Customer-focused service management: driving change up the hierarchy and outward.

The modern management revolution, which has quality and customer service at its core, is incomplete. The customer mindset is strongest in frontline operations and growing in support functions. Too often, however, the strategic hierarchy has been left out--still taking its marching orders from the skittish, myopic financial community centered in Wall Street, the City of London, and other meccas of money. Superior organizations, largely in manufacturing thus far, are taking steps toward correcting this deficiency. Their approach is to reorient using customer-focused principles that are attractive to all parties, including external partners.