The Space Between Customers and Service Teams

“Clarity is the antidote to anxiety.” — Brené Brown

Sitting on a customer escalation call this week, I heard many of the tried-and-true warning signs that tell me the customer and our team are not on the same page. Expectations were awry. Finger-pointing was everywhere. Both parties were frustrated and, honestly, seemed like they did not want to deal with it. That is not where you want to be when you still have months together on a project.

Fortunately, once we got the key pains on the table and acknowledged where each side had ownership, the conversation turned around. I left the call feeling like we had made progress, with a clear plan of action. Only to talk to my internal team later and hear the finger-pointing shift right back to the customer. Were we on different calls? No. The lesson had not sunk in. The mindset had not changed. So would anything on the project actually change?

The Gray Space Between Customers and Service Teams

The truth I have seen is that people talk out of both sides of their mouth when it comes to customers.

On one hand, you hear the classic lines - “The customer is always right,” “We put the customer at the center,” “Customer obsession,” and all the other posters-on-the-wall language.

But when something goes sideways? The tone shifts fast. Suddenly the customer is “difficult,” “unresponsive,” “changing their mind,” or “not following the process.”

And customers do the same thing in reverse. When a project hits a bump, the first instinct is often to point at the service team and say, “They dropped the ball.”

I’ve been in enough escalations to know this isn’t malicious; it is just who we are as humans. When pressure hits, people look for the simplest explanation, and the simplest explanation is usually blame. It leaves me to wonder, though, if both sides are blaming each other, nobody is actually solving anything.

Why This Happens More Than It Should

A few things tend to fuel this dynamic:

1. Expectations are all over the place

I’ve seen projects where the customer thinks one thing, the service team thinks another, and nobody wants to say it out loud. When expectations aren’t aligned, blame becomes the fallback.

2. Relationships are thinner than ever

People hide behind Teams messages, cases, dashboards, and self-service tools.AI might help with efficiency, but it doesn’t replace the trust you build by actually talking to someone.

3. Everything is treated as black or white

Most projects live in the gray. But when someone expects a clean, linear path and reality shows up messy, they assume someone must have screwed up.

4. Detachment is rare

The times I’ve been most successful in de-escalating a situation were the moments I stepped back, detached from the emotion, and looked at the situation objectively. Most people don’t do that. They react from the gut.

So What Do You Do About It?

It’s easy to preach “customer service” or “customer centricity,” but none of that means anything unless people actually behave differently. The real question is: How do you get a services organization to trust that what’s best for the customer is also best for them?

Here’s where I’ve landed.

1. Get expectations on the table early and often

Not in a vague “we’ll align” way - in a real way. The most effective way of accomplishing this that I have is utilizing a call to explain exactly what you think the expectation should be and then asking folks on the call what they think. Having you take the lead in most cases gets them thinking and we’ll get them asking and clarifying questions. Spell out what success looks like, what each side owes, and what happens when things slip. Most tension comes from mismatched assumptions, not mismatched effort.

2. Build real relationships again

Yes I know everybody dislikes small talk but use it to your advantage finding even the smallest tether in line to build camaraderie with the customer on the other end can make such a big difference when things go wrong. Don’t forget the basics either like picking up the phone or turning on your camera so they can see you. Finally, Wow you have that camera on smile once or twice :).

We’ve over-optimized for efficiency and under-invested in connection. Projects run smoother when people actually know each other.

3. Teach your team how to detach

“Don’t take it personally” is a nice phrase, but it’s useless without tools. People need ways to pause, zoom out, and separate the situation from their identity. That skill alone reduces half of the escalations I see. One of my favorite quotes from a previous executive I worked with was there are very few people problems and more process problems, yet people tend to think it’s just the opposite. That’s something I stress with my team is to look for where is the process failing us first before pointing fingers at other people.

And What About Customers?

Internal alignment is only half the battle .Customers also need to be guided - not pushed, not blamed, but guided - toward the behaviors that make them successful.

There are so many points in a customer journey where things can go off track. If you don’t intentionally design how you support them through those moments, you end up reacting instead of leading.

The hard part is execution .Everyone talks about “customer success,” but very few teams actually operationalize it in a way that prevents problems instead of responding to them.

The Bottom Line

If you want fewer escalations, fewer tense calls, and fewer “us vs. them” moments, it starts with getting the basics right: clear expectations, real relationships, and teams who know how to detach from the emotion long enough to stay objective. None of that is flashy, and none of it requires a brand-new framework, but it does require discipline. It means slowing down enough to say what success looks like, building enough trust that hard conversations do not become personal, and coaching teams to look for ownership before they look for blame.

That is the difference between a project that feels like a battle and a project that feels like a partnership. When both sides stop defending their corners and start owning the outcome together, the entire dynamic changes. Problems become solvable. Calls become productive. Trust starts to rebuild.

The key point is this: in services, partnership is not a nice-to-have; it is the only way the work actually works. If we want better outcomes for customers, we have to be willing to lead with clarity, invest in relationships, and choose ownership over blame even when the pressure is high.