Using Data to Look Out for Customers

– Written for the Center for Services Leadership by Elizabeth Farquhar Some companies responded to the cascade of threats and challenges of the past year by turning inward. The long game for those firms will be more exposure during future shocks because they learned little about their environment this time. Graybar, a Fortune 500 company …

Service In A Time of Rapid Change: Innovate Through Crisis

– Written by Elizabeth Farquhar for the Center for Services Leadership At a Center for Services Leadership conference a year ago, board member Jonathan Leighton M.D. commented that complex forces were pushing the healthcare industry away from a relational focus to a more transactional model. For the Mayo Clinic, where Dr. Leighton and his administrative …

Service In a Time of Rapid Change: Another Cost, or Competitive Advantage?

– Written by Elizabeth Farquhar for the Center for Services Leadership When he talks to business leaders about risk management, Atul Vashistha says, too often he sees their eyes glaze. “There’s another expense I have to add to operations,” they think. Twenty years ago, companies could get away with this vision of risk management as …

Service in a Time of Rapid Change: Reaching a Turning Point – Reset or Adjust

Written by Elizabeth Farquhar for the Center for Services Leadership In 2019, author and lecturer Stan Phelps logged 155,000 miles on Delta, doing as many as four presentations a week, all in different cities. But in early March, the COVID-19 pandemic shut down conventions and business meetings along with the rest of the world, and …

Service in a Time of Rapid Change: Trust and Empathy During Crisis

– Written by Elizabeth Farquhar for the Center for Services Leadership Communications play a critical role in maintaining brand trust every day. Brands do this with customers much in the same way humans do with each other – through honesty, transparency, empathy, and by matching behavior to those values. During a crisis, trust is more …

Service in a Time of Rapid Change: Under Stress – Break or Change

– Written by Elizabeth Farquhar for the Center for Services Leadership Months before the U.S. woke up to the threat of COVID-19, Ron Zielinski was hearing about a new kind of pneumonia in China. Zielinski, who leads Global Customer Services for Coherent Inc., heard from one of his managers in Singapore in late December that …