UNCOMMON TAKEAWAYS

• To achieve service excellence, you must underperform in strategic ways. This means delivering on the service dimensions your customers value most, and then making it possible — profitable and sustainable —by performing poorly on the dimensions they value least. In other words, you must be bad in the service of good.

• The primary obstacle to service excellence is not the ambition to be great, but the stomach to be bad. This is an emotional obstacle.

• It's difficult to compete without understanding your customers' needs and how well your competitors are meeting those needs. Fortunately, customers are typically very willing to give you that information. And it's cheap and easy to ask them for it.

• There is an important distinction between marketing and operating segments. Marketing segments tell us how to identify and communicate with different kinds of customers. Operating segments tell us how to serve customers differently.There is rarely a one-to-one mapping between these segments.

• There are two key ways to improve service: (1) meet your customers' existing needs more effectively, or (2) convince your customers that they need something you already do well.

• There is a difference between financial models and service models. Service companies need to be "bi-lingual" to excel.

UNCOMMON TAKEAWAYS

• Service excellence must be funded in some way. If not, you risk delivering gratuitous service, service features that are donated to customers but never paid for in any way.

• There are four ways to fund a premium service experience: (1) get customers to pay you extra for it, (2) reduce costs in ways that also improve service, (3) improve service in ways that also reduce costs, or (4) get customers to enjoy doing some of the work for you.

• Method 1 is the simplest, at least from a design perspective. Methods 2 and 3 are the most reliable. Method 4 gets the most attention.

• Extra service fees aren't inherently good or bad. Their success depends on the specific contract you have with customers.

• A loyalty program is one way to get paid for a premium service experience. True loyalty programs —programs that increase customers' willingness to pay a premium price — are rare, largely because most loyalty programs are mislabeled retention programs.

• For self-service to be part of an uncommon service experience, customers must prefer self-service to a full-service alternative.

UNCOMMON TAKEAWAYS

• It's not enough to design your service model right. Uncommon service is achieved when great organizational design meets a culture of service excellence. A basic way to think about it is this: service excellence is a product of design and culture.

• The right culture is not a universal concept. Your right culture is a distinct asset that must be consistent with your organization's service model.

• One way to understand culture is to break it down into its relevant components. We like Edgar Schein's culture framework, which loosely divides a culture into artifacts, behaviors, and shared basic assumptions. As Schein argues, to change behavior (a company's typical goal), you have to change the way people think. To change the way people think, start with the underlying assumptions that drive that thinking.

• Great service organizations tend to do three things well in their relationship with culture. They have deep clarity about the organizational culture they must cultivate in order to compete and win. They are effective in signaling the norms and values that embody that culture. And they work hard to ensure cultural consistency, alignment between the desired culture and organizational strategy, structure, and operations.

UNCOMMON TAKEAWAYS

• Service excellence must be funded in some way. If not, you risk delivering gratuitous service, service features that are donated to customers but never paid for in any way.

• There are four ways to fund a premium service experience: (1) get customers to pay you extra for it, (2) reduce costs in ways that also improve service, (3) improve service in ways that also reduce costs, or (4) get customers to enjoy doing some of the work for you.

• Method 1 is the simplest, at least from a design perspective. Methods 2 and 3 are the most reliable. Method 4 gets the most attention.

• Extra service fees aren't inherently good or bad. Their success depends on the specific contract you have with customers.

• A loyalty program is one way to get paid for a premium service experience. True loyalty programs —programs that increase customers' willingness to pay a premium price — are rare, largely because most loyalty programs are mislabeled retention programs.

• For self-service to be part of an uncommon service experience, customers must prefer self-service to a full-service alternative.

UNCOMMON TAKEAWAYS

• It's not enough to design your service model right. Uncommon service is achieved when great organizational design meets a culture of service excellence. A basic way to think about it is this: service excellence is a product of design and culture.

• The right culture is not a universal concept. Your right culture is a distinct asset that must be consistent with your organization's service model.

• One way to understand culture is to break it down into its relevant components. We like Edgar Schein's culture framework, which loosely divides a culture into artifacts, behaviors, and shared basic assumptions. As Schein argues, to change behavior (a company's typical goal), you have to change the way people think. To change the way people think, start with the underlying assumptions that drive that thinking.

• Great service organizations tend to do three things well in their relationship with culture. They have deep clarity about the organizational culture they must cultivate in order to compete and win. They are effective in signaling the norms and values that embody that culture. And they work hard to ensure cultural consistency, alignment between the desired culture and organizational strategy, structure, and operations.