【Background】

Service Oriented Design Thinking: A Case Study, with Frances Frei and Anne Morriss, Coauthors, Uncommon Service

In a business that’s doing customer service brilliantly, is “the customer always right?” Not necessarily, say Frances Frei and Anne Morriss, co authors of Uncommon Service and consultants on organizational excellence. To research their book, they conducted a study of companies large and small around the world. The number one obstacle that organizations were coming up against time and time again? Trying to be great at everything at once.

今天我们请到了弗朗西斯·弗雷和安妮·莫里斯。他们是书籍《与众不同的服务：将客户置于业务核心的制胜之道》的作者。

对于一家为客户提供出色服务的企业而言，“客户永远是对的吗？” 《与众不同的服务》的合著者弗朗西斯·弗雷和安妮·莫里斯表示，这并不一定是对的。两位作者在写书时做过研究，他们对世界各地大大小小的公司进行了研究。组织一次又一次遇到的最大障碍是什么？让我们来听听他们是怎么说的。

 

【Course】

Anne Morriss: In our world view, excellence equals design times culture. So, half the battle is getting the design of the organization right, and these are things like choosing very strategically where to excel and where to underperform. And that’s a design function. And you have to make sure that the business model works and that it can scale and that it’s systematically setting people up to perform. The other half is culture. And, you know, one of the reasons that culture matters so much in service organizations is that, we need our employees to every day on the front lines make decisions that end up defining the customer experience. In managing those employees, the handbook only gets you so far. You know, you – and part of that is because customers are wildly, wonderfully unpredictable. You don’t know on the front lines of a service organization what’s going to happen moment to moment. And culture tells you what to do, where – when there isn’t a policy or precedent. And so it’s a hugely important asset in service organizations.

安妮·莫里斯：从我们的世界观看，卓越等于设计与时俱进的文化。因此，企业成功的一半是使组织的设计正确无误，这就意味着在战略上选择企业在哪些方面表现出色，以及可以在哪些方面表现不佳。这是设计功能之一。而且，你必须确保商业模型有效并且可以扩展，同时可以系统地设置人员来执行。另一半则是文化。文化对服务组织如此重要的原因之一是，我们需要员工每天在前线做出最终决定客户体验的决策。在管理这些员工时，手册只能帮助你解决问题。而其中部分的原因是客户是绝对多样且难以预测的。你不知道服务组织的前线会发生什么。企业文化会告诉你在没有政策或先例的情况下该做什么。因此，这是服务组织中极为重要的资产。

 

Frances Frei: So Southwest Airlines, the reason we love it is that it’s in perhaps the worst industry of all time. So the industry has essentially destroyed more value than its created since its inception. And then there’s Southwest, who’s profitable every year. Every year for one decade every year for another decade, every year, for another decade . . . They do it by this beautiful elegance of focus. They are very comfortable saying, “We do this, we don’t do that,” which means they have great strategy. And they’re very great at delivering excellence because they say, “We’ll do these things well: turnaround time, being on time. We’ll do these things badly: . . .” Go onboard a Southwest Airlines flight and ask someone for a full meal. They have no shame, no apology – they might mock you a little bit in their reply. They understand what they’re optimized to be great at. They understand what they have to give up in order to deliver on that, and they understand that from the top of the organization all the way down to the bottom.

弗朗西斯·弗雷：西南航空公司，我们之所以喜欢它，是因为它可能处于有史以来最糟糕的行业中。自成立以来，这个行业本质上破坏了比其创造的价值更大的价值。然后西南航空，每年都在盈利。日复一日、年复一年。他们通过专注的美丽优雅做到了这一点。他们很自在地说，“我们做这些事，我们不做那些事”，这意味着他们有很好的策略。他们非常擅长提供卓越的服务，因为他们说：“我们相信这些事可以做得很好：周转时间，准时到达。而这些事情我们可以做不好：…”如果你乘坐西南航空的航班，然后问服务员要提供一顿饱餐。他们拒绝时不会觉得惭愧，也不会道歉，他们的回答可能还会嘲笑你。他们了解自己最擅长的方面。他们理解为实现这一目标而必须放弃的东西，并且他们从组织的最高层一直到最基层都知道这一点。

