Uncommon Service Quotes

“Leadership, at its core, is about making other people better as a result of your presence—and making sure that the impact lasts in your absence.”
― Frances Frei, Uncommon Service: How to Win by Putting Customers at the Core of Your Business

“What’s hard is designing a service model that allows average employees—not just the exceptional ones—to produce service excellence as an everyday routine.”
― Frances Frei, Uncommon Service: How to Win by Putting Customers at the Core of Your Business

“To achieve service excellence, you must underperform in strategic ways. This means delivering on the service dimensions your customers value most, and then making it possible—profitable and sustainable—by performing poorly on the dimensions they value least. In other words, you must be bad in the service of good.”
― Frances Frei, Uncommon Service: How to Win by Putting Customers at the Core of Your Business

“Great service organizations tend to do three things well in their relationship with culture. They have deep clarity about the organizational culture they must cultivate in order to compete and win. They are effective in signaling the norms and values that embody that culture. And they work hard to ensure cultural consistency, alignment between the desired culture and organizational strategy, structure, and operations.”
― Frances Frei, Uncommon Service: How to Win by Putting Customers at the Core of Your Business

“There are four ways to fund a premium service experience: (1) get customers to pay you extra for it, (2) reduce costs in ways that also improve service, (3) improve service in ways that also reduce costs, or (4) get customers to enjoy doing some of the work for you. Method 1 is the simplest, at least.”
― Frances Frei, Uncommon Service: How to Win by Putting Customers at the Core of Your Business

“Progressive started out by targeting its biggest buckets of cost—fraud, disputed claims, and legal fees—and then worked out from there to find ways to dress up the cost savings as value-added service. This is the secret to the second funding mechanism: sequence matters. Start with costs.”
― Frances Frei, Uncommon Service: How to Win by Putting Customers at the Core of Your Business

“When companies pay customers to try out their products and services, it’s a customer acquisition program. When companies invest in activities that increase customers’ willingness to pay a premium price, then they have a loyalty program.”
― Frances Frei, Uncommon Service: How to Win by Putting Customers at the Core of Your Business

“In our experience, the number one obstacle to great service—number one by a long shot—is the emotional unwillingness to embrace weakness.”
― Frances Frei, Uncommon Service: How to Win by Putting Customers at the Core of Your Business

“We’ve seen this pattern across excellent service organizations, regardless of industry, geography, or positioning. Like Commerce, these organizations do a lot of things well, but they also—counterintuitively—do certain things badly. Really badly. Their trick is to make sure that the bad is in service of the great, and then to be unapologetic about it.”
― Frances Frei, Uncommon Service: How to Win by Putting Customers at the Core of Your Business

“Customers can increase the cost and reduce the quality of whatever service you’re providing, often with no advance warning and very little regret.”
― Frances Frei, Uncommon Service: How to Win by Putting Customers at the Core of Your Business

“Choosing bad is your only shot at achieving greatness. And resisting it is a recipe for mediocrity.”
― Frances Frei, Uncommon Service: How to Win by Putting Customers at the Core of Your Business