We’ve built a world optimized for speed, scale, and automation. That works great when everything is clean and predictable. Order a product. Reset a password. Pay a bill.
But the moment something falls even slightly outside the script, everything breaks.
Not catastrophically. Just enough to wear you down.
And that’s the problem.
Because doing the right thing today often means navigating systems that were never designed for nuance.
A simple example that somehow isn’t simple
I recently got an American Express Business Platinum card invitation in the mail.
Not unusual, except for one detail.
It wasn’t addressed to me.
It was addressed to a business name that has never existed at my home address. Not now. Not before I lived here. Not anyone I know. Based on the name, it appears to be a business located in another state entirely.
So I did what I thought the right thing to do was. I tried to report it to AMEX.
Not out of panic. More out of basic responsibility. If something’s off, you flag it.
Step one: the app
I reached out through customer support in the app. What should have been a quick clarification turned into a slow-motion misunderstanding.
It took about ten minutes just to explain that the issue wasn’t my address being wrong. It was that a completely unrelated business name was tied to it.
Different problem. Different category. No clear path.
Eventually, I was given a phone number to call.
Step two: the phone maze
You know how this goes.
Press 1 for this.
Say “billing” for that.
Repeat yourself because the system didn’t understand.
Nothing even close to “report incorrect business tied to my residential address.”
Every attempt nudged the call in the wrong direction until I defaulted to the universal solution: press 0 and hope a human picks up.
Step three: the human… almost
To their credit, someone did pick up.
But now I had to explain the entire situation again. Fair enough.
Then came the request: my Social Security number.
That’s where it lost me.
Why would I need to provide sensitive personal information to report a suspicious or incorrect mailing that has nothing to do with my identity or my accounts?
I’m not opening a card. I’m not verifying ownership. I’m flagging something that looks wrong.
I declined.
The conversation didn’t go much further after that. The rep said goodbye and ended the call entirely.
The bigger issue
This isn’t really about one company or one interaction.
It’s about a pattern.
Systems are built for only the cases that fit neatly into predefined boxes. The remaining “this is weird but probably important” moments, are left without a path.
And those are often the situations where doing the right thing matters most.
But when the process is this difficult, people stop trying.
Not because they don’t care. Because it’s exhausting.
Incentives are backwards
If I ignore the letter, it’s likely nothing happens to me (hopefully it’s a simple mistake, not fraud). No time lost. No friction. No awkward calls.
If I try to report it (just in case), I get stuck in a loop of misrouted support, irrelevant questions, and requests for information that doesn’t make sense in context.
So what behavior are we reinforcing?
Silence.
Customer care isn’t broken. It’s optimized
And that’s the uncomfortable truth.
Customer service today is not failing by accident. It’s optimized for efficiency, not resolution. For volume, not edge cases. For cost control, not curiosity.
It works incredibly well, until it doesn’t.
And when it doesn’t, there’s rarely a safety net.
What gets lost
What gets lost is trust.
Not in a dramatic, headline-making way. Just in small, cumulative moments.
Moments where someone tries to do the right thing and runs into a wall.
Moments where the system quietly signals, “This isn’t worth your time.”
Eventually, people listen.
The irony
Companies spend millions talking about customer experience, brand trust, and security.
But the real test is what happens when something doesn’t fit the script.
That’s where the experience actually lives.
Not in the polished flows, but in the messy, inconvenient, hard-to-categorize situations.
The takeaway
Doing the right thing shouldn’t feel like a side quest.
It shouldn’t require persistence, patience, and a tolerance for absurdity.
It should be the easiest path, not the hardest one.
Until that changes, the gap between what companies say they value and what people actually experience will keep growing.
And more and more, the quiet decision will be:
“Not my problem.”
Even when it should be.