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Following the McDonald's formula, Ackerly eventually distilled her knowledge of "team cleaning" into a 300-page manual of dos and don'ts. The book serves as the basis for training new Mini Maid personnel. Among its teachings: pick up statuary in the middle, rather than at the top and bottom, and clean animal-skin rugs with a whisk broom rather than a vacuum cleaner. Sums up Ackerly: "The homeowner does not have to feed us, pick us up, give directions. We don't give a song and dance about our car breaking down as a reason for not showing up. We are successful because we have learned the hard way."
Amica Mutual Insurance. Among the behemoths of the insurance business, Amica Mutual figures far down the list. The Providence-based company, which specializes in property and casualty coverage on such items as homes, autos and boats, earned $13 million last year on revenues of only $400 million. Nonetheless, the 80-year-old Amica has earned a top grade from the monthly Consumer Reports and an A-plus billing from the A.M. Best insurance-company rating service. With a modest crop of 400,000 customers and only 39 branch offices across the country, Amica has consciously avoided increasing its size to match its reputation. Says Amica Vice President Charles E. Horne: "We address a very small segment of the market, and we try to do it well. We simply seek not to be the biggest but to be the best."
Amica has not strayed into commercial lines of insurance, choosing to remain focused on individual-customer care. The firm never advertises and relies on referrals for most of its customers. It employs no independent agents and hires its own adjusters and underwriters. The company's unusually high ratio of 1 employee for each 140 clients allows it to meet high performance standards, like routinely answering all customer mail within a day of receipt. Amica tries to respond to claims in the same speedy manner. The company's adjusters have been known to take extraordinary pains to assist clients in duress. After Hurricane Gloria hit the New England coast in 1985, one Amica homeowner policyholder was unable to get any government agency to remove a ten-ton tree that had fallen onto her house. When she called Amica for help, an adjuster came out and made arrangements the same day for a construction company to cart the tree away.
L.L. Bean. Freeport, Me. (pop. 6,700), is an unlikely Mecca. Yet every year 2.5 million American worshipers of sensible, frugal and unpretentious products for the outdoors descend on the Yankee seaside town. Their aim: to visit the one and only L.L. Bean company store, which is open around the clock and features 6,000 items, ranging from moccasins to sleeping bags to camel-hair cardigans. However, many more Americans know the company through the 75 million L.L. Bean catalogs that are mailed out annually. Celebrating its 75th anniversary this year, the company, founded to market a superior hunting boot, has become a $362 million business that sells its merchandise 24 hours a day by telephone and employs 1,850 workers full time, with an additional 1,800 on , duty during the peak fall-to-Christmas season.