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Four Things Service Organization

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Extensive study of the world’s best service companies reveals the principles on which they’re built. The Four Things a
Service Business Must
Get Right by Frances X. Frei

Included with this full-text Harvard Business Review article:
1 Article Summary
The Idea in Brief—the core idea
The Idea in Practice—putting the idea to work
2 The Four Things a Service Business Must Get Right
13 Further Reading
A list of related materials, with annotations to guide further exploration of the article’s ideas and applications

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This article is made available to you with compliments of Frances X. Frei. Further posting, copying or distributing is copyright infringement. To order more copies go to www.hbr.org.

The Four Things a Service Business Must Get
Right
The Idea in Brief

The Idea in Practice

All successful firms must design a compelling offering and manage the workforce to deliver it at an attractive price. But service firms must do even more: deal with the frustrating fact that their customers can wreak havoc on service quality and costs.

To consistently deliver service excellence, ensure that each of these four elements reinforces the others:

For example, a customer dithering at a fastfood counter slows things down for everyone else waiting in line. An architect’s client struggling to clarify how a new facility will be used drags out the design process.
To tackle this challenge, Frei advises aligning four key elements of your business:
• What your service offering consists of
• How you fund the excellence you want to provide
• How you manage employees to deliver quality service

COPYRIGHT © 2008 HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL PUBLISHING CORPORATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

• What you do to help customers enhance— not erode—service
Get these elements pulling together, and none of them can pull your

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