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Best Practices in Customer
Service Part Eight. Customer Service and the Rest of the Organization
What can you learn from an airline? A lot! A recent study compared organizational practices and performance outcomes at four airlines. The results described in this article reveal lessons about crossfunctional coordination and ways of overcoming functional boundaries to deliver better service. Jody Hoffer Gittell is Assistant Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. She works on organization design, human resource and coordination problems in service settings. She is a member of the Service Management Interest Group and teaches Technology and Operations Management in the M.B.A. program. She recently completed a study of crossfunctional coordination of the airline departure process, with the participation of four major airlines. In June 1997 Jody launched a study of the coordination of patient care, with the participation of nine large hospitals in Boston, New York City, and Dallas. This study tests key ideas from the airline study of crossfunctional coordination, extending them to the delivery of patient care across both functional and organizational boundaries. E-mail: jgittell@hbs.edu It's become common for people in business to talk about "internal customers." The author suggests that another term might be better -- Trapeze Buddy. The metaphor conveys the idea of teamwork, communication, precision timing, and the "extra effort" mentality, as well as the serious consequences of letting somebody down. This article recommends some ways to improve those significant relationships. Mark Rosenberger is the founder and Director of WOW! Training and Consulting. Mark is a professional speaker who has appeared before groups in North and South America. He has developed several training programs used in schools and corporations across the United States, including The Customer Loyalty System, Team Selling, How to Stay Sane in an Insane World, Tele·Consulting, The Service Audit, and the Service University. He's the author of the recently published book, The PLUS 10% Game: 52 High-Impact Leverage Points to Enhance Sales, Customer Loyalty, and Teamwork. E-mail: wowseminar@aol.com Your business depends on selling your goods and services. So, do you realize that those sales efforts may be compromised and undermined ... by your employees? This article can help you understand those hidden problems and take care of them, once and for all, so that all your employees are working with the perspective of your sales representatives in mind. Gary Connor has over 25 years of sales, sales management, and sales training experience in three Fortune 200 Companies. He is president of The Connor Group, Inc., which specializes in custom designed sales and sales management programs. The author of Buyer's Side Selling: Sales Performance Enhancers From the Customer's Perspective, a sales training program, and co-author of Sales Games and Activities for Trainers (McGraw-Hill, 1997), Gary is a nationally known trainer and speaker. E-mail: gbc@mindspring.com Business experts generally maintain that a key to lasting success is innovation. You may think that your company is dedicated to innovation. But are you using your customer service representatives to help drive the innovation process? If not, then you're missing out on a lot of advantages, according to the author. This article presents an eight-step process for developing new products, starting with customer sales reps as market research resources. Scott Davis is a partner with Kuczmarski & Associates. He leads the firm's focus on brand equity management as a key component of delivering customer value. He has led projects dealing with the creation of customer-focused innovation strategies with some of the top brands in the United States. His work has been cited in numerous publications, including USA Today and The Wall Street Journal, and he serves as a contributor for Crain's Small Business "Business Advisor Column." His work has been published in several marketing-oriented journals. E-mail: scottd@ennovate.com Web site: http://www.ennovate.com What's the goal for your customer service people? It should be to try, in every interaction with a customer, to provide better and more memorable service than last time. Not only that, the author of this article contends, but the "better and more memorable" service begins within your company, in the interrelationships of your employees. Dr. H. Lee Meadow is Professor of Marketing and former Chair of the Department of Management and Marketing for the Lumpkin School of Business and Applied Sciences at Eastern Illinois University. He has over 20 years of collegiate-level teaching and management experience. He has consulted extensively in the areas of marketing, management, and selling in retail organizations (Sears), technology (Motorola), higher education (Metropolitan State College and the University of Northern Iowa), health care (Kishwaukee Hospital, Sarah Bush Lincoln Health System, and Home Health Care, Inc.), insurance (State Farm and Country Companies), state government (Maryland and Massachusetts), and federal government (Army, Air Force, and Office of Personnel Management). E-mail: cfhlm@eiu.edu Return to Best Practices in Customer Service page |