Customer Friendly: The Organizational Architecture of Service - Softcover

Ziegenfuss, James T.

9780761837534: Customer Friendly: The Organizational Architecture of Service

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0761837531 ISBN 13: 9780761837534

Publisher: UPA, 2007

The need for customer friendly organizations exists across fields and industries. Corporate leaders have long known the value of customer support. Even public agency leaders increasingly recognize the need to offer better service to citizens. This book presents the organizational architecture of customer friendly organizations. How do some private companies and public agencies become customer friendly-by accident or design? Academics and practicing managers know that organizational design affects behavior. This book helps us understand how we develop high performance organizations-in this case, organizations that consistently deliver high quality service. It builds on the theory and application of 'systems thinking' to organization design and behavior by showing how products, structure, psychological climate, culture, and leadership work together to produce customer friendly experiences. Beginning with the architectural model, the book offers a series of cases to illustrate the application: hospital, auto manufacturer, airline, hotel, bank, university, and library.

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About the Author:

James T. Ziegenfuss, Jr., Ph.D., (Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania) is Professor of Management & Health Care Systems in the graduate programs in health and public administration, Pennsylvania State University. Professor Ziegenfuss has written over one hundred articles for journals and conferences and authored eleven books on health care, management, strategic planning, and administration.

Review:

Adjectives such as clever, innovative, and unique readily come to mind in describing the core import of Customer Friendly... His masterful volume is far from the ordinary, which tends to characterize the substantial literature on the subject of customer service. It will be highly regarded by serious students of customer service and those struggling to build strong customer service in their enterprises... Ziegenfuss's work takes its rightful place among leading college and university texts dealing with customer service and is a valuable asset for curricular libraries. Summing Up: HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. Lower-division undergraduates through professional collections. (J.B. Kashner, emeritus, College of the Southwest CHOICE)

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