The New York Times Business Books: Current Bestsellers

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August 11, 2013

This Month		Hardcover Business Books
1		LEAN IN, by Sheryl Sandberg with Nell Scovell. (Knopf.) The chief operating officer of Facebook urges women to pursue their careers without ambivalence.
2		THE DUCK COMMANDER FAMILY, by Willie and Korie Robertson with Mark Schlabach. (Howard Books.) Behind the scenes at the A&E show “Duck Dynasty.”
3		ELEVEN RINGS, by Phil Jackson and Hugh Delehanty. (Penguin Press.) An autobiography by the coach who led the Chicago Bulls and the Los Angeles Lakers to multiple N.B.A. championships.
4		BREAKPOINT, by Jeff Stibel. (Palgrave Macmillan.) A neuroscientist and entrepreneur shows how the brain can act as a guide to understanding the future of the internet. (†)
5		THE POWER OF HABIT, by Charles Duhigg. (Random House.) A Times reporter’s account of the science behind how we form, and break, habits. (Also available on CDs;  as a downloadable eBook; and as a downloadable AudioBook.)
6		ONE THING, by Gary Keller with Jay Papasan. (Bard.) Narrowing your concentration and becoming more productive. (†)

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Customer Service Star #5: Visual Effects

Title: Visual Effects: A clear vision

Author(s): Lisa Bertagnoli

Source: Crain's Chicago Business. 35.40 (Oct. 1, 2012): p0022.

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Byline: Lisa Bertagnoli

Chet Steinmetz knows what customers are looking for in eyeglass frames before they do.

Correction: Dr. Steinmetz, an optometrist and owner of Visual Effects eyewear boutique in the Clybourn Corridor, knows what he would like to see on customers' faces, minutes after they walk in the door.

Dr. Steinmetz, 56, embodies a lesser-known principle of supreme customer service: You can't be all things to all people. "I have strong opinions," he concedes, and those opinions have earned him loyal fans--and customers who walk away frustrated, vowing never to return.

For him, the most enjoyable part of his practice is stepping onto the sales floor--1,150 square feet of 1980s-style glitter and silver, its glass shelves lined with stylish, expensive eyewear--and helping customers choose new glasses. He schedules appointments every hour, rather than every half-hour, to give himself and customers ample time to sort through options.
 

Dr. Steinmetz describes his practice as "an art and a science--the science is the eye exam, what I do in the white coat, and the art is being able to look at someone's face and decide what would look good on that face." Although he employs two opticians, Dr. Steinmetz helps customers decide which frames to buy. "What I do out here is as enjoyable as the eye exam," he says.

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Customer Service Star #4: RL

Title: RL: Classic style rewards its regulars

Author(s): Lisa Bertagnoli

Source: Crain's Chicago Business. 35.40 (Oct. 1, 2012): p0017.

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Byline: Lisa Bertagnoli

The service at RL, the restaurant adjacent to the Ralph Lauren boutique on North Michigan Avenue, is smooth as a perfect Hollandaise. Captains, waiters and busers glide around the room, taking orders, refilling water glasses and coffee cups, dropping checks, doing whatever needs to be done. Customers seated at the white-clothed tables get whatever they want, whether it's cottage cheese (it's not on the menu), sauce on the side or half a club sandwich.

Overseeing the clubby dining room is Rich Varnes, RL's general manager since 2001. Elegantly clad in a Ralph Lauren suit, he patrols the room, greeting regulars, picking up stray napkins, brushing microscopic bread crumbs from tables, changing light bulbs if need be, and listening, always listening, to customers. When some regulars told Mr. Varnes that they disliked leaving the restaurant smelling like cooked meat, he decreed that steak Diane, a signature dish traditionally prepared tableside, would be cooked in the kitchen instead.

Mr. Varnes, 48, delights in upending popular notions of customer service, and these upside-down notions anchor the service philosophy at RL.

To start, he's hardly a boss. "I'm a servant," Mr. Varnes says. "They put me in a suit and call me a GM but I'm a servant." Customers, he insists, are customers: To Mr. Varnes, the euphemism "guest" symbolizes how "watered down" restaurant service has become.

Waiters at RL are waiters. They aren't anybody's buddy, and they certainly aren't salespeople. RL waiters do not "up sell," that is, suggest appetizers, desserts, top-shelf liquor or side dishes. Waiters, in fact, are judged not by sales but by how many people ask to sit in their sections. "That's the Holy Grail of service for us," Mr. Varnes says.

"That's smart," says Bonnie Riggs, a Rosemont-based restaurant industry analyst at NPD Group Inc. "Customers don't want to be pressured. They want to be in the driver's seat."

