Your customers feel what your staff feel
You can train the front line.
You can script the greeting.
You can chase the score every month.
But if your people aren’t engaged, your customers won’t be loyal.
And loyal customers are where the profit is.
The Service Profit Chain
Harvard researchers mapped it decades ago.
I’ve watched it play out in restaurants, hotels and leisure parks ever since.
It’s a simple chain:
Good leadership >
engaged employees >
better service >
loyal customers >
profit and growth.
Break one link and the whole chain goes slack.
Most businesses try to fix the end of the chain.
The problem is usually at the start.
What we do together
We start with the whole team, not just the managers.
Everyone learns the basic principles of the Service Profit Chain.
Front of house and back of house. Sales, operations and support.
So people across departments start speaking the same language.
Then something shifts.
People see how their work lands on someone else’s desk.
And that the customer experience is only as good as the handovers in between.
Researchers call this relational coordination.
It’s what made Southwest Airlines faster and better loved than its rivals.
The foundation: the Dream Team cycle
Everything rests on one simple cycle:
- Attract great people
- Find the right people for the right customers
- Build their skills
- Give them great support: the right systems and information
- Set clear expectations
- Give them freedom to act
- Give feedback and recognition
Get this right and people stay, and they care.
And people who care create customers who come back.
It looks easy.
In reality it’s devilishly difficult.
That’s where we work together.
Two ways to start
Keynotes & workshops
A talk or a 90-minute workshop to get your management team on the same page.
A good first step when people need to see the chain before they’ll work on it.
Online or in person. English, Danish or French.
€500–2,500
GROW Leadership (in Danish)
A 12-week programme for service managers.
Managers learn the Service Profit Chain, and put it to work in their own business as they go.
Delivered to hundreds of managers since 2001.
From DKK 19,500 per participant
“By far the best leadership programme I’ve taken. It has given the organisation a common language and brought us closer together.”
Head of People & Culture, Liseberg (GROW Leadership)
What people say
I have used Mike for the past ten years to train my management teams. It works.
Dorte Gleie, Managing Director, SSP Copenhagen
Already know it starts inside?
If your team already gets the Service Profit Chain, you may be ready for the next step.
Let’s talk
Tell me what’s going on with your scores.
A first conversation costs nothing.