Author: Jeff Mowatt
Publisher: JC Mowatt Seminars Inc.
ISBN: 0-9734704-0-2

The following review was contributed by:  S.V. SWAMY & CLICK TO VIEW S.V. Swamy's Reviews

"Becoming a SERVICE ICON in 90 Minutes a Month" is a
well-written, highly readable book that gives a clear
road map to those individuals and organisations (or
rather the individuals who feel responsible for the
organisation) who are interested in taking their
service standards to ever increasing heights and
having reached a great height, staying there. They
stand out as symbols of outstanding service, or in
other words, they become the SERVICE ICONs. And Jeff
shows how it can be done, with as little as 90 minutes
a month, which is all it takes to conduct a CAST
Meeting (Customer Service Team Meeting, copyrighted).
However, before the first meeting can be conducted, a
lot of groundwork is needed, including employee
training, conducted through his "Influence with Ease"
(Trademark Registered) customer service training.

Jeff's approach is good, and is laid out in 8
chapters. Chapter 1 is rightly titled, "What's in This
for you". The second chapter gives a broad outline of
the CAST Meetings, followed by the next five chapters,
which describe the subtle shifts needed in Customer
Service Training, Service Standards, Customer Surveys,
Employee Motivation and Daily Priorities. The final
chapter describes the actual meeting process.

The anecdotes and the examples given by Jeff are from
real life and will certainly hit home. I liked
especially two examples: one about the customer
feed-back survey, where a car-wash employee not only
gets the real problem about the front-desk poor
service from a customer (who was not going to complain
but who, if possible will not come back) by asking the
right question, but also succeeds in getting the
customer's good-will by offering a discount, simply
because the company empowered him to take on the spot
decisions. The second example, which appealed to me
was the way a Government employee went out of his way
to give a refund cheque to a person who was in real
need. That story brought tears to my eyes. If only we
all could be as sensitive as that employee!

Jeff makes one important observation in his book,
which I liked, the need to treat all people
(employees, customers etc.) fairly, not necessarily
equally. The difference is important and in many
organisations, which go by the rule book, the approach
becomes impersonal. Every rule has an exception and
Jeff brings out clearly the need to empower employees
to differentiate between these two aspects.

The cartoons used by permission from Randy Glasbergen
(www.glasbergen.com) in the book add humour and
reinforce the points made by Jeff. The book is well
printed, and the editing is generally good, though a
few slips were noticed, which however, do not distort
the message.

The book is aimed at managers (that include people at
many levels including supervisors, executives and top
management) who are interested in making their
organisation a SERVICE ICON, an example to be looked
up to and emulated by one and all including the
competitors. Even for those who are not in North
America, the book gives enough ideas to get going. The
book can be supplemented by the Multimedia kits
availble from the same source.

I would have preferred to see this book in hard-cover
since it makes a good addition to the shelf of many a
library. The paper-back is fine for individuals.

Recommendation: A good read