Chapter 2

Why Service?

As soon as questions of will or decisionor reason or choice of action arise,human science is at a loss.

– Professor Noam Chomsky

Choices, Choices, Choices

The Pro knows that today’s customer is in a pretty unique situation—certainly a much different situation than the past. As we have said, today’s customers have more choices for the products and services they want than ever before. There is simply more of everything, perhaps too much!

The Pro thinks about the implications regarding what he or she observes in the marketplace. In 1981, there were 2,689 new products introduced on grocery and drug store shelves. Ten years later, in 1991, there were 16,143 new products introduced. That was a rate of two new products per hour, ...

Get The Service Pro: Creating Better, Faster, and Different Customer Experiences now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.