What Great Service Leaders Know and Do: Creating Breakthroughs in Service Firms

by James L. Heskett, W. Earl Sasser, Leonard A. Schlesinger

Entire service businesses have been built around the ideas of Heskett, Sasser, and Schlesinger, pioneers in the world of service. Now they test their ideas against the actual experiences of successful and unsuccessful practitioners, as well as against demands of the future, in a book service leaders around the world will use as a guide for years to come.

The authors cover every aspect of optimal service the best hiring, training, and workplace organization practices; the creation of operating strategies around areas such as facility design, capacity planning, queue management, and more; the use—and misuse—of technology in delivering top-level service; and practices that can transform loyal customers into “owners.”

Looking ahead, the authors describe the world of great service leaders in which “both/and” thinking replaces trade-offs. It’s a world in which new ideas will be tested against the sine qua non of the “service trifecta”—wins for employees, customers, and investors. And it’s a world in which the best leaders admit that they don’t have the answers and create organizations that learn, innovate, “sense and respond,” operate with fluid boundaries, and seek and achieve repeated strategic success.

Using examples of dozens of companies in a wide variety of industries, such as Apollo Hospitals, Châteauform, Starbucks, Amazon, Disney, Progressive Insurance, the Dallas Mavericks, Whole Foods, IKEA, and many others, the authors present a narrative of remarkable successes, unnecessary failures, and future promise.

Genres: Business, Leadership, Management

288 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2015

Reviews

[CatReader · Rating 3 out of 5]

James Heskett, W. Earl Sasser, and Leonard Schlesinger all are or were professors at Harvard Business School. In their 2015 book What Great Service Leaders Know and Do (which reminds me strongly of Frei and Morriss' 2012 book Uncommon Service: How to Win by Putting Customers at the Core of Your Business), they highlight positive case studies from a variety of service sectors (healthcare, airlines, finance, e-commerce, gambling, retail, food service) and synthesize factors common to each that help companies survive and thrive. Most of these are common sense examples, like paying employees equal or greater than market rates, empowering employees to do the right thing without battling bureaucracy, rewarding good behavior, and identifying your most profitable customers and taking steps to keep them loyal and happy. There really aren't any counterintuitive or unexpected examples here, or a detailed exploration of the negative repercussions to doing any of these "virtuous" actions. Reading this at the tail end of 2024, nearly 10 years after this book's publication, the examples could definitely use some updating, especially in light of the changed business landscape (even in the service sector) due to a global pandemic -- I'd love to see the authors release a revised version.

My statistics:
Book 308 for 2024
Book 1911 cumulatively

[Will · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mostly common sense in my opinion, but I have a finance/business background so that might be part of it. Enjoyable case studies and simple message.

[Peter · Rating 2 out of 5]

I will first and foremost admit I am not a great lover of non-fiction, particularly those with a business focus. However, if a book has a great lesson to teach and can do so in a convincing matter, I can appreciate it nonetheless.

This book was not that book. "What Great Service Leaders Know and Do" was an extremely disjointed read, jumping indiscriminately from one case study to the next with no follow through. Why mention a business as an example only to taunt the reader with "we'll return to that later"? I found that this lowered the impact of each case example, rather than providing a memorable experience to help in improving service.

My number one issue with the book was that it did not mention any counterpoints to the positive experiences covered for each company. If you're going to mention Amazon and what an amazing service experience they provide, why not also at least allude to the NYTimes investigative piece about practices at the company? I feel that it's important to understand both the positive and negative aspects of a company, particularly when they are so publicly available, otherwise you risk appearing biased.

Overall a fine read with some excellent concepts, just not very well executed.

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

good coverage of topics related to service industries. fairly recent topics covered. too heavily focused on broad trend anecdotes with little substantiation based on research or diving down into backend services.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book. Plan to have my son read this as well.

[Amber Welch · Rating 2 out of 5]

I got this book from goodreads for an honest review. I just didn't like it but did give some good info though.