It all reminds me of a line from ‘The Voyage of The Dawn Treader,”, one of C. S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia books; “One day the cat got into the dairy and twenty of them were at
work moving all the milk out; no one thought of moving the cat.”

While this sounds like something no rational person would do, we do it in business all the time because our focus is so narrow and so shortsighted.

Bezos’ words here show a lot of wisdom. There’s a reason why Amazon is #1. I think the message is, don’t try and lower Customer Service costs through squeezing it out of your Customer Service reps – find out the reasons why you need Customer Service reps, and address those system and process issues that are driving the traffic. People don’t call Customer Service because they like to chat; it requires time and effort that customers would rather spend doing something else. If they are calling you, there’s something waiting to be fixed.

I strongly agree with Bezos, and this article has helped sharpen my own understanding; the answer is not Customer Service reps doing more, it’s internal and external processes so good that there isn’t a need for Customer Service reps.