Preface -- Introduction -- Integrating service quality and productivity strategies -- What is a service quality? -- Identifying and correcting service quality problems -- Measuring service quality -- Soft and hard service quality measures -- Learning from customer feedback -- Hard measures of service quality -- Tools to analyze and address service quality problems -- Return on quality -- Defining and measuring productivity -- Improving service productivity -- Conclusion -- Summary -- Endnotes

This book is the culmination of inter-firm comparisons done by the author of more than 4,000 companies in over 100 different industries. These productivity analyses and comparisons all show that virtually every organization, even the best, can learn from their competitors and counterparts, as well as from self-analysis, about how to achieve more and better through improved organization and utilization of their resources. Part I explains what productivity is and why it’s so important. Part II describes how productivity problems and opportunities can be identified through measurement and systematic analysis. While this is not a statistical textbook, it explains through simple and practical solutions how one can benefit from relevant measurement. Part III outlines how each individual person can improve their productivity and become significantly more efficient and effective. Part IV reviews how productivity can be enhanced through better planning, organization, use of time, knowledge, technology and resources. This basic and comprehensive book is intended for entrepreneurs, managers of local branches of large corporations, such as banks, business chains, as well as managers or aspiring managers in other private or public organizations. It is essential reading for students of business administration, economics, as well as managerial practices, and fills a hole in the training of students in all fields where they will manage people and resources. Professionals, other knowledge workers and technical people also benefit because their professional training usually concentrates on their specific expertise and not productivity improvement. Over the years it has become clear that even managers of the best organizations can benefit by learning from the experience of others.

Winning in Service Markets: Success through People, Technology, and Strategy is the first practitioner book in the market to cover the key aspects of services marketing and management based on sound academic evidence and knowledge. Derived from the globally leading textbook for Services Marketing by the same author, this book offers a comprehensive overview of extant knowledge on the topic. Accessible and practical, Winning in Service Markets bridges the gap between cutting-edge academic research and industry practitioners, and features best practices and latest trends on services marketing and management from around the world.

General Motor Company IBM.

In this pathbreaking book, world-renowned Harvard Business School service firm experts James L. Heskett, W. Earl Sasser, Jr. and Leonard A. Schlesinger reveal that leading companies stay on top by managing the service profit chain. Why are a select few service firms better at what they do -- year in and year out -- than their competitors? For most senior managers, the profusion of anecdotal "service excellence" books fails to address this key question. Based on five years of painstaking research, the authors show how managers at American Express, Southwest Airlines, Banc One, Waste Management, USAA, MBNA, Intuit, British Airways, Taco Bell, Fairfield Inns, Ritz-Carlton Hotel, and the Merry Maids subsidiary of ServiceMaster employ a quantifiable set of relationships that directly links profit and growth to not only customer loyalty and satisfaction, but to employee loyalty, satisfaction, and productivity. The strongest relationships the authors discovered are those between (1) profit and customer loyalty; (2) employee loyalty and customer loyalty; and (3) employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction. Moreover, these relationships are mutually reinforcing; that is, satisfied customers contribute to employee satisfaction and vice versa. Here, finally, is the foundation for a powerful strategic service vision, a model on which any manager can build more focused operations and marketing capabilities. For example, the authors demonstrate how, in Banc One's operating divisions, a direct relationship between customer loyalty measured by the "depth" of a relationship, the number of banking services a customer utilizes, and profitability led the bank to encourage existing customers to further extend the bank services they use. Taco Bell has found that their stores in the top quadrant of customer satisfaction ratings outperform their other stores on all measures. At American Express Travel Services, offices that ticket quickly and accurately are more profitable than those which don't. With hundreds of examples like these, the authors show how to manage the customer-employee "satisfaction mirror" and the customer value equation to achieve a "customer's eye view" of goods and services. They describe how companies in any service industry can (1) measure service profit chain relationships across operating units; (2) communicate the resulting self-appraisal; (3) develop a "balanced scorecard" of performance; (4) develop a recognitions and rewards system tied to established measures; (5) communicate results company-wide; (6) develop an internal "best practice" information exchange; and (7) improve overall service profit chain performance. What difference can service profit chain management make? A lot. Between 1986 and 1995, the common stock prices of the companies studied by the authors increased 147%, nearly twice as fast as the price of the stocks of their closest competitors. The proven success and high-yielding results from these high-achieving companies will make The Service Profit Chain required reading for senior, division, and business unit managers in all service companies, as well as for students of service management.

In today's global economy, corporate managers are in the front-line when it comes to transforming management principles from an abstract vision into reality. This practical volume reveals how International Labour Standards (ILS) can be effective and powerful tools around which managers can build their corporate policies and practices --particularly during this era of rapid economic change. Increasing competition, changing customer demands and new structures of production and work have all altered the dynamics of the business environment. This book examines these issues and explores how incorporating ILS can help enterprises meet the challenges. It looks at the interrelationship between good management practices and ILS through numerous case studies and examples from both large and small companies from all over the world and demonstrates how implementing ILS in any company makes sound business sense.