Praise for Unleashing Excellence
‘‘In the restaurant business, achieving and maintaining excellent customer service is of paramount importance. Unleashing Excellence is a must read that would benefit any industry. It gives step by step guidelines that can be implemented with ease and invaluable insights that will help encourage your customers to keep coming back for more instead of leaving before the first bite.’’
—Fred DeLuca, President and Co-Founder Subway Restaurants
‘‘If your organization is not fully committed to service excellence, don’t read this book. If you are fully committed, then you MUST read this book. It provides all the nuts and bolts of how to create and sustain a service culture.’’
—Pamela Paulk, Vice President, Human Resources Johns Hopkins Health System
‘‘Business in the early twenty-first century has turned into a survival game—those who figure out how to keep their customers survive. If you need a customer service improvement plan and don’t know where to start, START HERE! Teri Yanovitch and Dennis Snow have put together a thorough guide for building a successful customer focus strategy in an organization of any size. In a plan of only 9 steps, Unleashing Excellence shows step-by-step how to build the business case for customer focus and service improvement, supported by successful business examples, guidelines and worksheets, and accountability strategies and measurement plans. The plan is logical, the book is easy to read and non-technical—highly recommended.’’
—Tom Willett, Director, Management Development Programs,
Cornell University, ILR School
‘‘There is no shortage of books extolling the importance of excellent customer service. What distinguishes Unleashing Excellence from the others is its focus on how to do it. If you are convinced of the value of service excellence and want to know how to provide it, this book is for you.’’
—Allan R. Nagle, former President, Tupperware Worldwide / former Interim Dean,
Crummer School of Business, Rollins College
‘‘Customer service is key to the success of any company. I recommend Unleashing Excellence to any company needing a ‘how to’ and ‘can do’ manual to implement service excellence in their organization.’’
—Richard A. Nunis, Retired Chairman, Walt Disney Parks & Resorts
‘‘Dennis Snow and Teri Yanovitch have once again authored an easy-to-read guide, rich with real-life examples of companies striving to achieve customer service excellence. We started following the simple ‘how to’ steps described in Unleashing Excellence (first edition) in June of 2004. ‘Everything speaks’ and ‘through the lens of the customer’ has changed our approach to providing great customer service. The second edition is a must read as it expands the concepts and steps necessary to take an organization to new customer service heights. In this incredibly competitive world, following these concepts will improve your business and your personal life!’’
—Gary Webb, Executive Vice President—Operation, First Financial Bankshares, Inc.
‘‘Once again, the authors have pinpointed the dynamics of the changing nature of delivering customer value through a focus on excellence. Wise words for any organization to heed.’’
—Dr. Robert K. Prescott, SPHR, Graduate Faculty of Management Rollins College,
Crummer Graduate School of Business
‘‘Few books written on the topic come close to the kind of thoughtful examination of the customer psyche that I’ve read here. Dennis and Teri seamlessly marry the intangible tenets of customer service philosophy with practical, easy-to-consume strategies that can help any organization transcend ‘business as usual.’ The authors illustrate their recommendations of ‘what to do’ with stories that make it easy to understand. And, Unleashing Excellence does not just tell us what, it shows us how.’’
—Chuck Kegler, Director, Kegler, Brown, Hill & Ritter
‘‘If your organization wants to make customer service a part of your culture, Unleashing Excellence is a powerful tool. The authors, with their keen understanding of what it takes to accomplish this in any business, walk you through understanding the process and the commitment that it takes to be successful. It is truly a step by step ‘how to’ guide. If this model can help a government agency reach a 93% overall customer satisfaction rating, it can help any organization. The book also helps anyone who reads it understand that excellent customer service isn’t a ‘program’ but a ‘process’ that never ends.’’
—Kimberlee Poulton, Director of Communications and Marketing,
Florida’s Turnpike Enterprise