Blog Posts

Cécile Delcourt, University of Liege, Belgium
Dwayne D. Gremler, Bowling Green State University
Allard C. R. van Riel, Radboud University, The Netherlands
Marcel van Birgelen, Radboud University, The Netherlands

Robert F. Lusch, University of Arizona
Melissa Akaka, University of Denver

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.

Edward Jones works with its clients to build portfolios that are based on client goals and timelines. Building personal relationships one at a time is at the core of the work of its 19,000 financial advisors for more than 7 million clients throughout North America.

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.

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 a cost. Not anymore, Vashistha says.

Written by Elizabeth Farquhar for the Center for Services Leadership

In early April, just weeks after communities across the country shut down in an attempt to slow the spread of a frightening new virus, the consulting firm McKinsey polled U.S. consumers about their level of distress.

One of the biggest challenges facing companies right now is how to keep a distributed workforce motivated and productive. For some employees working from home is a gift.  It beats the traffic, trains and planes it takes to get where you need to be, and employees feel more focused than ever. For others, however, it is a struggle.

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.

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 there were some 12 to 14 of these cases in Wuhan.

A recent survey shows just how unsatisfied Americans are with the products and services they buy. The 2020 Customer Rage study, conducted by Customer Measurement Care and Consulting (CCMC) in conjunction with the Center for Services Leadership at W. P.

After the World Health Organization declared a pandemic on March 11, State Farm shifted into catastrophe mode. By March 20 everyone was working at home. It was a remarkably nimble move for a large company where relatively few had been working remotely in the past.

Saturday Night Live has produced a grand amount of hilarious, gut-splitting moments since its inception way back in 1975, with many of these moments coming in a fictional service setting.

Business leaders understand what Greek philosopher Heraclitus proclaimed more than 2500 years ago: the only constant is change. But it matters whether that change is evolutionary or explosive, and response to the global health threat that is COVID-19 has produced change of the latter variety.

As sucker punches go, this coronavirus pandemic was a championship blow. Some companies would probably agree with boxer Mike Tyson, who said “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.”

One afternoon recently, marketing professor Leonard Berry paused in the middle of grading final papers and exams to describe our current frightening landscape: one million-plus COVID-19 cases, more than 60,000 deaths, unemployment growing to near-depression levels, and businesses shutting down—some never to return.

Black Friday shopping used to be a more chaotic and entertaining experience than it is nowadays and a large reason why things have changed has been the steady decrease in physical consumers showing up to stores.

– Written by Elizabeth Farquhar for the Center for Services Leadership

Emergency response is nothing new to National Industries for the Blind (NIB).

The English language sure can be confusing, especially when it comes to the United States. Take the word “cold” for example. I don’t know of any other place where cold can be used to describe the temperature as well as be used as an adjective in multiple contexts.