Customer service seems worse than it once was. Most companies underinvest in it, because they see it purely as a cost center, rather than a source of potential profits, and so workers are undertrained. Customer-service centers have often been set up to maximize the very things—speed and volume—that make for a poor customer experience. Continuous improvement is of no use if you’re not improving the right things.
James Surowiecki, “Better All The Time”, The New York Times Magazine (10 November 2014), 84.