Bill Price & David Jaffe 
The Best Service is No Service 
How to Liberate Your Customers from Customer Service, Keep Them Happy, and Control Costs

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 need 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. The Best
Service Is No Service outlines these seven principles to
deliver the best service that ultimately leads to ‘no service’:

* Eliminate dumb contacts

* Create engaging self-service

* Be proactive

* Make it easy to contact your company

* Own the actions across the company

* Listen and act

* Deliver great service experiences

Table of Content

Introduction: Why We Wrote This Book xi

1 Challenge Customer Demand for Service: Instead of Coping with Demand 1

2 Eliminate Dumb Contacts: Instead of Handling Them Again and Again 29

3 Create Engaging Self-Service: Instead of Preventing Contact 65

4 Be Proactive: Instead of Waiting to Respond 99

5 Make It Really Easy to Contact Your Company: Instead of Dodging the Bullet 125

6 Own the Actions Across the Organization: Instead of Blaming Customer Service 165

7 Listen and Act: Instead of Letting Customer Insights Slip Away 203

8 Deliver Great Service Experiences: How to Delight Customers with

Awesome Support When They Need It 241

Appendix A: Best Service Survey 277

Appendix B: Glossary 287

Appendix C: Bibliography 293

Notes 299

Acknowledgments 301

About the Authors 305

Index 307

About the author

Bill Price is president of Driva Solutions, the North American arm of Lime Bridge, a customer service consultancy whose clients include Dell, Hyatt, Mc Donald’s, Microsoft, and Ti Vo. 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 Mc Kinsey & Company. A frequent keynote speaker, Price has written numerous articles and white papers.

David Jaffe is consulting director of Australia’s leading customer experience improvement company and helps major corporations improve the service and sales that they deliver.