If you work anywhere near corporate America and haven’t watched House of Cards, you’re missing required reading on how the sausage gets made. It’s like therapy for consultants—except instead of healing, it just confirms your worst suspicions.
Now let’s talk customer service and all the dangerous half-truths that have turned into commandments.
1. “You must be great at Social Customer Service—or die!”
This one’s been preached from every stage with Wi-Fi. “If you don’t respond on Twitter in 8 seconds or less, the internet will cancel you.”
Except… no, it won’t.
United broke a guitar. Comcast gets dragged weekly. They’re still breathing.
Social media is loud, yes. But tweets are goldfish—they forget. What actually kills your brand isn’t a viral post; it’s the boring, silent failures you never fix. The ones that happen 10,000 times a day and never get tweeted at all.
So please—before you spin up another “social care team,” maybe fix your damn product first.
2. “Be everywhere your customers are!”
Ah, the gospel of Omnichannel. Pushed hard by vendors with dashboards to sell.
There are now 30+ social platforms. Are your customers on all of them? Maybe. Do they want to talk to you on all of them? Absolutely not.
Nobody wakes up thinking, “I wish I had more ways to contact my cable company.”
Here’s a radical idea: Be great in two live channels. Add clear self-help online. Nail those. Then maybe think about TikTok support.
Omnichannel is like buffet sushi—it looks impressive until you try to digest it.
3. “Customer Service Builds Loyalty!”
Sometimes. But mostly not.
Customer service is defense. It keeps people from leaving when things go wrong. It’s not offense. Nobody’s joining your brand for the promise of a courteous chatbot.
Great service can stop bleeding. It doesn’t build muscle. So if you’re investing in service, ask: What does this prevent? What does it fix?
Service doesn’t create loyalty from scratch. It just helps you not screw up the loyalty you already had.
4. “Customers will pay more for better service!”
Not always. Not even often.
Imagine Walmart launching a luxury concierge experience—with valet carts and champagne in electronics—and bumping up prices to cover it. Think their core customers would applaud?
Nope. They’d sprint to Dollar General.
Because service has to match the brand. People go to Walmart for low prices, not white-glove treatment. Just like they don’t go to Nordstrom to price-match against Temu.
Better service doesn’t justify a price hike if it breaks the brand promise. Know who you are.
5. “AI is here to save customer service!”
Also brought to you by the folks who gave us Omnichannel Panic Syndrome.
AI is not salvation. It’s not damnation. It’s a tool.
Used right, it makes service smoother, faster, smarter. Used wrong, it turns into a digital DMV that gaslights you with fake empathy while giving you zero help.
AI won’t fix broken incentives, toxic culture, or your decision to cut service headcount while launching another app nobody asked for.
Use it with purpose—or don’t use it at all.
Bottom line?
Customer service isn’t magic. It’s not a differentiator. It’s a cost of doing business—and a damn important one. But stop letting fear-based fads and vendor slideshows tell you how to run it.
Fix the real problems. Pick your spots. And remember: defense wins championships.
Amas Tenumah is
