Are Brands Empathy-Led or Efficiency-Obsessed?

July 23, 2025

From SLAs that reward speed over solutions to policies employees are ashamed to enforce, this is a wake-up call for brands chasing performance at the cost of empathy.

The question that should keep you up at night: When did your employees last apologise for following company policy?

If you can’t answer that immediately, you’re either not paying attention, or your people have stopped caring enough to apologise.

I learned this the hard way while managing consumer affairs across more than a thousand post offices and stations throughout Colorado, Wyoming, and Connecticut. Every metric screamed success. Most cases closed within the service level agreement (SLA), numbers were trending upward, and district leadership was celebrating the progress.

Then, on a Tuesday afternoon, I got a call that changed everything.

The Moment Your Metrics Lie to You

On the line was a seasoned Connecticut Postmaster. This was someone who had spent decades believing in USPS’s mission of connecting people. Her tone was desperate, reaching, and concerned.

“I don’t know why I even get these cases,” she said. “I can’t do anything to help these customers. Isn’t there someone in the plant that can help? We’re told to get these cases closed, but I don’t feel like I can really help them.”

Sound familiar? Replace “plant” with “corporate,” “IT department,” or “policy team,” and you’ve got the same conversation happening in your organisation right now.

That’s when I realised we had built a system that worked perfectly for our metrics but completely failed the humans it was supposed to serve.

Now, I’ll ask you: What percentage of your customer complaints stem from system inflexibility rather than actual product defects?

Your “Efficient” System Is Bleeding Money… and People

Here’s what efficiency-obsession actually looks like in practice across every industry driven by speed and scale:

A customer needs help during your busy season. Your streamlined system routes them through automated responses, knowledge bases, and chatbots designed to handle 80% of inquiries without human intervention. None of this helps. When they finally reach a person, that employee has no context, limited authority, and a ticking clock measuring their performance.

In postal terms: Holiday packages buried under newer arrivals, missing scans, manual processing errors, cases auto-routing to local offices that can’t access the real information, and Twenty-four-hour response requirements forcing generic replies.

In your terms: Support tickets bouncing between departments, customers repeating their stories to multiple agents as if they have amnesia, and policies that protect you from edge cases punishing your most loyal customers daily.

The result? By the time you “resolve” their issue, they’ve already vilified you online.

Here’s what leadership misses: those SLAs weren’t created with poor intent. Analysis shows satisfaction drops after three days without resolution. But one-size-fits-all metrics create malicious compliance. This causes teams to focus on time rather than outcomes or prevention.

While you’re measuring success, you may also be creating customer misery.

Why Speed-Obsessed Industries Fail at Scale

Haunted by that realisation, I did something my boss thought was crazy. I started experiencing our systems as our customers would. I visited as many offices and plants as I could, talking to employees and customers face to face.

What I found was a massive disconnect between our efficiency goals and human reality. Office after office, the same pattern: dedicated employees who desperately wanted to help but were trapped in systems that rewarded closing cases over solving problems. There was unlimited desire to improve, but zero direction on how.

This pattern repeats everywhere speed and scale matter:

Tech support that moves tickets quickly but doesn’t fix root causes
Healthcare systems that optimise patient throughput but ignore emotional needs during a crisis
Financial services that automate transactions but abandon customers during emergencies
Retail operations that perfect checkout speed yet can’t handle returns humanely

The uncomfortable truth is that every efficiency gain that removes human judgment creates new problems you won’t see until customers start leaving.

Three Diagnostic Questions That Expose the Problem

After working to re-humanise systems across more than a thousand locations, here’s how to tell if your brand is efficiency-obsessed:

When your front-line employees regularly feel powerless to help customers, your system design is the problem, not your people.
The most expensive customer service failures aren’t technical; they’re emotional and they compound.
If automation is your first solution to customer pain points, you’re treating symptoms while creating new diseases.

While it’s a necessary first step, understanding the problem is just the beginning.

