The New Gold Standard: 5 Leadership Principles For Creating A Legendary Customer Experience Courtesy Of The Ritz-carlton Hotel Company

Praise for The New Gold Standard “No doubt this behind-the-scenes look at The Ritz-Carlton will inspire you to work toward your own Gold Standard. Michelli’s five principles will help you break through the sea of sameness plaguing most industries and equip you with what it takes to blow the doors off business-as-usual—a must for thriving in this economy!” —DR. JACKIE FREIBERG, author of BOOM! 7 Choices for Blowing the Doors Off Business-as-Usual, NUTS! and GUTS! “As a business leader, there are two vital aspects required of the books I choose to read—insight and information. Dr. Michelli’s new book provides an exponential measure of both—information on HOW The Ritz-Carlton creates such a compelling experience for their customers, and insight on WHY it is so critical to do so! He has provided a compelling book about The Ritz-Carlton experience.” —SCOTT MCKAIN, vice chairman of Obsidian Enterprises and author of What Customers Really Want “The Ritz-Carlton is truly the New Gold Standard, and Dr. Joseph Michelli has done a great job of capturing the five key leadership principles which Simon Cooper and the Ritz-Carlton team have been applying relentlessly, energetically, and with localized creativity. Anyone interested in excellence in the 21st century would profit from reading The New Gold Standard.” —NEWT GINGRICH, founder of Center for Health Transformation and former speaker of the house “Simon [Cooper] and [The Ritz-Carlton] leadership team understand the role human nature plays in driving business outcomes better than any organization in the world.” —JIM CLIFTON, chairman and CEO of The Gallup Organization, Washington, D.C. “The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company has a global reputation for service excellence because their leadership team insists on it— every day, in every business decision and every communication inside and outside the company. We’ve learned a lot at Bank of America from The Ritz-Carlton team in our own work to build a customer-centered culture. All those lessons are captured here in this book. The New Gold Standard offers a view inside one of the most successful customer service cultures in the world, and is a valuable addition to business literature on the subject.” —KENNETH D. LEWIS, chairman and CEO of Bank of America “The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company wrote the book on legendary customer service. And in The New Gold Standard, Joseph Michelli writes the book on The Ritz-Carlton. Required reading for anyone who wants to learn how to create passionate employees and raving fan customers!” —KEN BLANCHARD, coauthor of The One Minute Manager® and The One Minute Entrepreneur™ “The Ritz-Carlton is the best hotel chain in the world because of the unique experience they offer. This book shows you how to install the same customer-focused attitude toward service that makes a world leader.” — B R I A N T R A C Y, author of The Way to Wealth THE NEW GOLD STANDARD 5 Leadership Principles for Creating a Legendary Customer Experience Courtesy of The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company JOSEPH A. MICHELLI New York Chicago San Francisco Lisbon London Madrid Mexico City Milan New Delhi San Juan Seoul Singapore Sydney Toronto Copyright © 2008 by Joseph A. Michelli. All rights reserved. Manufactured in the United States of America. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. 0-07-164163-7 The material in this eBook also appears in the print version of this title: 0-07-154833-5. All trademarks are trademarks of their respective owners. Rather than put a trademark symbol after every occurrence of a trademarke