Many brands still measure customer experience by whether the issue was resolved. Pasquale DeMaio, Vice President at Amazon Connect, argues that this is no longer enough.
In a recent interview with CX Today, DeMaio said the bigger risk is not always visible failure. It is the customer who gets through the process, accepts the answer, and then quietly decides not to come back.
AWS explored the same theme in DeMaio’s recent blog, “Failure Didn’t Lose Your Customers, Mediocrity Did”. The argument is blunt, and rather useful: resolution may close the transaction, but it does not always earn the next interaction.
AWS’s latest Amazon Connect Customer launches are designed to support that shift from basic resolution to more relevant, context-aware customer experiences. The new capabilities focus on helping organizations build AI-native, agentic interactions that can understand customer intent, use richer context, and guide customers toward more useful outcomes across voice and digital journeys.
For CX leaders, that creates an uncomfortable gap. A dashboard can show lower wait times, higher automation, and more resolved contacts while customers still feel processed rather than understood.
Deflection Can Send Customers Somewhere Else
For years, service teams were told to reduce calls, contain demand, and deflect customers into lower-cost channels. DeMaio said those terms now look awkward when viewed from the customer’s side.
In his view, the language reveals the problem. Customers do not want to be deflected. They want help that recognizes who they are, what has happened, and what they are trying to achieve. DeMaio framed the risk clearly:
“If you're deflecting that customer away, you have to think about who you're deflecting them to. And in that case, is it to an AI search engine? Is it to a competitor? Because both of those folks are going to accept them with open arms.”
The point is not that automation is bad; in fact, AWS is making the opposite argument. AI can improve customer experience when it helps brands understand context, act earlier, and give customers a better route to resolution.
The problem starts when automation is designed mainly to keep customers away from the business.
DeMaio said brands need to recognize customers more deeply, rather than greet everyone with the same generic language. A loyal customer does not need another empty “thanks for being valued” message. They need evidence that the business knows what they bought, what might be happening, and how it can help.
As DeMaio put it, customers can tell when a company is trying to solve their problem and when it is trying to “get rid of them.”
The Quiet Exit Is Harder to Measure
A failed customer interaction usually leaves evidence. The customer complains, escalates, gives a low score, or contacts the company again.
Mediocre service is less helpful and can leave no dramatic signal at all. DeMaio described the customer who receives an answer but remembers how painful the process felt:
“People are willing to crawl across glass to get things done that they need to get done, but they're going to remember that you made them crawl across glass.”
That is the quiet exit problem. Customers may not complain. They may not fill out a survey. They may simply choose another brand next time.
DeMaio argued that traditional feedback tools can miss this middle ground. CSAT and Net Promoter Score can still be useful, particularly when experiences are very good or very bad, but they do not always reveal gradual indifference.
CX leaders need to look across a broader set of customer signals. Are customers still engaging with the brand? Are they returning to the website? Are they trying to solve the same problem again? Are they buying again, calling again, or disappearing from familiar patterns?
The awkward bit is that a “resolved” case may still represent a damaged relationship.
Context Changes the Customer’s Experience
DeMaio used a delayed birthday gift as an example in his blog. A refund or replacement may resolve the transaction, but the customer’s real problem remains if the birthday is tomorrow.
The distinction is simple. The operational problem is the delayed item. The customer problem is the missed moment.
In the interview, DeMaio said circumstances matter. Some purchases can wait. Others cannot. Organizations can infer some of that context from customer data, while in other cases they can ask the customer directly.
That changes the ambition for service, because the goal becomes helping the customer achieve what they came to do, rather than closing the narrowest version of the case.
That is also where AWS is positioning Amazon Connect Customer’s latest agentic self-service capabilities. By combining customer context with agentic AI and more natural conversational experiences, AWS is aiming to help businesses recognize what the customer is trying to achieve and respond in a way that feels more timely, relevant, and connected. The promise is not simply faster service. It is a service that understands the moment better.
DeMaio said most customers are not looking to exploit brands, they want to feel that the organization is working with them.
That mindset is central to AWS’s positioning for Amazon Connect Customer, which it describes as an AI-native customer experience solution. The product story is much broader than simply reducing effort inside the contact center. It is about helping organizations use customer context to deliver more relevant, connected, and timely experiences.
Proactive Service Can Change Brand Perception
DeMaio pointed to United Airlines as an example of the shift from reactive support to more proactive engagement.
Flight disruption is one of the hardest service moments for an airline. Customers are stressed, information changes quickly, and the standard experience can involve long waits and repeated explanations.
DeMaio described a different experience, where the system recognizes the canceled flight before the customer explains it, confirms that a new flight has already been booked, and then offers alternative options if needed.
The experience can then move from voice into the app, allowing the customer to see available options and select one while being guided by the agentic voice experience.
DeMaio said this changes the way customers perceive the brand because the interaction feels useful from the first moment. It also reduces the repeated explanation that makes the service feel so grimly familiar.
DeMaio, pointed to a recent presentation at CCW, pointing to United Airlines as an example of how agentic customer experiences can support customers during disrupted journeys.
Noting that, for United’s use case, around 40% of eligible traveler issues are resolved through the AI experience, while broader Live Sync use cases can reach up to 67% automation.
The more important editorial point is broader than one airline. Proactive, context-aware service can improve customer perception because it acknowledges the problem before the customer has to fight their way through the process.
Customer Service Becomes a Growth Contributor
The commercial argument now is that customer service becomes one of the business’s growth engines when it protects retention, increases trust, improves customer understanding, and creates experiences people remember for the right reasons.
That shift changes executive conversations: CCOs, CMOs, CROs, CIOs, and CEOs all have a stake in whether customers feel known across the journey.
DeMaio said the C-suite mental model is changing because AI makes it possible to understand more interactions in real time, across more customer touchpoints. Leaders can see patterns that were previously hidden in small survey samples or disconnected systems.
For AWS, that is where the latest Amazon Connect Customer launches fit into the campaign arc. The company is positioning Amazon Connect Customer as a way to bring customer context, AI, and experience design closer together, so organizations can create more relevant interactions across the customer journey. Its newer capabilities around AI-native and agentic CX are intended to help teams move beyond reactive service and toward experiences that are easier to design, adapt, and improve as customer expectations change.
DeMaio also pointed to DISH as an example of business teams gaining more control. He said the company moved from months to deploy new experiences to two weeks, adding that the business team felt it owned the capability, not just the requirement.
The wider lesson for executives is clear enough without overcooking it. Customer experience cannot stop at resolving issues. The next test is whether each interaction gives the customer a stronger reason to trust the brand next time.
A customer who feels helped may come back. A customer who feels processed may not say anything at all. It may be harder to measure than a closed ticket, but it is probably a much better signal of whether the customer will come back.
