"That's a very critical phase in customer service because you can start to really understand what part of customer service has value to customers and what part is bothering customers"
About this Quote
The critical phase arrives right after the first wave of real customer interactions, when assumptions crash into lived experience. It is the moment a company stops admiring its service blueprint and begins to discover which parts of the experience customers actually value and which parts feel like friction. Sanjay Kumar points to a discipline that separates activity from outcome: not everything the organization works hard to deliver creates value, and some well-intended steps quietly annoy, confuse, or exhaust the very people the service is meant to help.
Understanding begins with evidence. Patterns in repeat contacts, channel switching, abandonment, and escalations reveal where customers struggle. Customer effort scores, open-text feedback, and call recordings illuminate whether speed, clarity, empathy, or control mattered most. Silence can be a warning as well; when customers stop complaining and simply churn, indifference has replaced irritation.
The deeper insight is that value is situational. A traveler stranded at midnight values speed and autonomy; a patient considering a high-stakes decision values time and reassurance. Rigid scripts, forced channels, and untimely upsells bother customers because they ignore context. Proactive updates, accurate first-contact resolution, and the freedom to choose channel and pace earn trust because they honor it. The task in this phase is to map moments that matter for different segments, then prune everything that distracts from those moments.
Operationally, that means turning the frontline into sensors, closing the loop on feedback, and running small experiments that remove friction and amplify what works. It often requires letting go of legacy metrics that reward handle time or volume over outcomes. The payoff is strategic: when every step in the journey is justified by customer value, service stops being a cost to defend and becomes an experience that differentiates, retains, and grows. The critical phase never ends; it becomes the operating system of customer-centric teams.
Understanding begins with evidence. Patterns in repeat contacts, channel switching, abandonment, and escalations reveal where customers struggle. Customer effort scores, open-text feedback, and call recordings illuminate whether speed, clarity, empathy, or control mattered most. Silence can be a warning as well; when customers stop complaining and simply churn, indifference has replaced irritation.
The deeper insight is that value is situational. A traveler stranded at midnight values speed and autonomy; a patient considering a high-stakes decision values time and reassurance. Rigid scripts, forced channels, and untimely upsells bother customers because they ignore context. Proactive updates, accurate first-contact resolution, and the freedom to choose channel and pace earn trust because they honor it. The task in this phase is to map moments that matter for different segments, then prune everything that distracts from those moments.
Operationally, that means turning the frontline into sensors, closing the loop on feedback, and running small experiments that remove friction and amplify what works. It often requires letting go of legacy metrics that reward handle time or volume over outcomes. The payoff is strategic: when every step in the journey is justified by customer value, service stops being a cost to defend and becomes an experience that differentiates, retains, and grows. The critical phase never ends; it becomes the operating system of customer-centric teams.
Quote Details
| Topic | Customer Service |
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