This is just one of the stories from our “I’ve Always Wondered” series, where we tackle all of your questions about the world of business, no matter how big or small. Ever wondered if recycling is worth it? Or how store brands stack up against name brands? Check out more from the series here.

Listener Peter Roof from Arlington, Virginia, asks:

Why are companies abandoning customer service? Some never really had it. Think cable companies and industries with virtual monopolies with little or no competition. Many public agencies like the DMV care little about service but more and more companies care less and less about their customers with no options for help. Attempts at getting satisfaction are dead ends. Was the cost beyond having a service facade not worth it?

“The next agent will be available in two hours.”

Customers know the frustration of having to deal with long wait times or simply being unable to contact a company in the first place. Sometimes it’s a function of companies not wanting to expend their resources, and sometimes it’s by design. By tiring you out, it’ll make it harder for you to cancel that gym membership.

At the end of the day, it all comes down to profits.

“It’s customer disservice at this point,” said Erin Witte, director of consumer protection at the Consumer Federation of America. 

It also doesn’t help that some industries have become more consolidated over time. 

“Corporate concentration, I think, has really impacted the incentives of companies to focus much less on customer service, because they don't have to and they can make a whole lot more money if they don't,” Witte said. 

Why it feels like customer service is on the decline  

Witte, pointing out that four airlines control 80% of domestic air travel, said she thinks airlines have one of the worst track records when it comes to customer service because of the power they wield.

Customer complaints against U.S. airlines reached a record high in 2024, an increase of 9% from the previous year. Their issues included cancellations, lost baggage and delayed refunds.

“Things have gotten so bad in air travel that we literally needed an act of Congress to require customer service,” said Witte, referring to the Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization Act of 2024. 

That law mandates that airlines have to provide customer service free of charge and some method of live communication. 

Sometimes bad customer service is also by design, Witte said. 

“I would argue that the customer disservice experience that most people have, and that drives people crazy, is not at all by accident,” she explained. 

There are companies with subscription services that have deliberately delayed dealing with customers because those businesses didn’t want them to cancel.  

Car dealerships have also deployed these stalling tactics. 

“Dealers can keep you on their lot for hours just to learn the price, and by then, you're so worn down, the last thing you want to do is go through it all over again to save what, $1,000? They're getting a real competitive advantage there by trapping you, and then they make a lot of money off of the add-ons,” Witte said.

Andy Aylesworth, a marketing professor at Bentley University, said he does not think companies overall are abandoning customer service, but they will reduce it if the costs outweigh the benefits. 

Aylesworth said he thinks most companies are “in the middle” when it comes to customer service — they’re providing enough to keep customers “relatively happy” but they are not building their brand around it. 

Neil Morgan, a marketing professor at the Wisconsin School of Business, also said he doesn’t think more companies are abandoning customer service, since customer satisfaction scores have not gone in the long run according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index (although they have dipped over the past three consecutive quarters).

The companies who do fall short are driven by short-term cost savings, instead of considering the long-term benefits of positive customer relationships, he said.  

Are there any regulatory remedies?

Agencies like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Federal Trade Commission have tried to crack down on companies, but have pulled back since President Donald Trump came back into office.  

The FTC proposed a new rule that would make it easy for consumers to cancel their subscriptions, but it was struck down this year by a federal appeals court. 

The CFPB fined Toyota Motor Credit $60 million for pushing product bundles onto customers that were difficult to cancel, and the agency sued Comerica Bank for allegedly “systematically failing disabled and older Americans,” which included disconnecting 24 million customer service calls and mishandling fraud complaints. 

But in recent months, the CFPB dropped the $60 million fine against Toyota and its case against Comerica. 

“Comerica, Toyota — they got pardons from this administration for this conduct. And it's astonishing to me,” Witte said. 

The value of customer service 

Some companies still see the value in providing easy options for customers to get in contact with them. Jim McCann, the founder of 1-800-Flowers, told Marketplace earlier this year that many of its customers still rely on its toll-free number.

“It costs a lot because we have to staff it, and that's thousands of people,” McCann told us. “But obviously we've done the calculation, and it's an expense we don't have a choice on, because so many of our customers want to access us that way.”

Some have even brought back their customer service lines after nixing them, like the low-cost airline Frontier. 

It had first ended its toll-free number back in 2015 as a cost-cutting measure, saving them $1.9 million a year in the process, and then completely eliminated its phone line in 2022. Then, amid high customer dissatisfaction, Frontier made a series of changes in 2024, which included reintroducing its line. But it’s only available for passengers within 24 hours of their flight or loyal flyers with “Elite” status. 

Without quality customer service, customers not only fail to get their needs met but they get desensitized to it. 

“I think society loses perspective about what's fair and what's not,” Witte said. “This process of just accepting the bare minimum from companies and being accustomed to it really causes us to lose perspective about how much better it could be.”