Often leadership doesn’t speak to the lowly plebs, or if they do, they don’t see the problem the same way.

I’ve worked at a company where customer service costs were higher than the contribution margin. The solution from leadership was to turn off the phones. If they can’t call in, then no one needs to be paid to answer calls.

I asked the VP how customers who need help now (appointments were involved) could get help? Well they could email in and wait for a response.

Shockingly, customer lifetime value dropped like a rock. So their solution was to lock every new customer into a hidden subscription plan that had a cancellation fee of 2-4x of one appointment. Then they had to walk that back when they had too many chargebacks.

The company was later bought out. Only people in the earliest of rounds made money from their equity. The CEO went on to be the CEO of the acquiring company.

The people deciding on the decision were will insulated from dealing with the consequences of that decision.