Employees can also increase sales. They know things about their local customers that no centralized system can know. They know what the customers are asking for that the store or restaurant doesn’t have.
Of course, all this requires enough time to do the daily work and engage in improvement. Many low-wage employers think that increasing labor productivity means doing as much as possible with as few people as possible all working as quickly as possible.
But key aspects of great service can’t be speeded up. An IT system may find an answer quickly, but it can’t listen to the customer’s problem more quickly or with any empathy. Nor can thinking about improvement and experimenting with countermeasures be speeded up.
Zeynep Ton is a professor, author and leading expert on operations management in retail and service businesses. She is a sought-after international keynote speaker who has spoken at major conferences worldwide on topics ranging from leadership and innovation to women in technology.
In 2017, Zeynep co-founded Good Jobs Institute, and she serves as the President. The non-profit organisation provides evaluations, workshops, and long-term collaborations to assist and support retail executives in transforming their businesses.
Zeynep has been researching and writing about business strategy for over 15 years, focusing on how companies can create good jobs and offer excellent customer service while still achieving superior returns to investors. In 2014, her work culminated in the publication of her book, The Good Jobs Strategy.
Zeynep’s research has been published in managerial and scholarly journals including Harvard Business Review, California Management Review, and Organization Science. She also wrote several Harvard Business School cases. Her work has been featured widely in the media, including The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The New York Times, PBS, and NPR.
Zeynep Ton teaches MBA and executive education courses in operations management. She received several awards for excellence in teaching both at HBS and MIT Sloan. She was named one of the World’s 40 Best Business School Professors Under the Age of 40 by Poets & Quants and was featured by CNNMoney as one of eight young business school professors on the rise.
Zeynep lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband and four children. A native of Turkey, she first came to the U.S. on a volleyball scholarship from the Pennsylvania State University.
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