What Great Service Leaders Know and Do

EPILOGUEOne Last Story

We have chosen to illustrate the important points in the book with one final extended example. The story, fascinating in its own right, contains key lessons for service leaders.

In 1998 the Progressive Corporation, a personal property insurer, ran a test in Houston, Texas, of Autograph, a concept called “pay-as-you-go insurance.”¹ It installed telematic devices (with global positioning and cellular communications), described by one company executive as “clunky $600 boxes the size of car stereos that had to be professionally installed,” in fewer than a thousand automobiles. Their owners had volunteered to serve in a test of whether they and the company could benefit from knowledge about their driving habits: mileage driven, ...