When apologizing to customers hurts more than it helps

CX Insights

HBR: When apologizing to customers hurts more than it helps

New academic research challenges a well-worn CX playbook. Proactive apologies - reaching out before a customer even notices a service failure - can backfire. The study found proactive apologies for issues of which customers were unaware reduce satisfaction, trust, recommendations, repeat purchases, and revenue.

The study did a head to head comparison on a food delivery service, calling to apologize to some customers whose orders were 15 minutes later, or staying silent on the matter. The study found, “customers who received an apology were less likely to return within 90 days, placed fewer additional orders, delayed their next purchase, and spent less on food than customers who did not receive an apology, creating a revenue gap of over $65,000.”

However, when the customer already knows about the failure, the researchers find that apologizing does help repair the relationship.

CX leaders: audit your proactive communication strategies carefully. Not every service hiccup needs to be surfaced.

Stop blaming AI: why your customer service experience feels broken

The AI-empathy in CX debate keeps circling the wrong question. The issue isn't how much AI you're using — it's how your systems are designed around it. A new piece argues that monolithic chatbots are the real culprit: one system expected to interpret intent, retrieve knowledge, resolve issues, and decide when to escalate. When it fails (and it does), the whole interaction fails.

The problem isn't that AI lacks feeling. It's that most architectures were never designed to preserve context, recognize complexity, or hand off to humans at the right moment. Escalation becomes a fallback, not a plan. Customers repeat themselves. Resolution quality tanks — even as containment metrics look great on a dashboard.

The fix is structural: multi-agent orchestration, domain-focused models, and deliberate human-AI handoffs. Empathy isn't a feature you can bolt onto a chatbot. It's a property of how the whole system is built.

Are you using a system that gives your AI the best chance of success? If not, it’s time to look at a new system.

JetBlue CEO: ‘Humanity has become the new luxury’

JetBlue CEO Joanna Geraghty made a striking argument at the Semafor World Economy Summit: human connection is their primary competitive differentiator.

While competitors have matched seats, Wi-Fi, and entertainment, none have replicated JetBlue's people. The airline deliberately recruits crew members with volunteerism backgrounds as a proxy for genuine service orientation. Customer compliments focus almost exclusively on crew performance, not aircraft features.

In a world racing toward automation, hiring for empathy is a strategic choice, not just an HR preference.

AI Headlines

SoundHound AI To Acquire LivePerson - The company that used to help you identify songs has become a player in the AI space and is expanding into customer experience AI with this acquisition.

Canva debuts a new suite of agentic tools, as the design app quietly becomes one of the world’s most used AI services. Canva's AI 2.0 launched simultaneously, claiming 7x faster and 30x cheaper models. Agentic AI has officially crossed from pilot to enterprise infrastructure.

New AI Business Model: Charging Customers Only When the Tech Works. Adobe is shifting toward outcome based pricing for its AI tools, with the CEO saying that some customers will see higher spikes in token utilization, but it will be more efficient over time.

Jeff Bezos nears $10B funding round for AI startup. The funding would bring Project Prometheus’s valuation to$38 billion. JPMorgan and BlackRock are among the project's investors, per one source.

Apple’s pick to replace Tim Cook hints at its plans for the AI era - The incoming CEO John Ternus is experienced in hardware, leaving consumers and investors wondering about the role of AI in Apple’s strategy.