Ron Kaufman, one of the world's leading customer service educators and motivators, in his Google talk, takes us on a

journey along a proven path into a new world of service. Through dynamic case studies, and perspective-changing
insights, he shows us how the world's best performing companies like Amazon, Apple, Zappos, Singapore Airlines etc.
have uplifted their business through higher quality service and how we too can successfully follow this.

Ron Kaufman thinks that one of the major problems we have today is: service culture is not being taught. Most of us
in the service sectors are well educated and inspired to excel in service. But the main problem is, hardly any of us
ever took a class on fundamental principles of service or how to develop a strong service culture or how to
differentiate an organization based on quality of service.

Ron Kaufman started his presentation by talking about Singapore Airlines. Although this airline is relatively more
expensive than majority of other competitors, but the point is: people are still willing to pay more to fly on exactly
the same route at just about the same time. It is not because they are better aircrafts; it is not because they use
better airports, better travel agents or even a better website. It is because they differentiated themselves based on
the quality of their service.

Mr. Ron has defined service as taking action to create value for someone else. However, many of us in the service
sector do not know this simple definition and we tend to do what is already defined for us in some TODO checklist
rather than understanding the purpose of doing the job is to create some value for somebody else.

Ron also discussed about six hierarchical levels of service which is the base of fundamental customer service
education. 'Criminal' service level is at the bottom of the hierarchy which is so bad that violates even minimum
expectations. The next level in the hierarchy is 'Basic' service - which means bear minimum. The customer may or
may not complain about this. However, he will remember not to use this service again. 'Expected' service level is also
nothing special. It is the average, the usual, the norm - it only meets the minimum expectation of a customer.
'Desired' service level is what customers hope for and prefer. They will do business with this service again because
this has fulfilled their desire. 'Surprising' service level is something special, like an unexpected gift. It gives the
customers more than they expected. 'Unbelievable' service is at the top of the service level hierarchy and it means
astonishingly fantastic. This is the level of service the customers can never forget and they will tell all their family,
friends and relatives about this service and insist them to use this service.

Each level of service is just like a step in a staircase. For improving and uplifting the quality of service, companies first
have to determine what service level hierarchy they currently stand and then they should constantly look for ways to
climb up to the next level. But the biggest challenge is: moving up in the service level hierarchy is not another step on
a solid staircase. It is like trying to climb up in a downward moving escalator. Each level is consistently sliding
downward because the competitors are also working hard to raise their service level. A service, considered as
‘surprising’ today, can slip down to be considered as ‘Expected’ or even ‘Basic’ when everyone in the industry will
start offering the same service. This is why in a service sector, it is very important for a company to constantly try to
achieve service excellence.

Finally, Ron Kaufman ended his presentation by introducing 12 build blocks required for establishing service culture:
Those are – common service language, engaging service vision, service staff recruitment, new staff orientation,
service communications, service recognitions and rewards, voice of the customers, service measures and metrics,
service improvement process, service recovery and guarantees, service benchmarking and service role modeling.
When these twelve building blocks are in place, we can create an uplifting service culture where everyone is fully
engaged, encouraging each other, improving the customer experience, making the company more successful, and
contributing to the community at large extent.