In this CX Today interview, Ross Telfer, the Vodafone and Teleperformance veteran explains why “contact” increasingly signals failure in a world where customers expect digital self service to work. When something breaks, it’s no longer an admin query. It’s a problem to fix fast.
Ross maps a simple but powerful chain leaders can take to the board: degraded service equals failure, failure drives customer effort, effort creates frustration, and frustration drives churn. That link matters because the cost of always on availability is visible immediately, but the cost of poor service shows up later as revenue leakage.
He also highlights the people impact. Peaks in demand during incidents pile pressure onto agents and customers alike, and the fallout can include the churn of tenured customers and tenured agents. Lose experienced agents and you lose operational knowledge, which makes repeat failure more likely.