Why Customer Service is the Most Underrated Differentiator

Offer the Best Customer Service on the Planet

Suppose this was one of your core mission statements…

‘Our goal is to offer the best customer service on the planet.’

What would that entail?

✅ What policy changes would you need to make?

✅ What hiring and training decisions would need to take place?

✅ How would you ensure this is echoed throughout the company culture?

Customer service is such an underrated differentiator, so many companies sleep on this.

Decisions that are intended to be in the company’s best interest are almost always bad for the customer (e.g. smaller seats, no refunds or exchanges, chatbots, etc.)

Decisions that are intended to be in the customer’s best interest, are almost always good for the business.

Great Customer Service Requires Judgment, Context, and Humanity

If “the best customer service on the planet” were truly the mission, it wouldn’t live on a slide deck or an About page. It would show up in moments of friction. In the exception requests. In the edge cases. In how much trust you’re willing to place in customers when there’s a chance they might take advantage of it.

It would mean empowering frontline employees to make decisions without asking for permission, even if that sometimes costs the company money in the short term. Because speed, empathy, and ownership matter more to customers than policy compliance ever will. The companies people rave about are rarely the ones with perfect processes, they’re the ones that made someone feel heard when it mattered.

It would also require leadership to accept something uncomfortable: great customer service is not scalable in the neat, spreadsheet-friendly way that automation is. It requires judgment. Context. Humans. And that means resisting the urge to replace every interaction with a bot just because it reduces headcount or improves margins on paper.

Most importantly, it would force a mindset shift. Customer service wouldn’t be a cost center to minimize; it would be a growth engine. Every support interaction would be treated as a brand moment, a retention lever, and a word-of-mouth opportunity. Do this well, and marketing becomes easier, churn slows down, and trust compounds over time.

The irony is that the companies chasing efficiency often end up paying for it elsewhere (refunds, negative reviews, lost loyalty, high acquisition costs).

Meanwhile, the businesses that genuinely optimize for the customer quietly build an advantage that’s hard to replicate.

Your product can be duplicated, prices undercut, social media copied…

But how you treat your customers when something goes wrong… That’s where brands are actually built.