Award-Winning Customer Service

When Renee Evenson’s Award-Winning Customer Service: 101 Ways to Guarantee Great Performance came out in September 2007 through AMACOM, it landed in a business world that was just beginning to grasp how crucial customer service really was to company survival. This wasn’t a trendy management fad book—it was a practical response to a genuine problem. Companies were losing money and reputation because their customer service approaches were scattered, reactive, and frankly, broken. Evenson recognized this gap and filled it with something managers actually needed.

What made this book resonate with readers was its directness. Evenson didn’t wrap her advice in theory or complicated frameworks. Instead, she packed the work with actionable tips that busy leaders could implement immediately. The book recognized something fundamental: managers don’t have time to wade through 400 pages of philosophy. They need solutions now.

The scope of what Evenson covers is genuinely impressive:

• Planning and goal setting – establishing what good customer service actually looks like for your organization
• Effective communication – ensuring your team can actually talk to customers without creating problems
• Leadership – modeling the behavior you want to see
• Preparing for change – helping teams adapt when processes shift
• Continual learning – building a culture where improvement never stops
• Coaching and development – turning customer interactions into learning opportunities
• Effective feedback – giving people information they can actually use
• Motivational and problem-solving meetings – making gatherings count
• Conflict resolution – handling situations when things go wrong
• Follow-up and staying on top of the game – maintaining momentum

What’s striking about this approach is that Evenson understood customer service isn’t one thing. It’s interconnected. You can’t give effective feedback if your communication is muddled. You can’t motivate a team that doesn’t understand your vision. Every element supports the others.

The book’s cultural impact came from how it shifted the conversation around customer service. Before 2007, many managers treated customer service as a cost center—something to minimize. Evenson made the case that it was actually a competitive advantage. When you do it right, customers stick around. They spend more. They tell their friends. This wasn’t revolutionary thinking, but the way she presented it gave managers permission to invest in their service operations.

> Customer service problems can damage not just a company’s reputation but its bottom line. For managers and business owners scrambling for quick solutions, Evenson offered actual guidance.

What endures about this work is its practicality combined with its respect for the reader’s time. The “101 ways” format meant people could grab one tip, implement it, and see results. You didn’t have to read the entire book to benefit. That’s not lazy design—it’s smart design. It acknowledged that real managers are busy and need to move quickly.

The book also arrived at a moment when customer service was becoming more visible. Social media was starting to amplify both good experiences and bad ones. Companies were beginning to understand that a single angry customer could reach thousands of people online. Evenson’s emphasis on prevention, consistency, and follow-up suddenly felt urgent in new ways.

Evenson’s writing style is conversational without being overly casual. She speaks to the reader as a peer who understands the challenges. There’s no condescension here. She doesn’t assume managers are failing because they’re incompetent—she assumes they’re struggling because the work is genuinely hard and they haven’t had the right framework laid out yet.

Looking back from 2026, nearly two decades after publication, the advice in this book remains relevant. The specific tactics have evolved—customer service now happens through channels Evenson might not have anticipated—but the principles hold. Teams still need clear goals. Communication still matters. Feedback still drives improvement. Conflict still needs resolution. The fundamentals haven’t changed.

If you’re a manager trying to figure out why your team’s customer interactions aren’t landing, or if you’re building a customer service operation from scratch, this book gives you a roadmap. It won’t make you feel like you’re reading something clever or fashionable. It will make you feel like someone who understands your job is in the room helping you solve actual problems. That practical energy is why it resonated when it came out and why it still stands as a useful reference now.