E-Service.

E-Service. By Ron Zemke and Tom Connellan. Amacom, 341 pages. $25.

Service is often the defining measure of success in competitive markets, and the Internet marketplace will be no exception. As authors Zemke and Connellan note, we're moving from an era in which e-business success will be determined less by business models (companies with flawed models will die relatively quickly) than by delivering topnotch, repeatable service that creates satisfied customers.

Zemke and Connellan - Minneapolis-based consultants behind the successful Knock Your Socks Off Service series of books -- offer two dozen ideas for differentiating a company's Web site by emphasizing superior service. These include such nuggets as personalizing the experience for the customer, creating "uniqueness" on the site, delivering end-to-end service, encouraging human contact and emphasizing problem-solving. Executives need to taste their own cooking, they argue -- go on their own sites and pretend they are customers, then compare the experience to that offered by competitors.

With a colloquial, easy-to-swallow style, E-Service makes good use of examples drawn from interviews with companies likes Lands End, Great Plains Software and fogdog.com. The book was completed recently enough to reflect last spring's Net stock swoon, which gives it enhanced credibility. Its ideas may not be boldly novel, but the book is comprehensive, well-packaged and highly readable.