The Pinwheel (ePub)

Remember that colorful childhood toy that spins?

Each vane of a pinwheel looks the same and catches the same wind, spinning the wheel around. If one vane is damaged, the pinwheel slows down or stops.

Many think of the pinwheel as a childhood diversion, but when you envision it as a metaphor for delivering great customer service, it means much more.

In this book, Steve Church and Terry Cain define great customer service and explain how it increases employee engagement, boosts repeat business, and drives greater profitability. Delivering it, however, can be daunting, especially in a changing business environment where social media influences buyers. There are also pressures to reduce costs while providing employees with purpose and meaning. Those challenges, however, should not stop you from plotting a path toward customer service excellence. Help every employee understand the importance of great customer service and his or her role in delivering it with The Pinwheel.

Through their many years in private sector business, Steve and Terry have learned that the culture of a business can be a companys most powerful weapon or a major roadblock to success. The most successful high-performance cultures are those designed by and with your entire team! (Ann Rhoades, founder, People Ink).

Steve and Terry have been my friends and colleagues for several decades, working together with me at Avnet for most of those years. They were instrumental in our success, most notably for their leadership in establishing customer service as our number two core value (following integrity) globally. During my thirteen years as chairman and CEO, we grew the company from $6B to $26B+, and I am confident that would not have been possible without their persistent efforts to ensure we lived up to that core value. This book is based on their real-world experiences and successes, which they are sharing to help you become a more effective leader (Roy Vallee, former CEO and chairman, Avnet Inc.).