It is ten years since we published The Best Service is No Service, (Wiley/Jossey-Bass 2008), in which we suggested that organisations needed to work harder to reduce the demand for customer contact, rather than spend so much time and effort “dealing” with the contacts.

In this paper we’ll discuss how the ideas have become even more relevant today, even though the book was written at a time when the iPhone was still in its infancy and apps and messaging were just emerging. We’ll discuss how the ideas apply in a more multi- and omni-channel world and the extent to which it’s become harder to address the ideas we set out. We will review how new technologies have made it easier to apply some of the concepts we proposed and describe cases in which these technologies have been applied successfully