Uncommon Service

When was the last time you were truly delighted by a company’s service—so much so that you told everyone about it? Frances Frei and Anne Morriss open Uncommon Service: How to Win by Putting Customers at the Core of Your Business with this very question. Their answer is both provocative and practical: great service doesn’t happen by accident or sheer goodwill. It’s intentionally designed into every part of a company’s system. According to Frei and Morriss, service excellence isn’t about heroics or passion alone—it’s about making smart trade-offs, creating sustainable funding, empowering employees, managing customers, and nurturing a culture that ties it all together.

We live in a so-called service economy, yet many companies consistently disappoint us. The authors argue that this failure stems from two misunderstandings. First, most organizations try to be great at everything, spreading themselves thin instead of focusing where they can truly excel. Second, many leaders assume that good service depends solely on extraordinary employees, rather than on business models that make excellence inevitable. This book dismantles those myths by showing how service leaders—from Commerce Bank to Zappos—win by deliberate design, not by luck.

The Blueprint of Uncommon Service

Frei and Morriss introduce what they call the four essential “service truths.” These are the structural pillars of a high-performing service organization: (1) you can’t be good at everything, (2) someone has to pay for great service, (3) it’s not your employees’ fault, and (4) you must manage your customers. Together, these truths create a blueprint that turns the act of serving into a system, not a slogan. The authors insist that if you want every interaction to reflect excellence, you must design your company like an engineer—deciding where to invest, when to sacrifice, and how to make average performers succeed routinely.

This formula culminates in the authors’ simple but powerful equation: Service Excellence = Design × Culture. Design provides the framework—the operational consistency and structure. Culture injects humanity, purpose, and energy. When either is weak, excellence collapses. Together, they make outstanding service both scalable and natural.

Why Design Matters More Than Heroics

The authors argue that leadership should stop depending on extraordinary people performing heroic acts. Instead, great systems should make it easy for ordinary employees to behave extraordinarily well. Commerce Bank, for example, built its success by structuring operations so that joyful service was unavoidable. Employees were chosen for friendliness, not finance degrees, and the limited range of products simplified every customer interaction. Similarly, Southwest Airlines thrives because its design encourages equality, cooperation, and efficiency, allowing everyone—from pilots to baggage handlers—to focus on what matters most: fast turnaround and cheerful flights.

The Role of Trade-offs

At the heart of this design philosophy lies an uncomfortable truth: excellence requires being deliberately bad at something. Trying to please everyone only guarantees mediocrity. Companies that excel know exactly where they will underperform. Commerce Bank offered terrible deposit rates so it could afford extended hours and friendly staff. IKEA sells furniture that’s not built to last—but it makes buying and assembling it quick, affordable, and empowering. As the authors put it, “you have to be bad in the service of good.”

Service by Design, Not Accident

Throughout the book, Frei and Morriss illustrate that service success follows a pattern: clear trade-offs, transparent funding, smart employee management, and active customer engagement. They showcase companies across industries that have redesigned their operations to make excellence inevitable: Progressive Insurance turns fraud prevention into customer care, Shouldice Hospital turns patients into recovery partners, and Magazine Luiza trains illiterate rural shoppers to use virtual stores to buy their first refrigerator. In each case, the organization embraces human nature rather than fighting it—and designs around it.

By the end, you’ll see that Uncommon Service isn’t about service tips or quick fixes—it’s a framework for reimagining how organizations create value. If you’re willing to trade perfection for purpose, and complexity for clarity, you can build systems that let everyone—employees, customers, and owners—win together. That’s what it means to put customers at the core of your business.

Frei and Morriss open their playbook with a counterintuitive principle: narrow your focus to get extraordinary results. To achieve excellence, you must decide exactly where you’ll be great—and where you’re prepared to be bad. The danger of trying to excel at everything, they argue, is that it leads to mediocrity everywhere. Just as a great athlete specializes, great companies choose their competitive terrain and make peace with the rest.

Being Bad in the Service of Great

The story of Commerce Bank illustrates this idea brilliantly. Its CEO, Vernon Hill, decided to sacrifice deposit interest rates—the worst in the industry—in order to fund extended hours and extraordinary service. By staying open seven days a week, including until midnight on Fridays, Commerce earned loyalty from working professionals and families, even if it paid them pennies on their deposits. Every sacrifice was intentional. Lower rates gave the bank the cash to deliver on its promise of friendliness and convenience, fueling a 2,000 percent stock increase in the 1990s.

