The Service Culture Handbook by Jeff Toister is a comprehensive and very practical guide for creating a customer-focused culture in any organisation. The book explains what a service culture is, why it matters, and how to develop one using a simple step-by-step process. The book also has some excellent case studies from successful companies, tips and tools for implementing your own service culture vision, and practical activities to help you apply what you learn.
The book explores:
- Why most customer service and culture initiatives fail
- How to design and create your own bespoke service culture
- How to align your vision, mission, and values with customer service
- How to engage your employees and make them obsessed with customer service
- How to measure and improve your service culture
- How to sustain and grow your service culture over time
The Service Culture Handbook ask three pivotal questions that every person in your organisation, from senior leadership to baseline operational staff, should be able to answer:
- What is our customer service vision?
- What does our customer service vision mean?
- How do you personally contribute to the customer service vision?
Toister emphasises the role of leadership in shaping a service culture. He highlights the need for leaders to set clear expectations, demonstrate their own commitment to service excellence, and empower employees to deliver exceptional customer experiences. He also covers the essentials for effective training and development as well as performance measurement and feedback mechanisms to ensure accountability and track progress.
Perhaps most importantly, Toister addresses crucial aspects of hiring and onboarding, and how these have a critical impact on service culture. Toister stresses the importance of embedding the service culture vision in the hiring process to better select candidates who possess the right attitude and aptitude for customer service. Furthermore, the book offers guidance on designing onboarding programs that quickly assimilate new hires into the service culture and equip them with the necessary skills to excel in their roles.
Toister also makes the point that high staff turnover is often the result of poor hiring practices. And then shows how a service culture lens can help to refine the recruitment process with some very simple strategies and actions. The Publix Groceries and Pharmacy case study is a real highlight, a masterclass example of how to design an intuitive hiring process that aligns with and supports the organisation’s service culture DNA. At every step of the Publix recruitment process there are built-in practical feedback loops that provide clear and immediate evidence about how strongly a candidate is aligned with the Publix customer service commitments.
The Service Culture Handbook is intended for leaders, managers, and frontline employees who want to create a culture where customer service is not just a department, but a way of doing business. But perhaps the book’s greatest value is in the host of real-world case studies and fresh insights it offers into the profound and powerful impacts of purpose-designed culture on your organisation’s ability to excel.