 

Anne Morriss: One of the things that Southwest does in a training experience is they get everyone, all the new recruits in a room and they have everyone stand up and share their most embarrassing moment. So, people in the moment think, “This is pretty hardcore. I mean, they’re testing us for poise and our ability to communicate in a stressful situation.” And it turns out, Southwest isn’t looking at the speaker, they’re looking at everyone else, and they’re looking for signs of empathy. And so when they see signs of empathy in that crowd, those are the people that they end up hiring. So, it’s, you know, it’s a great example of distinct clarity on the values that are important to them and figuring out how to find them in the hiring process.

安妮·莫里斯：西南航空在培训员工时做的一件事就是让每个人，所有新入职人员都在一个房间里。他们让所有人站起来，分享他们最尴尬的时刻。当下人们认为：“这挺硬核的。我是说，他们正在测试我们是否冷静，以及能否在压力很大的情况下进行交流的能力。”而事实证明，此时西南航空不是在观察说话的人，而是在观察其他所有人，在寻找能够共情的人。因此，当他们在人群中看到同情的迹象时，这些人就是他们最终雇用的人。所以这是一个很好的例子，它清楚地说明了对他们很重要的价值观，并弄清楚了如何在招聘过程中找到具有这些品质的人。

 

Frances Frei: Excellence is design times culture. You have to get the design right and you have to get the culture right. Great design, bad culture, won’t work. Great culture, bad design, won’t work. We need both, and Southwest is just a magnificent illustration of both.

弗朗西斯·弗雷：卓越就是设计与时俱进的文化。你必须知道怎么正确地设计，知道什么是正确的文化。好的设计，不好的文化，行不通。好的文化，不好的设计，也是行不通的。我们需要两者兼具，而西南航空就是两者兼有的绝佳例证。

 

【Summary】

“In our worldview,” says Frei, “excellence equals design times culture.” Designing a great customer-oriented business, she observes, means deciding strategically what to do well and what to do badly. Assessing what matters most to your customers and will give you a competitive advantage, and focusing your resources on that alone.

弗雷说：“从我们的世界观出发，卓越意味着设计与时俱进的文化。”她观察到，设计一个伟大的、以客户为中心的企业意味着在战略上决定什么能做好、什么不必做好。评估对你的客户最重要的东西，这将为你带来竞争优势，并将资源仅用于此方面。

 

Culture, on the other hand, is the company-wide set of values that helps people decide what to do (and what not to do) when the complexity of the business and the unpredictability of customers takes them outside the employee manual.

另一方面，文化是整个公司范围内的一套价值观，可以帮助员工在业务复杂性和客户的不可预测性脱离员工手册时，根据文化决定做什么（和不做什么）。

 

Southwest Airlines, Frei and Morriss’ poster child of great service, has designed its organization and built a culture that enables it to excel in areas that are pain points for many air travelers: remaining on schedule and providing warm, human customer service. This means observing potential recruits closely not for grace under pressure or perfectionism, but for empathy. And sometimes it means saying “no” (in the nicest way possible!) to things like full meals that the company has strategically decided not to offer.

弗雷和莫里斯认为西南航空有着完美的出色服务。西南航空已经设计了自己的组织机构，并建立了一种文化，使其能够在许多航空旅行者的痛点领域中脱颖而出：保持准时并提供热情、人性化的客户服务。这意味着要密切观察潜在的新兵，不是为了寻找能在压力或完美主义下保持冷静的人，而是为了寻找可以换位思考的人。有时，这意味着能用最好的方式对公司战略性决定不提供的餐点之类的东西说“不”。