CHAPTER 4Creating and Capitalizing on Internal Quality—“A Great Place to Work”

What great service leaders know: great service starts with the frontline employee.

What great service leaders do: they hire for attitude, train for skills.

It’s fashionable for CEOs to proclaim that, in their organizations, “people are our most important asset.” In the majority of service organizations, that is literally true. For these firms, people represent by far the largest cost—as well as the greatest opportunity—for differentiation. Employees are the heart, figuratively and literally, of the service profit chain. British historian Theodore Zeldin—who studies the history of work—commented to a reporter that, in the reporter’s words, “the world of work must be ...

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