A number of the nation’s top executives gathered at the Faculty Club yesterday morning for a lecture from business guru Bill Price. Employees from Yahoo!, Walmart.com, Nokia, Cisco Systems and Sun Microsystems were among the event’s attendees, which was part of the monthly Stanford Breakfast Briefing Series.

Price, who currently serves as the president of Driva Solutions, is also co-founder of Limebridge and was the first vice president of customer service for Amazon.com. He spoke about his experiences with customer service in the talk, which was hosted by the Office of Public Affairs.

“The best service is no service,” he said. “If everything works well, then there is no need to expand the customer service department, and one could even reduce or close departments.”

The Breakfast Briefing Series, intended to be accessible to the general public, focuses on business strategies, leadership and marketing. Yet despite the high-profile speakers at the lectures, only a small number of Graduate School of Business students generally attend the events, which carry a price tag of $36. Breakfast Briefings director Janet Wright said the money was necessary to cover the full breakfast, and offered it as one explanation for the low student attendance rate.

“We would love to see more students attend the events,” she said. “It is really a great opportunity for them to network. They have direct access to the speaker after the talk, who can give them great connections to internships and allows them to exchange business cards.”

Wright said that the lectures are intended to benefit the entire community.

“[The program is] about bringing in the outside community,” she said. “For example, we don’t only ask Stanford professors to talk. We want to bring in known experts in the field, regardless of the institution they are from.”

“The Valley and businesses are so broad and diverse,” said Cindy Williams, executive assistant to the vice president for public affairs. “As a result, the talks are designed to cater to a broad spectrum of people. It is about imparting teachable skills to people with a variety of backgrounds.”

Many of the business world’s leaders have lectured at the series in the past, including Scott McNealy, co-founder and chairman of the board of directors of Sun Microsystems, Southwest Airlines president Colleen Barrett and Jeffrey Swartz, president and CEO of Timberland Company. The next Breakfast Briefing, which will take place on Dec. 19, will feature Tim Brown, president and CEO of IDEO.