Chapter 44

Twelve Building Blocks of an Uplifting Service Culture

UP! YOUR SERVICE

In This Chapter

• Twelve suggestions with accompanying rationale for building a service culture.
• Practical advice for service leaders and service providers to ensure optimum service delivery.

Great stories about leading service organizations have been around for years: Nordstrom’s, Southwest and Singapore Airlines, Disney. New leaders emerge as business models change and adapt: Zappos, Google, GoDaddy.

But these stories are anecdotes, and many in other industries find their lessons difficult to apply. How many business-to-business or government organizations want a service culture like Zappos that promises to be “a little weird”?

What’s needed is more architecture than anecdotes, with a firmer set of foundational principles, leadership rules, and culture-building blocks that make sense and apply across all industries, geographies, and cultures.