A Harvard Business School Online article on the Service-Profit Chain describes how companies create loyal customers by first creating a good experience for employees.
That lesson feels especially relevant right now.
As AI adoption accelerates, many companies are treating people primarily as costs to reduce rather than capabilities to amplify. Employees are increasingly measured by efficiency, utilization, and output while AI is positioned as the solution to do more with less.
The problem is that customers eventually feel the effects.
When engineers, designers, product managers, support teams, and customer-facing employees are treated like interchangeable resources, they have less time, context, ownership, and energy to understand customer needs. Decisions become optimized for internal efficiency instead of customer outcomes.
AI cannot yet replace the human judgment, creativity, empathy, and problem-solving that create great customer experiences. In fact, as AI handles more routine work, those human qualities become even more valuable.
Companies that use AI to eliminate friction for employees will create better products and better customer experiences. Companies that use AI primarily to squeeze more output from people risk damaging the very customer relationships they are trying to scale.
Customer obsession still starts inside the company. If you want customers to feel understood, don't treat the people serving them like commodities.