New Book Recommendation – The New Gold Standard
Heads up all of you who love to better understand customer service as well as those of you who love to read! Dr. Joseph Michelli (author of The Starbucks Experience) has released his newest book on The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company.
The book is called The New Gold Standard: 5 Leadership Principles for Creating a Legendary Customer Experience Courtesy of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company. I actually had the privilege of attending the same training session at the Ritz-Carlton as Dr. Michelli did when he was doing his research. I’m even quoted in the book (you have to read it to see what I had to say)! As all of you know, I’m pretty big on customer service, so this book is a must read from where I sit.
I know you’ll value the insights he provides because I was there when he was gathering them. The Ritz-Carlton is a unique place we can all learn something from. Rather than me trying to explain what you’ll be getting out of the book, I’d rather let the professionals do it so here goes:
Discover the secrets of world-class leadership!
When it comes to refined service and exquisite hospitality, one name stands high above the rest: The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company. With ceaseless attention to every luxurious detail, the company has set the bar for creating memorable customer experiences in world-class settings. Now, for the first time, the leadership secrets behind the company’s extraordinary success are revealed.
The New Gold Standard takes you on an exclusive tour behind the scenes of The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company. Granted unprecedented access to the company’s executives, staff, and its award-winning Leadership Center training facilities, bestselling author Joseph Michelli explored every level of leadership within the organization. He emerged with the key principles leaders at any company can use to provide a customer experience unlike any other, such as:
– Understanding the ever-evolving needs of customers
– Empowering employees by treating them with the utmost respect
– Anticipating customers’ unexpressed needs and concerns
– Developing and conducting an unsurpassed training regimen
Sharing engaging stories from the company’s employees – from the corporate office and hotels around the globe – Michelli describes the innovative methods the company uses to create peerless guest experiences and explains how it constantly hones and improves them.
The New Gold Standard weaves practical how-to advice, proven leadership tools, and the wisdom of experts to help you create and embed superior customer-service principles, processes, and practices in your own organization.
I hope you’ll grab a copy. You’ll be glad you did!
– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC
I agree. Companies that fail to recognize the need to have associates ACTIVELY engaged in the delivery of their product or service are doomed to failure. Simply read some of the customer service (or disservice) posts on this blog and it becomes pretty evident that engaged associates are the holy grail of business success.
In O’Toole and Lawler’s The New American Workplace, they discuss this need to shift to High Involvement models for employee engagement as the key to sustainability, and they cite Starbuck’s and the steel industry as models for this kind of organizational reform that is the key to sustainability in the new global economy. It makes a lot of sense. I have had a suspicion for quite some time that Deming and Drucker were on to something, and I think the tide is beginning to turn.