Author David Lee brings out a number of important points in his book: 1. Its not good enough to be good, you must become exceptional, the Wow factor. Lee runs through the basic: 1. Be fast 2. Be Flexible 3. Be Friendly 4. Be a fixer 5. Be a followuper 6. Be fun. Story after story, book after book references, Lee hammers home these basic principles. However, Lee provides a bright gem in the middle of his book, as he states, the customer does not think of the customer service representative as a person, they think of the rep as the company. Wow, Lee understands the key to outstanding services: 1. Get the customer service rep to believe the represent the company 2. Impower the customer service rep with power and access to authority to fix problems 3. Help the customer service rep understand their role as crucial to "Company Growth" Customer service costs to a company are crushing. Large portions of profits are gobbled up in consumer expenses.

Lee doesn't talk much about "Self Service" systems. More and more, customer service costs can be reduced by reducing the number of employees needed in the consumer customer service force by increasing the use of technology and allowing the customer the ability to "self service" their problem. Using a series of questions and answers an expert conclusions can be derived saving human interaction time to the same equivalent answers and derived conclusions.

Using fast technology, online service agreements, easy to pullup contractual terms, and getting support capability must be managed from consumer demand and interaction. The consumer will spend the time to register, describe, and request help. The idea is to reduce the amount of time between request and service. Basically stated, solve the problem, solve it right, and solve it fast. This means saving money. The less human interaction required, the better, because less customer service time means more cost savings per customer rep. If the problem is not resolved immediately, the company will discover consumer abandonment and migration to competitors who will services them faster, better, and cheaper return them to a stable status. The quality of customer service is the single most important factor in maintaining loyal customers.

In most cases, it just cheaper to replace the malfunctioning product than spending hour after hour attempting to remedy the problem. Consumers want convenience, results, understanding, all in a time manner.