Rules of the Service Game

This book summarizes the 'rules of the service game' and presents the distilled lessons from three leaders' decades-long experience in consulting, teaching, and research on service, summarizing the 'rules of the game' they have learned. In particular, the authors emphasize that people (customers, employees, and managers) remain a prominent key to success in service, regardless of the level and extent of technology, robotics, and artificial intelligence (AI) involved.Embracing the social psychology of the various stakeholders and the settings in which they interact is critical for the long-term health of service organizations because this is what can yield sustainable competitive advantage. To be effective, service leaders need to understand the complexities of people so that they can create and support appropriate psycho-social contexts in their organizations.This book draws on the interrelated disciplines of social psychology, organizational behavior, and organizational psychology to distill fundamental principles that help inform the effective management of people and their organizational contexts. This book summarizes the most important 'rules of the game' on how to build effective service organizations for people to innovate, design, and co-create value.Rules of the Service Game provides a sharp and concise summary of how to manage a service organization by three thought leaders in this field. It reveals how people are central to the development of services whether those are delivered via technology, personally, or -- more likely -- a combination of these. This book deals with the organizational and contextual issues that produce the service quality marketing promotes. A central focus of the book is talent management -- how to attract, retain, and manage the talent necessary for creating and implementing the wide range of service delivery systems that will be required in the future.