Great service, it turns out, is not made possible by running the business harder and faster on the backs of a few extraordinary people. It's made possible — profitable, sustainable, scalable — by designing a system that sets up everyone to excel.
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Uncommon Service - Frances Frei and Anne Morris
Introduction: If This Is a Service Economy, Why Am I Still on Hold?
“Here's what we've learned: uncommon service is not born from attitude and effort, but from design choices made in the very blueprints of a business model. It's easy to throw service into a mission statement and periodically do whatever it takes to make a customer happy. What's hard is designing a service model that allows average employees — not just the exceptional ones — to produce service excellence as an everyday routine. Outstanding service organizations create offerings, funding strategies, systems, and cultures that set their people up to excel casually.
Great service, it turns out, is not made possible by running the business harder and faster on the backs of a few extraordinary people. It's made possible — profitable, sustainable, scalable — by designing a system that sets up everyone to excel.
Scenes like this played out across the country. And they did because BBBK's incentives to excel not only worked for individuals, but they also worked seamlessly with the rest of its employee management system. We're not suggesting that the company's approach is somehow universal, although its deliberate balance of "trust and verify" shows up in the management systems of many other successful service companies.
In short, the average employee is drowning in complexity. And the outstanding employee, the one who has a chance of keeping up, is a much scarcer resource than many managers are willing to acknowledge. We're designing jobs for superhumans, and it turns out our people are flesh and blood.
Scenes like this played out across the country. And they did because BBBK's incentives to excel not only worked for individuals, but they also worked seamlessly with the rest of its employee management system. We're not suggesting that the company's approach is somehow universal, although its deliberate balance of "trust and verify" shows up in the management systems of many other successful service companies.