FT.Laker: Closing the Service Gap

How connected are your customers, employees and organisation?

As technology advances and customer expectations rise, the most sustainable, profitable and realistic way businesses can succeed in the future is by connecting their customers, employees, and organisation. Following in the footsteps of some of the world's largest companies, this book shows you how to transform your business culture using technology to connect the three most important stakeholders – the customers, employees and the organisation – and deliver value to each in turn. This model is best recognised as ‘RenDanHeyi', a Chinese term that means ‘each employee' (Ren), ‘the needs of each customer' (Dan) and ‘the connection between the two' (Heyi). 

With practical steps, tips and case studies, this book helps you to build and implement a strategy to close the service gap in your organisation:

• Understand how to use the RenDanHeyi model to connect your employees, customers, and organisation.
• Use new or existing technology to link customer expectations to employee activities, and craft job roles and workforce planning strategy around customer needs.
• Create a connected organisation that generates sustainable and scalable revenue for the business.
• Transform your leadership from one that delegates to one that empowers and enables employees.

Ben Laker is a Professor of Leadership at Henley Business School. Prof Laker has authored several books, most recently the Financial Times bestseller, Too Proud To Lead (Bloomsbury), which focused on leaders within the workplace and was critically acclaimed by The Telegraph and The Association of MBAs (AMBA), among others. In addition to his role leading postgraduate research programming at Henley Business School, Prof Laker also serves as a regular contributor/columnist for MIT Sloan Management Review and Forbes, in which he shares, promotes and distils key lessons from his books and research.

Dr Lebene Richmond Soga is a Program Director at Henley Business School and a Lecturer in Entrepreneurship and Leadership. His research explores a range of themes, including the social aspects of technologies in organisational life, entrepreneurship ecosystems, and manager-employee relations. He regularly presents his research at international conferences for business leaders, academics, and policymakers to progress the understanding of various organisational challenges for startup businesses, multinationals and the implications of new technologies for the practice of leadership.

Dr Yemisi Bolade-Ogunfodun is a Lecturer in Organisational Behavior at Henley Business School who serves the African European Centre for Investment and Trade (AECIT) and frequents international research symposia - regularly presenting her research to academics and policymakers the world over - to advance societal understanding of cultural diversity, particularly about values that underpin work practices, such as productive job design.