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.

“You get what you measure”, is among the oldest sayings in business. Unfortunately, numerous traditional measures undermine the customer experience. However, in this era of new customer experience tools, many of the measures that are possible have changed. We think that a lot more is possible. Why?

Digital channels have grown exponentially in the last fifteen years. Customers are keen to use well-structured digital solutions that are convenient and save time. The growth of on-line shopping and on-line sales and service is accelerating and customers clearly like it when it works well. Many pure digital businesses like Amazon, Google and Ebay have some of the highest net promoter and customer satisfaction scores. As digital solutions have grown many organisations are providing chat solutions to support these channels, particularly complex sales processes like insurance or home loans. Chat bots are emerging as a way of automating simple responses and triaging complex requests. In addition, the latest forms of robotic automation are starting to automate data based repetitive tasks.