At RL, they are. The restaurant's back-to-old-fashioned-basics approach to service, paired with meticulous attention to detail, has earned it an army of regulars. Locals, as Mr. Varnes calls frequent customers, account for 70 percent of business. They are seated where they want without asking: Mr. Varnes, who reviews the reservation list every day, knows to place friendly ladies who lunch near each other, business competitors and some politicians, far apart.

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Customer Service Star #3: Vive La Femme

DISCLOSURE:  Vive la Femme announced last week that they are closing.  

Title: Vive la Femme: Be the customer

Source: Crain's Chicago Business. 35.40 (Oct. 1, 2012): p0023.

Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2012 Crain Communications, Inc.

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Byline: Lisa Bertagnoli

Stephanie Sack, owner of Vive la Femme, a plus-size clothing boutique in Bucktown, has developed a cult following among women like Myisha Hill.

"Stephanie understands us," says Ms. Hill, 30, founder of Plus Fashion Week Chicago, a fall expo for designers and retailers. "Stephanie makes women feel good in their own skin."  No wonder. Ms. Sack, 38, who loves clothes, loves to shop and wears a size 12 to 14, fits her boutique's demographic. She is the main saleswoman, the model for the store's Facebook page--its chatty postings generate 20 percent of sales--and the author of the store's newsletter, emailed every Friday to 5,000 customers.

Her efforts have earned her 250 regular customers, 103 Yelp reviews, almost all of which are five stars, and about $400,000 in annual sales. Ms. Sack also owns Violette, a 1,200-square-foot shoe and accessories store tailored to plus-size women, down the street in Bucktown.

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Customer Service Star #2: Waldorf Astoria Chicago

Title: Waldorf Astoria: Keep workers happy

Source: Crain's Chicago Business. 35.40 (Oct. 1, 2012): p0020.

Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2012 Crain Communications, Inc.

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Byline: Lisa Bertagnoli

Travel & Leisure magazine ranks the Waldorf Astoria Chicago the best large-city hotel in the continental U.S. and the 22nd-best hotel in the world. Meanwhile, Conde Nast Traveler readers give the Waldorf Astoria a 98 percent service score; the next-highest in Chicago is the Peninsula Hotel, at 95 percent.

Waldorf Astoria managers know they have plenty of competition in Chicago.  "We're in the luxury market," says Richard Evanich, 54, general manager at the Gold Coast hotel, which until earlier this year was the Elysian. "Everyone has great rooms, great bedding and beautiful suites. What will separate us from the competition?"

The answer is personal, focused service. The trick to carrying out that service: hiring people who delight in making others happy, and hiring a lot of them. The hotel employs 308 people, making the ratio of staff to customers about 2-to-1, which is the standard in the luxury hotel market.

The hotel hires painstakingly. Only 30 percent of applicants make it through the first interview, during which Kathryn Day, head of guest services, tries to discover whether the applicant has "a servant heart."

She asks them the nicest thing they've done for anyone and how they react when someone's angry. Then she listens for detail and observes how candidates "process" the question.

Experts say it's the right way to hire in the hotel business. "That impulse to care about someone isn't something you can teach," says Reneta McCarthy, senior lecturer in operations management at Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration in Ithaca, N.Y.  Promising applicants sit for as many as six interviews, and the last is with Mr. Evanich. "I want to see everyone's face," he says.

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Customer Service Star #1: Fleet Feet

Title: Fleet Feet: Passion first, shoes second

Source: Crain's Chicago Business. 35.40 (Oct. 1, 2012): p0018.

Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2012 Crain Communications, Inc.

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Byline: Lisa Bertagnoli

About four years ago, when minimal and barefoot running shoes started to become popular, David Zimmer, owner of two Fleet Feet Sports stores in Chicago, didn't rush out to stock them. Rather, he started to hold minimal-shoe running classes for his customers. "We didn't feel we could bring (the shoes) in without getting a feel for them," says Mr. Zimmer.

More than 3,000 people have taken the class, and many have credited it--and, by proxy, Mr. Zimmer--with shaving minutes from their marathon miles, clocking personal bests and, best of all, making running more fun.

That customer focus governs most everything that happens at Fleet Feet. In addition to selling lots of shoes--Mr. Zimmer's Old Town store is the top-grossing in the 95-store Fleet Feet franchise system--Fleet Feet Chicago sponsors 350 events and races a year. It holds meditation and yoga classes and women's running groups. Staffers hand out free water and Gatorade--325,000 cups this year, Mr. Zimmer estimates--at local races.

"I don't want happy customers; I want 'raving fans,' " says Mr. Zimmer.

Mr. Zimmer, 47, who owns the stores with his wife, Lisa, also 47, crafted his service philosophy 25 years ago, when he sold loans to first-time homebuyers at Citibank. "I realized I was helping people achieve their greatest dream," he recalls. He has taken what he calls an "It's a Wonderful Life" approach to the sports-gear business. "I am helping people fulfill their dreams," he says. "Shoes are a byproduct of that."

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