Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, would have turned 166 this weekend (March 3). Happy birthday, Mr. Graham. Interesting factoid: Years later, in retrospect, he considered the phone as an intrusion on his work as a scientist and refused to have one in...

I recall a consulting assignment for the customer service operation of a large utility, with a client base in the millions. They handled thousands of customer interactions daily—vigilantly keeping an eye on service levels (which, in their case, meant the percent of...