Companies pour hundreds of millions into getting customers — then ghost them. After investing so much to win new business, they turn around and spend just as much trying to avoid actually talking to customers — pouring resources into deflecting calls, shrinking support teams, and automating human connection out of the equation. These measures all but ensure companies will fall short in the moments that matter most to cementing brand loyalty — when customers reach out for support.
Let’s face it, customer service has a PR problem. In fact, our research shows it’s often the last resort, with customers citing long wait times, unhelpful suggestions, and difficulty reaching the right department as some of the top reasons for avoiding official support channels*.
I don’t need to tell you that bad customer care is bad for business. After all, nobody wants to offer sub-par support — but the hard truth is this: when we view customer support as a cost center, we lose. When we seek to minimize call volume, we lose. When we expect AI to solve human problems, we lose.
The secret to winning? Reframing customer care from transactional, one-off ticket closures to a series of connected care moments across the full customer journey, pre- and post-purchase. The shift from cost center to growth engine can only happen by transforming customer support into fully realized lifecycle experience management where every interaction is an opportunity to win loyalty. I’m not just talking about retaining near-cancel customers — I’m talking about increasing customer lifetime value.
Imagine a world where you seek to drive more customer engagements, not fewer; where your care team spends more time with customers, not less; where you aim to solve any problem affecting how customers experience your product, whatever the root cause. It may sound counterintuitive, but that’s the world we’ve built at Asurion — a scalable, future-ready, self-funding care system that turns customer support into a strategic growth driver. Here are some lessons we’ve learned along the way:
Resist the “Fewer Calls” Fallacy
When it comes to CX, prevailing wisdom has long been to reduce engagement volume and handle time. Many companies view these as levers to cut operational costs, promoting instead tools like automation and self-service resources — and when they do have to engage, they want the shortest possible handle times. The great irony is that, in the pursuit of short-term efficiency, businesses may inadvertently forfeit long-term customer value. When customers experience friction with hands-off tools, or feel rushed or unheard during hands-on engagements, it leads to increased frustration, weakened brand loyalty, and ultimately churn.
What customers really want is empathetic, expert help in the moments they need it most. When their child’s laptop crashes at midnight before the big essay is due, FAQ pages and automated agents don’t win much comfort or trust. You want to talk to a person — an expert who can appreciate the gravity of the situation and support you through a potentially nuanced resolution. At Asurion, we helped over 23 million customer last year. That’s not a sign of failure; that’s 23 million opportunities to show up for customers in ways that enhance how they experience the companies they trust.
Customers Crave Choice
Here is where I’m going to contradict myself. Some customers do want self-service resources. Some want to chat online. Some want to call in via phone. Some want to visit a storefront in their neighborhood. Some want in-person help at home. It’s important to know your customers and invest in the channels most useful to them.
Offering an omnichannel support experience isn’t without its challenges — particularly, cost and efficiency. It’s driven us to build intelligent CX routing technology that evaluates customers across any channel — voice, web, messaging, or in-person — and identifies, triages, and routes them to the right solution for their needs. These significant investments in smart routing tech are not a consequence of omnichannel support but rather a testament to the value it creates for our organization and our partners. The ability to offer customer choice at scale is well worth the investment.
AI Can Make Agents More Human
When your strategy is to double down on support interactions, it only works if your experts can consistently deliver exceptional experiences. Here is yet another mindset shift that will feel counterintuitive: what if instead of replacing human agents with AI, you leveraged AI to make your agents more human? Let me explain. Before AI, during support calls, our 9,000 live experts were (rightfully) focused on understanding the customer’s problem and digging up the appropriate resources to walk them through a resolution. Now, our AI platform handles that part, learning from the millions of support interactions successfully completed each year to instantly pull the right resources for experts, all while keeping notes on personal details the agent might reference to build a rapport (like if the customer mentions they have kids or just bought a new home).
Our AI-enabled platform empowers experts to focus more on the customer as a person, while enabling them to deliver faster, more accurate resolutions with greater empathy and care. Resolving issues quickly, completely, and compassionately helps to mitigate churn, reduce returns, unlock additional service opportunities, and build long-term customer loyalty for our partners.
Everyone wants to chart a path toward growth, and AI presents an interesting fork in the road. Is your goal to cut costs or to enhance your team’s ability to drive growth? For us, it always comes back to driving long-term growth.
See the Bigger Picture
We help partners — from consumer tech brands to wireless carriers to retailers and beyond — support customers across every stage of the customer journey. Our platform enables total lifecycle care, from the point a customer is considering a purchase; to setup and everyday troubleshooting of that device; to the moment they’re ready to trade in for something new. Support during unboxing and onboarding, for example, helps reduce product confusion and cut remorse-driven returns, ensuring customers are set up to get full value from their purchase. Continued proactive support throughout the product lifecycle helps customers rediscover value in partners’ products and services — and helps us understand the “why” behind churn so that we’re better able to prevent it and even transform it into renewed product engagement and long-term loyalty.
Technology breaks, fails, malfunctions every day. It’s a fact of life — and a crucial moment that can strain customer relationships and erode trust — but it doesn’t have to. With the right support in place — be it 24/7 access to product help, same-day repair services, or next-day replacements — you can not only mitigate any relational damage but actually strengthen retention and build trust. Remember, you’re investing in the bigger picture.
Answer the Call
Recent Gartner® research found that growth organizations are more than 50% more likely than non-growth companies to have calculated the relationship between improved customer satisfaction and business impact. Conversely, no-growth companies were more than twice as likely to be unsure or unable to determine the business impact of customer satisfaction**.
It probably goes without saying, you cannot make meaningful progress if you have rigorous silos in place creating seams in your customer experience. Customers want more support from the companies they rely on, though they expect to receive less and less as AI becomes more integrated. Teams must work seamlessly together to deliver an experience worthy of their customers’ lifetime value. It is our firm belief that the businesses that win the future will be the ones that answer the call — literally.
*Asurion Consumer Research. Tech Support: What happens when it doesn't work, 2023. n = 1390.
**Gartner, Prove the Business Benefits of Improving Customer Satisfaction and CX, Augie Ray, 21 May 2025GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.