. Customers also have choices. Shop for
a loaf of bread, and you're confronted with 16 brands and 23 varieties packaged 12
different ways.
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Title: Attracting Loyalty From All the New
Customers
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Bridging the Customer Trust Gap
"Ill be back to get you when school is out, a parent promises as her
youngster exits the car with book bag in tow. So begins an all-important matter of trust
between child and parent. The level of trust that results depends on whether past
experiences are more Mom [or father] always comes or Sorry, Im
late again; traffic was terrible.
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Title: Bridging the Customer Trust Gap
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Competing With Service Air
Customer satisfaction has been the hallmark of customer evaluations. But if you look up
the definition of satisfactory, you will find good enough to fulfill a
need or requirement. The verb to satisfy comes from the Latin word
satisfacere which means enough. It also means adequate or
sufficient. Because we live in an era of too many choices, data over load and
sensory excess, our taste for sufficient is
well, insufficient.
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Title: Competing With Service Air
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Customer as Boss: Go from Leader- to Customer-Centric
When Organizations are Led by charismatic, demanding or memorable leaders, the focus often
turns to compliance, obedience, or obsession with the leaders way, style and vision.
Centering on customers takes leaders who are more interested in excellence than ego. It
takes a total alteration in agenda, attitude, and action. To make the shift, employ three
strategies.
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Title: Customer as Boss: Go from Leader-
to Customer-Centric
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Focusing on a Customer Experience Survey
"We need to survey our customers!" When these words are uttered by a senior
leader it can prompt all manner of meeting, mania and macerations. It triggers a group of
questions someone in marketing masterminds to send around to various departments for
critique. This is where the fun begins.
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Title: Focusing on a Customer Experience
Survey
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Thats Great Advice, Charlie Brown: New Rules for Mining Customer Intelligence
Best selling tomes tell us to get to know your customers needs while the
board room is demanding we get lean or get lost. Yet the demands of the
competitive arena to attract and retain customers are ever increasing. We think the
lessons from simpler times can be instructive in how we balance competitive necessity for
timely customer intelligence with the corporate constraint we do it fast, good and most
importantly - cheap. We found new rules for mining customer intelligence in a 1975 Peanuts
comic strip. We marveled at how timely it had remained and how insightful its counsel
for todays challenging business environment.
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Title: Thats Great Advice, Charlie
Brown: New Rules for Mining Customer Intelligence
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Customer Intelligence Through New Eyes
Customer surveys are a potent tool for gathering customer intelligence. However,
surveys are fraught with more inaccurate fiction and erroneous folklore than all other
customer intelligence methods. Breaking free of these mythical restrictions can come
through new eyes questions. These out of left field questions
can yield valuable insights and refreshing corner turners for elevating the
pursuit of what customers really think. Below are our top ten favorite
themes. They may make you squirm, blush or feel a bit guilty; they may also help you
learn.
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Title: Customer Intelligence Through New
Eyes
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Dont Skip Dessert
Dessert has gotten a bum rap. Customer service survey application has gotten a
similar rap. In our hasty pursuit of the next initiative we fail to mine the
intelligence nuggets gained. We too often fail to make the application of data
learnings as valued as the acquisition of data. Checking the
box that we did another survey has won out over making the process
meaningful. And, the richest part of the survey effort is overlooked and left behind.
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Title: Dont Skip Dessert
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What Great Service Leaders Actually Do
"Sure, youre supposed to be a role model. We know all about making service
excellence a priority and how we need to communicate the service vision," they
chided. "But, thats just consultant-talk. What does being a service
leader look like up close on a Monday morning when the sh_t is hitting the
fan?" We compared their list with what we have witnessed among leaders known for
inspiring, instigating, and sustaining a culture famous for service. Some have names that
identify their enterpriseBruce Nordstrom, Debbi Fields, Bill Marriott, etc. Most are
known only to their associates, stockholders, and customers. Their actions have similar
themes.
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Title: What Great Service Leaders Actually
Do
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The Customer Service Dashboard
Dashboards are vital tools for direction, alteration, maintenance, early warning, and the
setting in which the organization is operating. As such, they provide a critical part of
the guidance system needed to traverse the marketplace. Like the odometer of our vehicles
alert us to change the oil or the speedometer warns us to slow down, various components of
the organizations dashboard provide a myriad of information key to progress and
success.
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Title: The Customer Service Dashboard
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Forget Customer Feedback, Try Customer
Intelligence Instead
Focus on Learning, not Evaluation. Customer feedback is about evaluation; customer
learning is about problem solving. Problem solving means learning for
improvement. Problem solving requires more customer intelligence than customer
evaluation; more ideas than critique. And, customers enjoy solving problems with you
when they are invited. Shifting from a customer evaluation to a customer learning
focus requires new tools, new methods and above all, new mindsets.
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Title: Forget Customer Feedback, Try
Customer Intelligence Instead
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Command Presence; Animate and Engage People
Great leaders are all about spirit
that is, being, not just doing. They focus on
being there, everywhere, not in absentia. And, when they are there, they are all
there
focused, attentive and engaged. Great leaders like the mail room air better
than the atmosphere on mahogany row. They hunt for genuine encounters. They
upset the pristine and proper by inviting vocal customers to boardroom meetings. They
spend time in the field and on the floor where the action is lively, not in carefully
contrived meetings where the action is limp. They thrive on keeping things genuine
and vibrant.
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Title: Command Presence; Animate and
Engage People
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Happy Processes: Keeping High Spirits in Service Delivery
The Native Americans believed every creation was alive. A tree had a spirit in
the same way as a horse or a bird. Organizations that create customer devotion look
at their service processes in a similar way. While we rationally know the order entry
process is not really alive, if we thought of it like that--a part of a living, organic
system to achieve goals--we would ensure it was the appropriate process for our
tribe. Caretaking live processes would ensure the service process
always worked well and worked cooperatively with other processes. A live
perspective would increase the chances the process received proper maintenance. It
would guarantee custodians of the process oversaw it with great respect, not only for
the process itself but for what it helped provide to customers. Service processes
receiving this type of TLC would always have high morale.
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Title: Happy Processes: Keeping High
Spirits in Service Delivery
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