Very few organizations understand the Power of the Service Strategy. In 1979 I decided to develop the world’s first customer service program because I saw firms working night and day to drive customers away. It’s worse in 2024 than in 1979. There is more hype and more BS today. By Service Strategy I mean how do you dominate and own the market. How do you increase the value of your business by 10 -100 times? For many firms, this is worth hundreds of millions or billions of dollars. I teach how to go under the radar and crush your competition using the stealth approach which is the Service Strategy.
In 2024 companies believe if you do customer satisfaction surveys that is all you need. The problem is no one does anything with the customer satisfaction research. Companies like Federal Express and Vail Resorts gave up on customer service during COVID. Both firms at one time delivered great customer service.
In May 2003, I identified 9 companies that delivered great customer service. I invested $1,000 in each of them to track financially what happens to service leaders with real money. Not the baloney that you read in other companies’ annual financial reports. I recently got my monthly November 30 statement from my Schwab stock account. For those who deliver great customer service, it pays off. Share this with your management team. The $9,000 is now worth $216,361, 21 years later. The top 3 service leaders account for 91% of the value.
- Amazon: $133,050
- Costco: $40,813
- Home Depot: $23,617
- Walmart: $7,212 (When Lee Scott took over as CEO in 2000 they lost their focus on customer service)
- TD Bank: $5,212 (When they bought out Commerce Bank the first thing they eliminated was their focus on customer service
- Southwest Airlines: $2,291 (They are the most customer-driven airline in the US. I am not sure why their stock has done so poorly)
- General Electric: $1,793 (Under Jeff Immelt, CEO from 2001 -2017 he focused on executive compensation, waste, and greed by top management and the board)
- Dell: $1,563 (After Michael Dell retired the first time they lost their focus on customer service.)
- JetBlue Airways: $430 (After they botched the winter snowstorm at JFK Airport in 2017 with no Service Recovery the airline has never recovered)
Three firms were Relentless. See my book, “Relentless”. Five of the six firms lost their focus on customer service. Amazon is light years ahead of all 8 firms. I believe it is the most customer-driven company in the world. Sales in 2024 were $578 billion a $60.8 million increase. AWS was $90.8 billion of this. Profit was $30.4 billion. Amazon, Jeff Bozos, and now Andy Jassy obsess over the customer experience.
If I was to do this again in December 2024 I would select Chewy.com, and 5 organizations that are not publically held. (Mayo Clinic, Northeast Delta Dental. Stew Leonard’s, and K-VA-T/ Food City)
This is the link to the principles and Proven Process for driving a service culture. Amazon, Costco, Home Depot and Southwest Airlines excel at all of these.
