Moments of Truth by Jan Carlzon
Book Review - 4 Stars
In "Moments of Truth: New Strategies For Today's Customer Driven Economy" Jan Carlzon shares the story of his turnaround of three Scandinavian airline businesses and in particular the biggest - SAS - in the early eighties.
The focus is on customer service and leadership and in particular empowering the front line who deal with customers to deliver powerful moments of truth and make this a classic leadership for customer service book.
The customer's experience is made up of many individual moments of truth which may be good but can be bad. Since the book looks at airlines, think lost baggage, delays, long check-in queues etc.
It would be easy for many small business owners to dismiss the importance of Moments of Truth since it is about big business, in Scandinavia (with a unique culture) and more than 25 years old.
But that would be a mistake.
Just because a business doesn't have the huge chain of command that goes with a big business, it doesn't mean that employees understand and commit to the vision or that customers get great service.
My Assessment of Moments of Truth by Jan Carlzon
The book is inspiring and while it is easy to say "my business is different", the lessons on leadership and customer service can be applied. Even better if you own your own business, you don't have to fight with the board and the intransigent corporate culture to make changes.
Moments of Truth isn't a management guide that takes Jan Carlzon's experience and turns it into a list of things to do so you could read it and think "is that it" which is why I rate it as a 4 star book.
This is a recommendation to buy and read which could turn into an excellent manifesto for change if you work in a big business.
You can get a copy from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk (affiliate links)
If you have read Moments of Truth I will be very interested to read your comments.
The book is highly rated at Amazon with 21 reviews, 12 at five stars and 7 at four stars and the other 2 at three stars.
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