Total Quality Service, Autobiographies and Biographies
Karl Albrecht. The Only Thing That Matters: Bringing the Power of the Customer into the Center of Your Business; The Northbound Train: Finding the Purpose, Setting the Direction, Shaping the Destiny of Your Organization; and Service America in the New Economy. Albrecht is the modern founder of the customer service revolution, with the publication of his 1985 book, Service America! These later works expand on his theory, while the last book explains why he thinks the service revolution has, for the most part, died.
Jan Carlzon. Moments of Truth: New Strategies for Today’s Customer-Driven Economy. Carlzon was head of SAS Airlines when this book was published, and was the inspiration for some of Albrecht’s later work on Total Quality Service. This exploration of the Moment of Truth strategy—looking at each interaction the customer has with your company—still holds many relevant lessons for today’s leaders.
Henry Ford and Samuel Crowther. My Life and Work. This book was originally published in 1922, and is remarkable for the insight it provides on pricing, essentially mirroring the Pricing On Purpose value chain presented in Ron’s books, and illustrating how Ford understood that, ultimately, price drives costs, not the other way around.
Disney Institute. Be Our Guest: Perfecting the Art of Customer Service. A behind-the-scenes look at the best practices and systems used by Disney’s theme parks to provide moments of magic for its guests.
Stanley Marcus. Quest for the Best; The Viewpoints of Stanley Marcus: A Ten-Year Perspective; Minding the Store: A Memoir; and Stanley Marcus from A to Z: Viewpoints Volume II. Stanley Marcus was the son of one of the founders of Neiman-Marcus, and ran the store during the Great Depression until the late 1960s. Baker considers Marcus the leader in customer service, and the many stories and examples in these works support this view. An amazing man and a great life story.
Eugene O’Kelly. Chasing Daylight: How My Forthcoming Death Transformed My Life. This may seem like a peculiar book to suggest, but it is profound. Baker knew the author, he was a partner in the same office while he was at Peat, Marwick, Mitchell (now KPMG) in the mid-1980s. In the last week of May 2005, he was told he had three months to live, at the age of 53. When he consulted another specialist on how long he had, the doctor replied: “You’re not a statistic.” What is fascinating is how O’Kelly, who went on to become CEO of KPMG—the international accounting firm and one of the Big Four—changed his perspective on evaluating people from competency, proficiency and quality, to the energy with which someone puts into a task. He admits he could have limited his office schedule, spent more time with his family, and probably have been more focused and creative at work, and gotten more done. This is especially relevant to increasing the effectiveness of knowledge workers, and one can only hope we have the wisdom to learn from it—and practice it—without having to wait for a fatal diagnosis.