A review of

Uncommon Service

How to Win by Putting Customers at the Core of Your Business

Frances Frei and Anne Morriss • Harvard Business Review Press • 2012

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The review below was first published in the getAbstract Journal on Jan 27, 2014.
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Great Service, Terrible Something Else

by David Meyer

Harvard Business School’s Frances Frei and Anne Morriss argue that offering great service requires being terrible at something else.

“Design x Culture”

Today, eight out of 10 employees are service workers. Some 80% of the United States’ gross national product depends on service activities, yet quality service is rare. People’s natural inclination is to serve others, so why is it so difficult to provide — or receive — good service?

Most companies won’t make the necessary trade-offs to produce great customer service, contend Frei, a noted author and a professor at Harvard Business School, and Morriss, head of its leadership institute. Firms should purposely plan to be bad in areas that customers don’t care about and focus on rendering the high level of service that customers want.

Uncommon Service

How to Win by Putting Customers at the Core of Your Business

Great Service, Terrible Something Else

“Design x Culture”

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