Reimagine CX with a goal of zero support calls in five years

<p><b>Stop patching cracks with better call centers and start eliminating the reasons customers call in the first place. The result: a support center that’s a source of intelligence—and growth.</b></p>

<p>Let’s be honest: no one wakes up thinking, <i>“I hope I get to call my broadband provider today. Those IVR menus are great.”</i> Customers love your product because it works well, not because your call center does. When call centers don’t function smoothly, support becomes the product—and too often feels like it was designed by someone who’s never actually used it.</p> <p>What if your customers never had to call you? Let’s set a bold goal: reduce support calls to zero in five years. Unrealistic? Not entirely. By flipping the call center model from a cost center to a growth engine, companies can turn avoidable contacts into insights that improve products and services.</p> <p>Getting there starts with understanding your customers. This means walking in their shoes, going deep on design, applying AI across the customer journey and recasting service agents as knowledge engineers who transform every interaction into opportunity.</p> <h4>The CX problem: Designing for efficiency, not empathy</h4> <p>In the quest for efficiency, call centers often prioritize cost-cutting and containment over empathy and resolution. The result: Call centers that are efficient and scalable—and deeply frustrating for customers. Everything has been automated except the one thing customers want: a human who understands their problem and can solve it. The takeaway for customers is, “Thanks for calling. Instead of helping you, here’s a link to our self-help site. Good luck, and have a great day.” </p> <p>The vision of zero support calls doesn’t mean call centers go away. Even Amazon—arguably the gold standard in customer experience—uses call centers. Instead, the zero-calls concept expands the call centers’ purpose beyond support to include insight and innovation that negates the reason for calls in the first place because it becomes a feedback loop that connects product development, marketing, IT and CX. </p> <p>To make it happen, organizations need to reimagine the call center by replacing call deflection with a total focus on customer satisfaction. The design of the support experience goes back to the drawing board to emphasize: </p> <ul> <li><b>Seamlessness:</b> Customers get what they need without friction. </li> <li><b>Transparency:</b> No mystery menus or cryptic chatbot loops. </li> <li><b>Strategic value:</b> Every unnecessary support call becomes an insight and an opportunity. </li> </ul> <p>Think of it as turning noise into signal and signal into strategy. It’s also a lot more fun to build things customers love than to troubleshoot things they don’t.</p>