The authors call this philosophy being bad in the service of good: underperforming on things customers value least to outperform on what they love most. Southwest Airlines, for example, doesn’t serve meals or offer glamorous lounges—but its customers get low fares, friendly crew, and on-time flights. Walmart looks shabby and skimps on ambiance, but delivers unbeatable prices and vast selection. IKEA’s furniture may not last a lifetime, but it delivers immediate gratification and empowerment by letting customers assemble their own stylish products cheaply.

Trade-offs as Strategy

The authors liken these trade-offs to the laws of physics: you can’t have all features optimized at once. Engineers accept this truth easily—cars can’t be both the safest and the sportiest—but service managers often resist it, believing in “have-it-all” dreams. But the best service brands embrace limitation as liberation. IKEA, for instance, redefined furniture shopping by flipping customer preferences. In the old model, durability and delivery were signs of quality; IKEA made disposability and self-service symbols of freedom. As customers began to see cheapness as empowerment, competitors were left behind.

Choosing Your Weaknesses

Frei and Morriss describe practical ways to map your strengths and weaknesses. They use “attribute maps”—charts comparing what customers value most with how well you and your competitors perform on those dimensions. The goal is a sharp diagonal contrast: excellent where it matters, average or worse where it doesn’t. Companies that try to flatten this line, pursuing every dimension at once, waste resources and blur their identity. By design, excellence depends on sacrifice.

The hardest part of this discipline isn’t analytical—it’s emotional. Many leaders, especially in mission-driven fields like healthcare or education, find it morally difficult to choose where to fall short. But the authors challenge that mindset: accepting imperfection isn’t unethical—it’s strategic courage. In other words, to win like Commerce, Southwest, or IKEA, you must know where to lose gracefully.

Even the best-designed service model fails if no one funds it. Frei and Morriss insist that excellence is never free—it must have a sustainable financial engine. The authors outline four primary funding mechanisms that high-performing service companies use: (1) customers pay more, (2) cost reductions improve service, (3) service improvements cut costs, and (4) customers do some of the work themselves. Each method turns the fantasy of limitless service into a viable business.

1. Charge More—Palatably

Charging a premium can work if it feels fair and transparent. This is “palatable pricing.” Commerce Bank did it subtly by paying lower rates on deposits rather than charging explicit fees. Starbucks, meanwhile, makes you feel cozy enough that $5 coffee feels worth it. But unpalatable pricing—like airlines charging for bottled water or luxury hotels charging $20 for Wi-Fi—generates outrage and distrust. Southwest shunned bag fees because it would have violated the “we’re your friend” contract inherent in its low-fare, friendly brand. Spirit and easyJet could get away with them precisely because their value proposition is transactional, not relational.

The takeaway: your customers will pay for great service, but only within a deal structure that matches your brand relationship. As the authors note, transparent contracts trump sneaky surcharges.

2. Lower Costs and Improve Service

Some innovators reduce costs in ways that make customers happier. Progressive Insurance’s onsite van service is a classic illustration. It dispatches adjusters immediately after accidents—an expensive-sounding idea until you realize it reduces fraud, lawsuits, and overhead. Similarly, FedEx’s package tracking system cut expensive ‘where’s my shipment?’ calls while improving transparency. In both cases, operational efficiency funded delight.

3. Improve Service to Lower Costs

Scott Cook of Intuit saw tech support not as a cost center but as an R&D lab. Engineers answered customer calls, learned firsthand where users struggled, and built more intuitive software. Each investment in superior support reduced future call volume, lowering total costs. Similarly, Zappos invests heavily in call centers and shipping, treating them as marketing expenses. Every ‘wow’ conversation drives repeat business and word-of-mouth loyalty, saving millions on advertising.

4. Get Customers to Do the Work—Happily

Finally, companies can shift labor to customers—if they design the process to feel rewarding. Grocery store self-checkouts often fail because they feel like unpaid labor. Airline kiosks succeed because they make passengers feel empowered and fast. The difference? Ease and benefit. Fire and Ice restaurants go further by turning self-service into entertainment; diners happily grill their own meals for the fun of it. Ochsner Health’s patient portal invites users to schedule appointments and check results online. The result: higher satisfaction and fewer no-shows.

