Best Face Forward

Now more than ever, success is based on how well firms manage interactions with customers. Short on appropriately skilled labor and flush with new intelligent technologies, visionary managers are not just outsourcing or sending work offshore for greater efficiency; they are recruiting machines into the workforce for greater effectiveness. Technology is taking over ‘front office’ roles in customer relationship management–sparking a revolution in how firms serve customers and compete with rivals. In ‘Best Face Forward’, Jeffrey F. Rayport and Bernard J. Jaworski argue that as this ‘front-office automation’ revolution unfolds, competitive advantage will increasingly depend on deploying the right mix of interfaces with customers–human, automated, and hybrids of both–to surpass current levels of performance and service. Based on extensive research inside both start-up and established businesses, the book proposes guiding principles and a practical auditing tool for determining how humans and machines can best collaborate on mediating critical customer interactions. Far from dehumanizing the workforce, the authors show how this revolution will create a ‘people-rich’ workplace–one that combines the unique capabilities of humans and machines to create a better world for all of us.