<h4><br> Four levers for achieving zero support calls</h4> <p>Here are four ways leaders can get started on the path to zero support calls.</p> <h5><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="text-bold-italic">1.</span>&nbsp; &nbsp; Walk a mile in the customer’s shoes (or at least ride along)</span></h5> <p>Want to understand your company’s customer experience? Try living it and remember: Feedback is a gift. </p> <p>Leaders who pair up with a field technician, put on a headset in the call center or work a shift on the retail floor often discover what no quarterly report ever reveals: the real customer experience. It’s not pretty. The technician may juggle three apps just to confirm an address. A live agent might re-verify a customer for the third time because voice recognition failed (again). A retail associate could be stuck squinting at a screen that looks straight out of 2002.</p> <p>The best leaders don’t rush to fix the problem. They ask, <i>“How would you solve this to make the customer’s life easier?”</i> Nine times out of 10, the frontline employee knows the answer. Implement it, and not only is a recurring reason for support calls erased, but you’ve also built trust, loyalty and a culture where solving problems is a team activity rather than a top-down mandate.</p> <p>Specific steps you can take:</p> <ul> <li>Cancel your internal executive support team for a month and instead go through the same journey as your customers. Or ask your family to do it.&nbsp;They will be your most honest critics. </li> <li>Buy your own product, use your own app, call your own support line—not because you get an employee discount but because you truly believe in your own product and services and want to make them better. </li> <li>If you’re a developer, try using the app you built while a customer waits on hold. It’s humbling—and enlightening. </li> </ul> <h5><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="text-bold-italic">2.</span>&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;Double down on design</span></h5> <p>Many consumer goods companies don’t just ask customers what they want—they watch how they use products. That’s the essence of good product design. It’s not about just analyzing churn rates and survey scores; it’s about observing, listening and learning.</p> <p>Yet many telco operators still design support experiences based on internal priorities, not customer expectations. The result is a maze of automated menus, AI agents and self-service links that feel more like escape rooms than support channels. </p> <p>Recasting call center interactions as strategic assets requires committing to design thinking <i>end-to-end</i>. That’s a big change for telecoms, which tend to only apply structured design methodologies to small, focused projects or as a workshop tool. The real opportunity comes when telecoms use design thinking to systematically solve product challenges. They’re able to scale design thinking and align KPIs with customer outcomes such as ease, trust and emotional connection, not just operational efficiency.</p> <h5><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="text-bold-italic">3.</span>&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;Apply AI to ‘unlock alpha’ in the customer experience</span></h5> <p>AI isn’t just about chatbots and scripted responses. It’s about insight at scale.  AI can now analyze every dimension of a call center interaction, creating transcripts of <i>what</i> was said and reviewing <i>how</i> it was said for tone and sentiment. It interprets silence and hesitation for what the customer <i>didn’t </i>say.</p> <p>For example, we’ve seen AI dramatically cut repeat complaints. Using AI analysis, businesses can spot recurring billing disputes after order placement, first at two weeks and then again at 30 days. Doing so can signal systemic issues such as one-time charges or misapplied credits. Armed with the AI-driven alerts, companies can avoid escalation through automated credit validation and real-time charge reconciliation, while product teams address the root cause. The result: up to 40% fewer repeat complaints, and a transformation of billing from a pain point into a driver of trust.</p> <p>By applying AI extensively across the customer journey model of Learn, Buy, Get, Use, Pay, Support (LBGUPS), organizations can turn customer interactions into strategic assets. AI can help categorize and mine each point of contact for insight: </p> <ul> <li>Could this contact have been avoided? </li> <li>If yes, how? </li> <li>What does this reveal about our product—pricing, billing, UX, packaging? </li> <li>What can we automate without degrading the experience? </li> <li>What should we already know from our data? </li> <li>How can we engage proactively, not reactively? </li> </ul> <p>The answers generate a closed-loop intelligence system: a dynamic, continuously learning framework that feeds real-time CX data back into product, service and operational design. The system enables proactive engagement and predictive support, and it informs strategic decisions across pricing, UX, packaging and support, ultimately reducing avoidable contacts, enhancing customer satisfaction and driving operational efficiency.</p> <p>Think of it as turning your call center into a real-time product feedback engine—with better data than your last 10 surveys combined.</p> <h5><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="text-bold-italic">4.</span>&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;Evolve support reps into knowledge engineers</span></h5> <p>Yes, you’ll still need people. But develop knowledge engineers instead of simply hiring support agents. These frontline experts should be trained to not only resolve issues but also: </p> <ul> <li>Capture and codify insights</li> <li>Identify patterns and anomalies</li> <li>Feed continuous improvement loops across product, marketing and operations</li> </ul> <p>Evolving the frontline role requires recasting it as a strategic function: Knowledge engineers become owners of the customer experience.</p> <p>Preparing for this shift will require change on several fronts. Individuals who succeed in this role will need to be skilled in analytical thinking, insight documentation and cross-functional collaboration. For their part, companies will require planning that includes a mix of training, tools and guidance for cultural change. AI will be a key ally for knowledge engineers, with AI agents ready to handle routine tasks and surface insights, and&nbsp;AI-powered platforms ready to identify patterns, flag anomalies and feed intelligence to teams across the company.</p> <p>For knowledge engineers, the resulting feedback loop becomes a two-way street. They share business-shaping insights and, in turn, their contributions are recognized for driving change, which reinforces their role as experience owners.</p> <p>Empowerment is key. By giving knowledge engineers autonomy, recognizing their impact and creating new career paths, companies can unlock new value from the frontline. Knowledge engineers solve problems and shape the future of your business—which is a lot more fulfilling than reading from a script.</p> <h4>Support as strategy</h4> <p>Zero support calls isn’t about eliminating customer assistance—it’s about designing experiences that make assistance unnecessary.</p> <p>Success rests on reimagining customer experiences, mining every interaction for insight and empowering your teams to act. When support becomes a source of intelligence, not just a cost, you don’t just reduce calls—you design experiences that customers love and trust.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p>