The True Cost of Poor Customer Experience: It’s Not Inconvenience, It’s Injustice

We’ve all experienced poor customer service. The lingering frustration, however, isn't just about wasted time or a minor hassle. At its core, what truly upsets us is a sense of injustice.

This feeling is easy to identify in a restaurant, where direct interaction makes unfair treatment obvious. But it becomes far more complex and insidious when dealing with large corporations, especially utility providers where we feel like just another account number.

A friend’s recent ordeal with BT perfectly illustrates this systemic failure.

A Story of Grief and Red Tape

After losing her husband, my friend was already in a fragile state. While tidying up their affairs, she remembered their BT contract. Years earlier, her husband had set up a business line for their small home-based company. The business had long since ceased, but they had continued paying for the business line out of habit.

In an attempt to simplify her life, she contacted BT to switch to a standard domestic tariff. This is where the trouble began. BT, a corporate juggernaut, operates its business and residential divisions as separate silos. Transferring from one to the other proved to be a bureaucratic nightmare.

Compounding the problem was a severe communication barrier. The helpline agent had a very strong accent, making it difficult to understand them. My friend had to constantly ask for repeats, turning what should have been a simple process into a stressful and exhausting loop of miscommunication.

The Final Straw: An Overcharge and an Impasse

The situation worsened when closing the business account to agree on a final payment. The BT agent discovered that my friend had been overcharged two years prior.

While the agent did identify the error, it raised a glaring question: Why did it take two years for this to come to light? Why wasn't the overcharge flagged and rectified at the time?

Then came the debate over how to return the money. BT insisted on issuing a cheque—a slow, outdated method for many. My friend simply wanted the amount credited to her account, a logical and immediate solution. The customer service agent, bound by rigid protocols, didn't have the authority to resolve this simple impasse, leaving my friend feeling trapped and ignored.

The Big Company Blind Spot

We tend to give large businesses the benefit of the doubt, assuming they wouldn't knowingly cheat a customer. Yet, we constantly hear stories of systemic failures that, whether by design or neglect, almost always seem to work in the company's favour.

A small business, reliant on its reputation and personal relationships, would likely resolve such an issue with an apology and a swift correction. A large corporation, however, gets bogged down in its own systems and processes, which are often designed to protect the company, not to serve the customer.

Too Big to Care?

The fundamental problem is that these corporate behemoths can become "too big to care." At the top, boards of directors make grand claims about putting customers and stakeholders first. Yet, they routinely delegate the crucial task of customer experience to underpaid, under-empowered staff who are ill-equipped to handle anything beyond a script.

Management can sleep at night, believing they have "processes" in place. But these very processes are the problem. They create a cloak of darkness, allowing errors to fester and making it incredibly difficult for customers to get a fair resolution. It’s a travesty when companies, hiding behind their size and complexity, act in ways that feel less like simple errors and more like institutionalised indifference.

It’s time for these giants to realise that customer experience isn’t a cost centre — it’s the very foundation of their reputation. And until they fix the injustice baked into their systems, customers will continue to feel cheated, one frustrating interaction at a time.