Why I Wrote This Book
I wrote this book to connect and help individuals, teams, and entire businesses who, through a service-and-servant philosophy, want to focus on delivering world-class customer experiences from the inside out, thereby building wealthy, healthy, profitable businesses and creating ongoing economic growth and job opportunities. Moreover, I sincerely believe that a service philosophy embraces all that is right with our free enterprise system. If we choose to personally embrace the notion of "first giving" as opposed to "first taking," a "how can I help you?" service mentality, I believe many of the problems of greed and dishonesty we recently experienced in our capitalistic society will be greatly diminished.
I say this with confidence because I have worked closely with executives and their teams in large and small companies. These companies trusted me to guide them through a process of organizational transformation. They allowed me the opportunity to implement several service ideas and new change-management concepts that-although I knew they would work-worked so outrageously well and so quickly that I felt I needed to repeat them in different industries for validation. In industry after industry, the results have been exceptional. The primary concept is that business teams are no different than high-performance sports teams. Like sports teams, focused business teams "want to" bring all their individual talent and abilities to work. This approach enables them to create a safe, secure, synergistic environment, openly share ideas, and willingly focus on a shared destiny. In this case, the shared destiny is to build an internal culture of service that enables them to "WOW" customers with ease.
A team infused with a Spirit of Synergy and focused on the psychology of shared destiny is a power source for growth and profitability.
In this book, I have paid fanatical attention to detail. Each chapter demonstrates how to engage, excite, and delight internal and external customers and build a customer-centric culture. You'll see how experiences are influenced by relationships and how relationships influence perceptions. In turn, validated and reinforced perceptions build trust, and trust leads to communities of customers and brand loyalty. All enlightened businesses understand the importance of building trusting relationships. Trusting business relationships rely on leadership, integrity, the quality of the people, products, performance, and price, and the ability to manage and exceed expectations consistently.
If a business promises one thing but delivers another, trust is eroded, and frustrations spread to friends, families, and business associates like a contagious disease. Through social media, unhappy customers can reach thousands of people with one single post. Any business in a competitive market relying on service to differentiate itself understands it only takes one surly employee with a "couldn't care" attitude to lose a million-dollar contract.
"When people care, there is magic in the air!"
"Choose service as a way of life, and life will serve you."
Chris Alexander is the founder and president of Synergy Executive Education, a highly effective change management practice specializing in people-centered change. He is an award-winning business-building strategist, professional speaker, and author of 9 business and personal development books. So far, Alexander's largest audience has been his two PBS TV shows, titled "Creating Extraordinary Joy" and "Joy in the Workplace." His Synergy programs have been implemented worldwide by many Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and educational institutions. He has advanced degrees in Organizational Behavior and is an expert at building high-performance business teams focused on a shared destiny.
