Details

<p>Introduction: Why We Wrote This Book xi</p> <p>1 Challenge Customer Demand for Service: Instead of Coping with Demand 1</p> <p>2 Eliminate Dumb Contacts: Instead of Handling Them Again and Again 29</p> <p>3 Create Engaging Self-Service: Instead of Preventing Contact 65</p> <p>4 Be Proactive: Instead of Waiting to Respond 99</p> <p>5 Make It Really Easy to Contact Your Company: Instead of Dodging the Bullet 125</p> <p>6 Own the Actions Across the Organization: Instead of Blaming Customer Service 165</p> <p>7 Listen and Act: Instead of Letting Customer Insights Slip Away 203</p> <p>8 Deliver Great Service Experiences: How to Delight Customers with</p> <p>Awesome Support When They Need It 241</p> <p>Appendix A: Best Service Survey 277</p> <p>Appendix B: Glossary 287</p> <p>Appendix C: Bibliography 293</p> <p>Notes 299</p> <p>Acknowledgments 301</p> <p>About the Authors 305</p> <p>Index 307</p>

"admirably straightforward book… refreshingly no-nonsense". (<i>Financial Times</i> , Thursday 27th March 2008)

<p><b>Bill Price</b> is president of Driva Solutions, the North American arm of LimeBridge, a customer service consultancy whose clients include Dell, Hyatt, McDonald’s, Microsoft, and TiVo. Prior to founding Driva Solutions, Bill was Amazon.com’s first vice president of Global Customer Service, a vice president at MCI, and a senior consultant with McKinsey & Company. A frequent keynote speaker, Price has written numerous articles and white papers. <p><b>David Jaffe</b> is consulting director of Australia’s leading customer experience improvement company and helps major corporations improve the service and sales that they deliver.

<p>Most customer service operations have it wrong. They gauge their effectiveness and productivity based on the number of customer calls or contacts they handle. But do your customers really want a “relationship” with your company’s customer service department, or do they simply want to purchase your products or services so they can put them to use? <p>In this groundbreaking book, Bill Price and David Jaffe offer a new, game-changing approach, showing how managers are taking the wrong path and are using the wrong metrics to measure customer service. Customer service, they assert, is only needed when a company does something wrong—eliminating the <i>need</i> for service is the best way to satisfy customers. To be successful, companies need to treat service as a data point of dysfunction and figure what they need to do to eliminate the demand. <i>The Best Service Is No Service</i> outlines these seven principles to deliver the best service that ultimately leads to “no service”: <ul><li><b>ELIMINATE DUMB CONTACTS</li> <li>CREATE ENGAGING SELF-SERVICE</li> <li>BE PROACTIVE</li> <li>MAKE IT EASY TO CONTACT YOUR COMPANY</li> <li>OWN THE ACTIONS ACROSS THE COMPANY</li> <li>LISTEN AND ACT</li> <li>DELIVER GREAT SERVICE EXPERIENCES</b></li></ul> <p>While self-service and customer relationship management are often tech-heavy and software-driven efforts, Price and Jaffe emphasize that no technology is needed to adopt a “no service” mindset—and any manager who tries to ferret out dysfunctional contacts between customers and companies can create far better, self-correcting systems. <p>Indispensable to both managers and leaders of organizations, <i>The Best Service Is No Service</i> redefines traditional notions of service and success.

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