Dieses Buch handelt von den Dingen, die der erfolgreiche Manager im Dienstleistungs gewerbe weiB und tut. Es handelt von einem Konzept, das ich als "Strategische Dienst leistungsvision" bezeichnet habe - einem logisch aufgebauten Plan fUr den Aufbau neuer Unternehmen und die praktische Umsetzung von unternehmerischen Ideen. Und nicht zuletzt geht es auch urn das sich stiindig wandelnde Umfeld, in dem die Ftihrungskraft im Betrieb agiert. Parallel zum Aufwartstrend, den der Dienstleistungssektor zu verzeichnen hat, steigt auch die Zahl der Ftihrungskriifte in diesem Bereich in allen Industrieliindern der Welt und ist inzwischen sogar groBer als in der gtiterverarbeitenden Industrie. Daher beschaf tigt sich dieses Buch in einem gewissen Sinne auch mit den Dingen, die jeder Manager von den erfolgreichsten Praktikern im wachstumsintensivsten Wirtschaftszweig der Welt - der Dienstleistungsindustrie - lernen kann. 1 In einer bahnbrechenden wissenschaftlichen Arbeit beschrieb Colin Clark den Ubergang einer Volkswirtschaft von der vorindustriellen tiber die industrielle zur postindustrieHen Phase. Er unterteilte die wirtschaftlichen Aktivitaten in drei Sektoren: den Primiirsektor (Landwirtschaft), den Sekundiirsektor (Industrie) und den Tertiiirsektor (Dienstleistun gen). Inzwischen ist es so, daB der Tertiiirsektor alle Wirtschaftsaktivitaten abdeckt, die nicht von den anderen beiden Teilbereichen vereinnahmt werden. Und die Erben von Clarks Gedankengut haben es mit einer ganzen Ftille von hOchst unterschiedlichen Spar ten zu tun, die sich vom Bereich der gtiterverarbeitenden Industrie zum Teil nur graduell abheben."

James Heskett, Earl Sasser, and Leonard Schlesinger reveal powerful new evidence that paying close attention to the employee-customer relationship will enable any organization to be a low-cost provider and achieve superior results -- proving that you can have it all, a goal thought inadvisable just a few short years ago. At the heart of this bold assertion is the authors' indisputable conclusion supported by thirty-one years of groundbreaking research: today's employee satisfaction, loyalty, and commitment strongly influences tomorrow's customer satisfaction, loyalty, and commitment and ultimately the organization's profit and growth -- a quantifiable set of associations the authors call the value profit chain. In what may be the most far-reaching study ever undertaken of the strategic importance of the employee-customer relationship, Heskett, Sasser, and Schlesinger offer profound new insights into the life-long value of both employees and customers and the increasingly important concept of employee-relationship management. Readers will discover how organizations as diverse as aluminum maker Alcoa, travel agency Rosenbluth International, and the Willow Creek Community Church treat employees like customers (in the case of Willow Creek, volunteers as well). Conversely, the authors show how advertising agency Merkley Newman Harty and financial services provider ING Direct treat customers like employees, pursuing the ones they want most. At the Vanguard Group, Cisco Systems, and Southwest Airlines, both practices are common. The authors explain how these organizations and many others -- whether large or small, public or private, or not-for-profit -- achieve profitability and growth or the equivalent by leveraging results and process quality to deliver differentiated products and services at the lowest cost. Timely, essential, and important reading, The Value Profit Chain should be readily accessible on the desk of every forward-thinking manager.

What Do Citicorp, UPS and Marriott have in common? They are "breakthrough" service providers,
firms that changed the rules of the game in their respective industries by consistently meeting or exceeding customer needs and expectations. To find out how these companies do it, service management experts James Heskett, Earl Sasser, and Christopher Hart put the question to the chief executive officers of fifteen of America's leading service firms attending a workshop at the Harvard Business School. Breakthrough leaders, they discovered, think very differently about their businesses than do their competitors, in distinct and well-defined ways. Now, in "Service Breakthroughs, " based upon five years of exhaustive research in fourteen service industries, Heskett, Sasser, and Hart show exactly what enables one or two companies in each industry to constantly set new standards for quality and value that force competitors to adapt or fail.
At the heart of breakthrough performance, the authors contend, is a sometimes intuitive
but thorough understanding of the "self-reinforcing service cycle" that replaces traditional management of "trade-offs." The "cycle" is a paradigm derived from the research results suggesting direct links between heightened customer satisfaction, increased customer retention, augmented sales and profit, improved quality and productivity, greater service value per unit of cost, improved satisfaction of service providers, increased employee retention, and further heightened customer satisfaction. With detailed examples and dramatic case studies of Mark Twain Bancshares, American Airlines, Florida Power & Light, Federal Express, McDonald's and many other companies, Heskett, Sasser, and Hart show how this self-reinforcing cycle of behavior differentiates breakthrough leaders from their "merely good" competitors.
The authors describe how breakthrough managers develop counterintuitive, even contrarian, strategic service visions. These companies define their "service concept" in terms of results
achieved for customers rather than services performed. They target market segments by focusing on
psychographics -- how customers think and behave -- instead of demographics. And instead of viewing a
service delivery system as a facility where the service is producted and sold, breakthrough firms see it as an opportunity to enhance the quality of the service.
These profound differences in thought and action have brought spectacular results. For managers who wish to set the pace in their service industries, "Service Breakthroughs" will be essential reading.