The Best Service is No Service

How to Liberate Your Customers from Customer Service, Keep Them Happy, and Control Costs

Jossey-Bass, 2008

15 min read

10 take-aways

Audio & text

What's inside?

Give your customers great experiences, and you won’t need to worry about customer service.

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Editorial Rating

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Concrete Examples

Recommendation

Many companies handle customer service exactly backward. They obsess about creating elaborate service experiences for their customers, when their primary goal, instead, should be making the customer service experience moot. Customer service gurus Bill Price and David Jaffe explain how companies should organize themselves in such a way that customers do not feel any need to contact them for assistance, and they explain how to handle clients’ concerns when they do need help. In addition to providing a clear, working plan and outstanding advice, the book offers a bonus: wonderfully entertaining cartoons that bring the main points to life. These lessons offer worthy guidance to everyone in business, not just customer service personnel. getAbstract recommends Price and Jaffe’s book to owners of businesses large or small, directors of customer service, students of business, and, especially, to start-ups and those trying to revive going concerns.

Summary

Customer Service: Bad and Getting Worse

As design and technology evolve at a blistering pace, customer service is not managing to adapt with the same speed or sophistication. Many top executives are not in touch with their customers, and regard customer service operations as an unpleasant burden. More-mindful executives understand that customer service departments can predict adverse events and difficulties and that if properly heeded, customer service can alert companies to all customer-related problems.

Flawed customer service creates many problems. The primary one is making customers sufficiently unhappy to stop being your customers. Dissatisfied customers often (far more often than satisfied customers voicing compliments) express displeasure by posting negative comments on Internet feedback sites and in blogs, and by spreading discontent on social media.

Most companies have the wrong attitude about customer service. They mistakenly believe that customers want to establish relationships with their firms; that gives birth to the concept and growing business of “customer relationship management” (CRM). Customers may well develop positive feelings about companies...

About the Authors

Bill Price, president of Driva Solutions, a customer service consultancy, is the former global customer service vice president at Amazon. David Jaffe is a services and sales expert.

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K. C. 11 months ago

Good
P. P. 7 years ago

Overall nice pointers to use. Some good tips.
G. B. 10 years ago

Some good advice even if it's still a basic observation. I have appreciated the part about what a CS have to do and mustn't do (do not be the front line of all calls for example)

Bill Price and David Jaffe