Leading and Managing the Customer's Experience

"A whole book on customer service. What! it costs nothing to smile." And with that, I was shooed away. But quickly I realised that some people very close to customer service seem to know least about it. Gradually I realised that the real challenge in writing this book was how to keep the material short enough to fit inside a single book. Having had several decades experience of quality systems and the associated methods, it became apparent that what we call leadership, and what we name management, are not synonyms but two entirely different things. In 1996 I came across the work of John P. Kotter in his book Leading Change. After just 25 pages, he draws a clear distinction between leadership and managementship, then uses these definitions to promote business change. Later the Six Sigma movement achieved much support for its analytical techniques in process control, then augmented by the Lean movement (both developed by Toyota) added the concept of Respect for Humanity. In Lean-Six-Sigma we have both leadership and managementship firmly defined and it is clear that both are needed. Leadership - leaders lead people. Their skills are in making work meaningful, to establish a purpose and direction through a vision. Then to motivate, encourage, and align people to that purpose. In Lean terminology Leader-ship fulfils the objective of Respect for Humanity. Managementship - managers manage processes. Their skills are in planning, organising, supervision, and controlling resources (people, budget, and time) so that activities are aligned with the objective and are predictable. In Lean terminology, Managementship fulfils the objective of effective and efficient processes. Too much management and a shortage of leadership leads to the precise delivery of the wrong thing; and too much leadership with a shortage of management leaves unfulfilled dreams. By considering humanity, and process, one concludes that customer service is humanity supported by process. This work has the objective of helping the reader to Lead, and Manage, Lean Customer Service.