According to Forbes, poor customer service has a shocking financial impact on businesses, with over 2 trillion pounds at risk of being lost.
Qualtrics XM (Experience Management) Institute’s 2025 global consumer research of more than 20,000 consumers found that 11% of experiences globally are bad, and 34% of those experiences cause consumers to spend less.
Consumers are no longer tolerating poor experiences, and businesses without the right infrastructure to deliver will pay the price – literally.
Commercial Director at AI customer service provider Resolvable, Jonny Murphy-Campbell, explains that the common customer service mistakes can and must be rectified to avoid purging millions of pounds: “Many businesses perceive their customer service to ‘do the job’, but customer needs transcend the minimum. Speed, intelligence, and empathy are crucial pillars of enhancing customer experience, and it’s important that businesses live up to customer expectations.
“Businesses underestimate the hidden service costs, and the impact of a poor customer service experience. It costs a business their reputation, and eats into their profit. Customers need fast responses, personalisation, empathy and human judgement, and unified omnichannel experiences.”
Resolvable outlines FIVE of the most common customer service mistakes businesses are still making today.
Mistake 1: Operating reactively
Customer service includes anticipating customer needs, and being equipped for unforeseen events. Businesses who wait to be reactive to complaints, as opposed to using pattern recognition to identify trends, risk increasing support volumes and issues escalating.
The future of customer service is proactive, and inevitably will lean on AI systems to provide predictive insights through trend analysis and pattern recognition by scanning large volumes of data.
Mistake 2: Implementing AI without human oversight
Outsourcing for AI customer service can cut costs for businesses by over 52% – seems like a no-brainer, right? However, AI integration must be done with integrity – human oversight will always be essential for the ethical use of AI to deter bias, accuracy and ensure reliability, accountability, and nuance.
AI must be used alongside humans at all times, and act as a tool to support, not replace. AI alone lacks human judgement and empathy – key pillars in customer service. Failing to seamlessly integrate AI with humans leads to broken customer journeys, more likelihood of escalation, and a lack of customer trust – all costing money.
Poorly implemented AI damages the customer experience, but intelligent deployment can enhance it.
Mistake 3: Speed over quality
Speed and efficiency are crucial to deliver successful customer service, but this requires nuances that many businesses fail to acknowledge – leading to incorrect responses that take extra time to resolve, and dissatisfied customers.
Speed is not the only metric that matters, and the solution boils down to ensuring quality is maintained alongside efficiency. It’s crucial that customer service teams have the time to provide responses that are aware of the context, and can offer appropriate solutions.
Mistake 4: Focusing on generic responses
While some simple queries can be easily resolved, generic responses that lack personalisation and intelligence damage relationships with customers and leave them feeling misunderstood and undervalued.
It’s crucial that businesses decrease their escalation rates and increase their conversion and retention rates by providing accurate, individual responses. Context is everything, and every customer requires a tailored approach.
Mistake 5: Fragmented channels
Many businesses make the mistake of treating customer service channels – like social media, email, phone – as separate workflows. Customers need clarity and fast solutions; when customers have to repeat themselves over various channels, it’s frustrating and off-putting.
Omnichannel services provide consistent, unified interactions for customers – helping businesses to respond faster and maintain customer trust.