The Service Pro: Creating Better, Faster, and Different Customer Experiences

Introduction

Too Much Talk,Not Enough Action

While businesses have talked a great deal about being “customer driven” in the past, the challenges of tomorrow require much more than just rhetoric. The “Close to the Customer” section of the Peters and Waterman management blockbuster, In Search of Excellence, was thought of as somewhat revolutionary at the time. Since then, much has been written about the need to be even more customer driven. Communications from books to conference speeches have bombarded the business world with exhortations about “close to the customer” in some context or another.

But believing in and talking about a customer-driven approach is one thing. Delivering it is quite another. To judge from what we see around us, many ...