Quality Customer Service, Why it matters

In just over a week I will deliver a speech at a local toastmasters club on Quality Customer Service. The title is "Quality Customer Service, Why it matters". If my recording equipment will work well I plan on posting it here on my blog as youtube video.

I'm reading a captivating book on customer service. The book is called "The Only Thing That Matters" by Karl Albrecht. He states that service and quality go together. Quality service he says must be introduce to the whole organization and it is about delivering value to the customer. He points out how so very few businesses get this. The book was written in 1992 and his message still holds true for today.

A quote from the book, "If we're talking about a 'service-driven,' 'customer-focused' organization, we've got to design the operation to work that way. It's more than just a slogan or a training message. It must involve the way we conceive the total product, market it, design the delivery system, program the computer, communicate with the customer, train the employees, and all the rest. And when it comes to the expensive computer systems, if you get it wrong, you stay wrong for a long time."

To adapt a total quality customer service experience is an on going process and takes a lot of thought and risk taking. Individuals of organization who are not willing to take a risk will falter.

Jim Estill recently wrote a blog on risks and made this statement, "Without risks, companies will not be able to thrive."

Old Dogs Don’t Create New Tricks

I read another inspiring essay by Ron Baker called “Old Dogs Don’t Create New Tricks”

Here are a few quotes and the link to the essay

“If firms, not to mention the profession as a whole, want innovation and dynamism in tandem with attracting the best and brightest talent, they will have to give more authority and responsibilities to their youthful team members. Organizations, like arteries, tend to calcify with age, and young team members––far more prone to adventure and risk-taking––can keep the blood pumping at an extra vigorous pace. No doubt they will make more mistakes and incur more failure, yet risk is where profits come from. The alternative is continued irrelevance of a once proud profession, more and more dependent on regulatory revenue rather than wealth creating innovations that add value to its customers. Ossification is not an option."


“The question for today’s firm leaders is will they allow their young team members the opportunity to create path-breaking services and experiment with new approaches for the benefit of the firm and the profession as a whole, or will they continue to reject too much and adventure too little, remaining satisfied with a settled mediocrity of success and the illusion of security. The posterity of our profession depends on letting the new dogs create new tricks. History proves no one else will."

For the whole essay click here

Book Review

Ron Baker has written a fascinating book on pricing.

Rarely is pricing done for the purpose of creating value for the customer. The strategy for pricing put forward in this book is to create and capture value for the customer.

In just about any given business, prices are a result of cost, tracking the margins and other methods that don't take the customer in consideration. It is looking in to the past and not the future. Ron proposes a different strategy for pricing, a strategy to price on propose, as the title of the book suggests. It is value, not cost, that determines price.

What I found the most inspiring in the book is the introduction of a CVO (Chief Value Officer) in to an organization. Ron profiles the world's first CVO in the book.

Ron states that the characteristics of a CVO are to "understand that there is nobility in getting paid what the company is worth. Nothing is more satisfying than customers who believe—and act on the premise—that they get what they pay for. Perhaps the first important characteristic of a successful CVO is high self-esteem; they believe that their company's product and services are worth every penny they charge. They are more concerned with developing a value proposition based on value, not price."

I highly recommend this book. It has already become a reference book for me as I learn more about running a successful business.

I will post another blog with a few quote from an essay I read today from Ron.