Resources for Basic Service Management
For the convenience of readers of the Basic Service Management book, here are the URL links and references from the book and other useful resources
Seven practice areas
References
Additional useful links
Customer service
Basic Service Management's seven practice areas
These are the references directly referred to in the book with a "ref n" annotation.
Useful to any services organisation:
Frameworks
1. USMBOK is a website: Universal Service Management Body of Knowledge™
... and a book, a big book, “a definitive guide to service management”: The Guide to the Universal Service Management Body of Knowledge, Ian Clayton, Tahuti (2008), ISBN: 978-0981469102
This is the guide, 450 pages describing everything you need to consider for service management end-to-end across the business – the gold-standard best practice. It occasionally reveals its IT roots. If you get serious about service management, buy it.
2. CMMI-SVC
Carnegie Mellon University developed the CMM models for measuring process maturity. Most of these models are IT-centric. One model, the CMMI-SVC, is not specific to IT. It is a generic model for providing services (though much of the talk about it is IT-oriented).
CMMI-SVC is an excellent body of knowledge, comprehensive and well structured. It is also free to download, and you can certify your organisation against it.
Changing people
3. The 8-Step Process of Successful Change, John Kotter
Service management books
There are many books about “service”. Some focus on across-the-counter services, and/or the culture of service more than the practice. Others take a more general view of services and consider service management, like this book, but often get very academic and comprehensive instead of looking for the pragmatic core. For the record, we like:
4. Service Management and Operations, Haksever, Render, Russell and Murdick, Prentice Hall(2000), ISBN: 0-13-081338-9
…which is still in print.
In addition, the study of product management overlaps service management a great deal (products and services being ends of the same continuum remember) so there are a bunch more books on that topic.
IT-centric resources
Basic Service Management is drawn from a number of sources that are specific to IT and not necessarily useful to the general service management reader. Sources such as ITIL…
5. IT Infrastructure Library
…are useful only if you are an Information Technology service provider, in which case they are pretty good (if expensive). For IT, the five core ITIL books are the generally accepted “standard” approach to service management.
For other readers ITIL may be too IT-centric, with the possible exception of the first of the five main books in ITIL…
6. ITIL Service Strategy, Cabinet Office, TSO (2011), 978-0113313044
…which is a dense, heavy book describing business strategy for the provision of IT services.
If you think you can get value from an IT book, instead of ITIL we would recommend…
7. IT Service Management An Introduction, Jan van Bon, Van Haren (2007) ISBN: 978-90-8753-051-8
…and any publications related to COBIT or Val IT or Risk IT from…
8. ISACA
…and KCS for organising your people, processes and tools to make better use of knowledge for the support of services or products
Outsourcers of IT service and those using them should refer to …
10. eSCM
There are one or two original ideas of the author’s in Basic Service Management too, first published on Core Practice, He Tangata and The IT Skeptic.
The following links are to things mentioned in the book (and a few other useful ones):
First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently, M Buckingham and C Coffman, Simon and Shuster 1999, ISBN 0-684-85286-1.
Activity-Based Costing (ABC)
Baldrige
CMDB (Configuration Management Database) or more recently CMS (Configuration Management System)
Ishikawa diagrams
ISO/IEC 15504 a.k.a. SPICE
ISO38500 “Corporate governance of information technology”
ISO9003 for services, ISO9001 if manufacturing a product
Kepner-Tregoe analysis
lean accounting
Six Sigma concepts of DMAIC and DMADV
Total Quality Management
Baldrige
Reorganize for Resilience: Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business, R Gulati, Harvard Business Press 2010, ISBN-13: 978-1422117217
Understanding Your Organisation as a System, Vanguard Consulting, 2001
Performance Pyramid : Measure Up!: Yardsticks for Continuous Improvement
Results and Determinant Matrix: Performance Measurement in Service Businesses , CIMA Publishing 1991
See also THE PYRAMIDS AND PITFALLS OF PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT , Shane Johnson, ACCA
Five Ps for Strategy, H Mintzberg, California Management Review, Fall 1987
Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance, M Porter, The Free Press, New York 1985
Managing in the Service Economy, J Heskett, Harvard Business School Press, Boston 1986
NIST Small Business Information Security: The Fundamentals
Using behavioural science to improve the customer experience, J DeVine, K Gilson, McKinsey Quarterly 2010
Basic Service Management says
We aren’t talking about over-the-counter “may I help you?” service, the focus of a number of books. Those books tell you how to develop the customer service interface, the experience of contact.
If you are interested in over-the-counter customer service, try these resources:
The Nordstrom Way to Customer Service Excellence: A Handbook For Implementing Great Service in Your Organization, R Spector, Wiley (2005), 978-0471702863