Ultimately, the authors warn that free extras are freeloaders. Gratuitous services that no one funds will eventually eat quality from within. Sustainable excellence means either customers, efficiencies, or self-service carry the bill—and smart companies blend all three.

Service failures usually trace back not to lazy employees but to flawed systems. Frei and Morriss’s third truth—“It’s not your employees’ fault”—turns a common leadership instinct on its head. You don’t need superstars; you need sound architecture. The goal is to design a service environment where average employees can deliver above-average results every day.

The Employee Management System

The authors describe four levers of effective employee management: selection, training, job design, and performance management. These elements must align with each other and your service model. Bugs Burger Bug Killers (BBBK), a pest control company that guaranteed total pest elimination, exemplified this integration. BBBK’s technicians were handpicked perfectionists, exhaustively trained for five months—ten times the industry norm—and rewarded through bonuses tied directly to client satisfaction. Every system reinforced the message: excellence isn’t optional.

Commerce Bank took the opposite path. It hired for attitude, not technical skill, because a smile was the real differentiator. Its simplified product line meant that friendliness alone could create great experiences. Zappos blends both models—hiring for culture, training everyone (even executives) on customer service, and paying recruits $2,000 to quit if the job doesn’t truly fit.

Simplify and Enable

In many organizations, complexity kills performance. Frei and Morriss suggest reducing technical burden through intuitive job design and technology that helps rather than hinders. LSQ Funding automated its factoring process so new hires could serve clients on day one, while Ochsner Health used IT to simplify physician communication. The message: if your employees are drowning in rules, screens, or products, excellence becomes impossible.

Performance Management That Fits

Motivation systems should amplify the culture, not fight it. BBBK combined fair pay with radical transparency—employees reported every detail of client visits, and managers verified through surprise calls, creating both trust and accountability. Spence Diamonds took scripting to new heights: its high-paid sales consultants follow a 70-page script to guide terrified engagement ring buyers, creating calm consistency amid emotional chaos. Meanwhile, Magazine Luiza’s “Assisted Freedom” program links employee promotion to developing your manager’s career, reinforcing its upward-mobility ethos.

The authors close this section with a powerful reminder: build for humans as they are, not for the superhumans you wish you’d hired. Simplify jobs, train deeply, and create systems that make excellence the default.

The fourth truth of uncommon service flips the usual script: your customers are part of your workforce. Frei and Morriss call them customer-operators—people who actively co-create the service experience, often without realizing it. When customers slow down checkout lines, misuse products, or ignore policies, they aren’t just inconveniences; they’re operational variables. Great companies manage them deliberately.

From Chaos to Coordination

Customer behavior introduces five kinds of variability—arrival, request, capability, effort, and preference. Shouldice Hospital manages all five perfectly. It admits only patients who fit specific health profiles and are willing to participate in their recovery. Post-surgery, patients are walking within hours, playing games with peers, and mentoring the next day’s arrivals. The result: faster recovery and just 1% complication rates.

Training the Customer

Customers often need training, but it must feel empowering. Starbucks teaches “barista-speak”—tall, venti, and grande—not through lectures but by subtly repeating orders back to train patrons in proper sequence. Each order becomes a mini lesson. Similarly, LSQ Funding and Magazine Luiza “educate” customers on financial literacy, turning transactions into inclusive experiences that build loyalty.

Designing Customer Jobs

Just as you design employee roles, you can design customer roles. eBay lets users act as advertisers, shippers, and quality auditors—all enabled by user-friendly systems. Magazine Luiza’s rural clients, many of them non-literate, navigate virtual stores using picture-based catalogs and personalized coaching. Its genius isn’t technology—it’s empathy. By refusing to underestimate the poor, the retailer built both trust and exceptional profitability.

Changing Behavior, Keeping Dignity

The secret to managing customer behavior is influence, not punishment. Netflix eliminated late fees altogether, designing its system so customers naturally returned DVDs to unlock the next one. Zipcar used community pride—“be a real Zipster”—to ensure people refueled and returned cars on time, showing how values can outperform fines. BBBK even made cleanliness a shared responsibility, dropping messy customers who refused to cooperate.

Ultimately, Frei and Morriss argue that culture extends beyond employees—it should shape customer behavior too. Align your customers with your mission, and they’ll not only behave better but also deepen their loyalty. Managing customers well, they write, is what separates good service from greatness.