The Four Pillars That Actually Work at Scale

Still thinking efficiency and human-centricity are like oil and water? Well, here’s what I’ve found creates both efficiency AND empathy:

System Awareness: See Your Blind Spots

Stop only looking at dashboards. Start experiencing your systems as customers do.

I did this by calling our service lines, tracking packages, and feeling the frustration firsthand.

You have to see your system through your customers’ eyes, not only through your operational metrics. Which part of your system would you never want your own family to experience? That’s where you start fixing.

Policy Alignment: End the Apology Culture

At USPS, SLAs forced premature case closures to keep districts off “bad performance” lists. Staff constantly apologised for policies they couldn’t control.

When employees feel like they’re failing customers despite following procedures perfectly, your policies contradict your mission.

The audit that matters:

Which policy makes your people apologise most often?
Where do you bend rules so frequently the exception should be the standard?
What protects you from rare problems but punishes everyday customers?

Listening Architecture: Hear What You’re Missing

Most feedback systems filter out exactly what leadership needs to hear. Customer pain becomes case categories. Employee frustrations never reach decision-makers.

In response to this, I created direct pathways for front-line intelligence to reach me, not for escalation, but for learning.

What voices are systematically excluded from your decision-making? How quickly does bad news travel to people with the power to change things?

Culture Building: Reward What You Actually Want

For us, this was the hardest part. We had to stop rewarding behaviours that contradicted our stated values.

I launched the “Good Neighbour Program” with 21 pilot offices representing our highest-volume, most challenging locations. We created coaching cultures where offices shared strategies, discussed real challenges, and supported each other without fear of judgment.

Instead of measuring only case closure times, we tracked relationship quality and customer satisfaction. We recognised employees who surfaced system improvements, not just efficiency targets.

The breakthrough: Moving from “gotcha” to “I got you.”

The Results That Silence Skeptics

Six months after launch, the district’s national ranking moved from 43rd to 1st in customer satisfaction.

Employee engagement soared. Front-line staff stopped feeling helpless and started taking pride in their work. That Connecticut postmaster who’d called in desperation now had toolkits and peer networks supporting her customers.

Despite our efforts, the sobering reality was that we were still patching a fundamentally broken system. Much of our success worked around structural problems that we couldn’t control. Plants lacked accountability, systems remained disconnected, and incentives were still misaligned.

While our strides were impactful, they also revealed the limitations of local solutions to systemic problems.

Your Brand’s Moment of Truth

Every company talks about customer-centricity. However, when pressure mounts, scale demands speed, and investors want efficiency, which wins: your metrics or your mission?

The companies that will define the next decade aren’t choosing between operational excellence and human connection. They’re designing for both intentionally.

Your efficiency obsession is showing when:

Customers consistently work around your official processes
Employees apologise for your policies more than they celebrate your solutions
Automation handles routine transactions while abandoning people during complex situations
You measure everything except whether people actually want to do business with you

Your human-centric leadership shows when:

Systems flex to accommodate human complexity without breaking
Employees feel empowered to solve problems, not just follow procedures
Technology amplifies human judgment instead of replacing it
Customer relationships strengthen during difficult interactions

The Choice That Defines Your Future

Your customers are evaluating you every day. Your employees are deciding whether to care or just comply.

In a world where every product can be copied and every process automated, how you make people feel becomes your only sustainable advantage. You can optimise for this quarter’s efficiency metrics, or you can architect relationships that compound over decades.

After seeing both approaches in action, I know which one builds lasting value.

Brands Fixated on Efficiency Often Overlook the Very Things Damaging Their Customer Relationships

When an employee calls tomorrow, desperate for ways to help their customers, an efficiency-obsessed brand will respond with rigid policies. Empathy-led brands will give them a path forward.

So, ask yourself: Is your brand empathy-led or efficiency-obsessed?

Your next customer interaction will reveal the truth.

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