Retail Price: $39.95 LS Price: $27.17 You Save: $12.78 (32%) Availability: Usually ships within 24 hours. Format: Hardcover, 280pp. ISBN: 9781118345566 Publisher: Wiley Pub. Date: December 11, 2012 Average Customer Review:

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Times have changed.

Long gone are our days of being kings of the manufacturing industry, we are now immersed in the world of ‘service’ where the relationship between an organization and the customer is an integral part of the ‘product’ offering. The nation is suffering from a widespread lack of truly customer-satisfying service. We lack the very thing that we need to make this new paradigm work efficiently: service-ability.

Organizations of all kinds are facing high customer churn, serious customer antagonism, loss of consumer confidence and plummeting customer satisfaction. Research shows that totally satisfying the customer is the only thing that will secure loyalty and offer significant competitive advantage. Yet still, on a daily basis we encounter service that frustrates us.

Whilst the emergence of technology has no doubt brought efficiency to many areas of business activity, including the third sector, it has led to the standardised and indifferent service we regularly receive. We appear to have lost sight that people do business with people. Through efficient technology, our organisations may be serviceable but they are not service able.

The arrival of Generation Y and the developments in social media, provide businesses with a whole new way to engage with their customers, but also provide a new way for customers to rate companies, products and services: not always in a positive manner. ‘Like’ or ‘#Fail’ have become part of our social language.

Organizations that refocus on the need to treat customers in a way that satisfies them, and not the technology, will have better customer retention, lower costs of replacement and will build their brand value through better reputations.

Service-Ability delves deeply into these areas to show how today’s managers need to re-think the way we structure, manage, lead and organize our companies to achieve total ‘customer-centric’ work cultures that develop lasting relationships with customers.

Kevin Robson was awarded his MBA with overall distinction and academic prize for best dissertation on Human Resource Management in the small business by Durham University Business School, UK and he also holds the internationally recognised Graduate Diploma in Marketing of the Chartered Institute of Marketing of the UK of which he is also a Fellow.

	Preface	ix
	Foreword	xv
1	Connectedness	1
2	Customer Satisfaction and its Link to Pro t	17
3	Our Industrial Legacy	37
4	Our Service Economy	61
5	Servicing Customers is Not Customer Service	83
6	Understanding Service-Ability	105
7	Getting the People Right	115
8	Appropriate Organization	143
9	Effective Leadership	173
10	Clarity of Purpose	211
11	Bringing it All Together	241
	Index	253

Book on Leadership