If design is the skeleton, culture is the soul. The authors’ fifth principle—“Now multiply it all by culture”—argues that even the best systems collapse without the right norms and values. Culture determines how people behave when no one is watching—and in service businesses, that’s almost always.

Clarity: Know What You Stand For

Zappos, the poster child of cultural clarity, anchors everything in ten core values like “deliver wow through service” and “create fun and a little weirdness.” CEO Tony Hsieh insists that personality beats polish: hiring focuses on humility and authenticity. The company even offers new hires money to quit if they don’t feel aligned. The payoff is astonishing loyalty—80% of employees relocated with the company to Las Vegas, and turnover is a fraction of the call-center average.

Signaling: Send Clear Messages

Culture begins with signals—especially at moments of imprinting. JetBlue’s founder David Neeleman personally served coffee on flights to remind everyone, “no one is above the customer.” Commerce Bank started its orientation by having new hires answer imaginary phones with “Wow!” enthusiasm, quickly filtering out anyone allergic to joy. Sewell Automotive opens every orientation with storytelling, passing down real service legends to codify what excellence looks like.

Consistency: Align Every System

Publix Super Markets demonstrates what mature culture looks like at scale. Its simple guarantee—“We will never knowingly disappoint you”—is printed everywhere, from business cards to store walls. When a customer blamed a burned oven on a Publix pizza, manager Jim Rhodes didn’t argue—he cleaned her oven himself. Culture is proven in decisions, not slogans. At Zappos, employees are rewarded as much for living values as for punctuality; silence and mediocrity get filtered out yearly.

Keeping Culture Alive

Strong cultures can calcify. The authors recommend deliberate “decalcification”—ritual moments that soften cynicism. Kaiser Permanente, whose employees face patient frustration daily, holds regular resets to renew empathy. Mayo Clinic uses a single question to realign decisions: “Is this right for the patient?” When culture slips, even giants like Toyota show how growth without introspection leads to failure.

The bottom line: culture isn’t an HR initiative; it’s the operating system for human behavior. If you define it, demonstrate it, and defend it, culture multiplies your design by creating alignment, energy, and trust.

Once a company nails service excellence, the next challenge is growth—without breaking what made you special. Frei and Morriss close the book with two paths: do more of the same (scaling your existing model) or do different things (creating new ones). Both paths demand ruthless clarity and structural discipline.

Growing by Standardizing

Many young companies rely on customization in their early days, bending over backward for every customer. But as complexity grows, they must transition toward standardization without sacrificing empathy. The authors contrast Orient Express Hotels (exclusive and handcrafted) with the Four Seasons (standardized but luxurious). The Four Seasons can scale globally because of rigorous design consistency—every glass, greeting, and gesture replicates excellence without micromanagement. Standardization, the authors argue, isn’t the enemy of humanity—it’s what frees humans to deliver it well.

Commerce Bank once again offers an example: saying “no” to grandma’s request to transfer luggage—or in this case, personal exceptions—is often necessary for growth. Each yes to customization adds hidden costs that eventually erode quality.

Shared Services and Multi-Focused Firms

Many mature organizations use a “multifocused” approach: multiple service models, each optimized for a unique customer segment, yet linked by shared back-end services. Think of Armani and Armani Exchange or Best Buy and its luxury sub-brand Magnolia. These brands deliver distinct customer experiences while sharing central functions like IT, procurement, or training. The key is synergy without mediocrity—each model must enhance the others, as CDM Group did by centralizing finance and IT but not creativity. Done right, shared services unlock both economies of scale (lower costs) and economies of experience (shared learning).

Learning to Grow with Integrity

The authors highlight Rackspace, which grew from $12 million to $800 million by building what CEO Lanham Napier called a “flywheel of fanatical service.” Happy employees create happy customers, who buy more, powering reinvestment in employee growth. Similarly, Zappos expanded into 6pm.com (its discount brand) without diluting its premium culture by maintaining shared training and IT systems but distinct service policies.

In the end, scaling uncommon service means systematizing what works while fiercely protecting what makes it human. Say no to shortcuts that kill culture. Standardize intelligently, centralize where it helps, and keep learning relentlessly. Growth, Frei and Morriss remind us, isn’t just getting bigger—it’s getting better, on purpose.