We live in a world of abundance which basically means that there is too much of everything. Supply outstrips demand in virtually any business category you can imaging. This hyper competitive situation forces us all rethink our approach if we want to be successful.
This is the core idea of my new book.
So why write another book you might ask – it’s not as if the world is craving for more books on service, customer focus or management?
Surely there is also an abundance of books?
Well – Yes… But on the other hand… No!
Let me explain.
My work in the service industry has been based on the principles outlined in a book that caught my attention in 1990 called The Service Profit Chain – shortly after the book was published I became the CEO of a large hospitality group and the principles outlined in the book became the basic foundation for the approach that we took. It worked like a dream for us.
In fact it worked so well that in 2001 I decided to form a consulting and training company that would help others implement the principles of the Service Profit Chain.
So for the past 10 years or so I have been delivering workshops, training, and keynote speaking to companies in the service industry from consulting engineers to managers in large hospitality groups.
I nearly always get asked at some point: ”Where can we read more about this? ”
And I refer people back to the original work published by Harvard in 1989.
But when I then check back later and ask if they enjoyed the book I very often get slightly sheepish looks and some mumbled excuses about not really getting past the first chapter.
I suspect this has to do with the fact that a lot of the people working in the service industry prefer a very practical hands-on approach to their learning. The original service profit chain book is a fabulous piece of work but it is in parts quite theoretical and with more than 360 pages to get through it is also quite a mouthful when you have a lot of other stuff on your plate.
Invariably the discussion therefore leads the obvious question from my client: Why don’t you write an easy to read, simple to understand hands-on guide to implementing the service profit chain – we really need that!
And funnily enough when I then researched what’s already published I can’t find anything that integrates all seven steps of The Service Profit Chain into one coherent system that is easily understandable at all levels of the organisation.
So there was nothing els for it but do it my self – and here is is:
Best! No need to be cheap if you are…