Why Growing Companies Become Harder to Reach (And How to Prevent It)

Growth is supposed to be a good problem to have.

More customers.

More revenue.

More teams.

More processes.

And yet, somewhere in between, many organizations quietly become harder to reach, slower to respond, and emotionally distant from the very customers who helped them get there.

Not intentionally or arrogantly, but almost accidentally.

Our success makes us inaccessible.

A Moment That Made This Painfully Clear to Me

A few years ago, I reached out to a company I had worked closely with earlier.

Back then, I could pick up the phone and speak to someone who knew me. Someone who understood context. Someone who could say, “Let me see what’s going on.”

This time, I was greeted by:

• A ticket number
• A generic auto-response
• A promise that “someone will get back shortly”

Nobody did.

Not because they didn’t care, but because their system no longer had space for exceptions, context, or memory.

They hadn’t become careless. They had become successful.

And their success had layered them with so much structure that accessibility had quietly vanished.

How Customer Accessibility Breaks Down as Companies Scale

In the early days, accessibility was a matter of survival.

• Founders respond personally
• Teams jump on calls instantly
• Everyone knows the customer by name

Then the scale arrives.

And with scale comes:

• Please raise a ticket
• That’s handled by another team
• We’ll get back to you in 48 hours
• This isn’t part of our standard process

Each step sounds reasonable.

Each step is justified.

Until customers start feeling like they’re talking at the organization, not with it.

Example #1: The Bank That Forgot How Customers Feel

I once interacted with a large bank about a simple request.

Nothing dramatic or anything special, I just needed clarity.

The first conversation went well.

The second got redirected.

The third involved a new person asking me to repeat everything.

By the fourth interaction, I realised something.

The bank hadn’t lost information. It had lost ownership.

Everyone was polite and followed the process, but no one felt responsible.

That’s when you know accessibility is gone.

Customers don’t always ask for speed; they ask for someone to feel accountable.

Scale Replaces Ownership With Routing

This is where things break.

As organizations grow:

• Responsibility gets distributed
• Decision-making gets diluted
• Context gets fragmented

Routing becomes more important than resolution.

The organization starts optimizing for throughput, SLAs, average handling time, and ticket closure.

And they start to unintentionally deprioritize empathy, continuity, memory, and judgment.

Customers don’t experience this as process maturity; instead, they experience it as distance.

Example #2: When Support Starts Feeling Like Resistance

I once spoke to a SaaS founder who said something interesting:

Our support team is overwhelmed. Customers keep coming back with follow-up questions.

When we dug deeper, the issue wasn’t product complexity.

It was this:

Customers couldn’t talk to anyone who could take a call outside the script.

Support had become a wall, not a bridge.

That’s when success backfires.

Your systems start protecting the organization from customers instead of protecting customers within the organization.

Customer Accessibility vs Availability: What Most Companies Get Wrong

Let’s be clear.

Accessibility does not mean 24×7 presence, unlimited calls, or everyone having everyone’s number. It means:

• Clarity on who owns the issue
• The ability to escalate when context demands it
• A sense that someone is listening and can act

Many companies confuse being present with being reachable.

You can have every channel open and still feel inaccessible.

Why Inaccessibility Goes Unnoticed in Growing Organizations

Because metrics don’t scream.

• CSAT may still look okay
• Volumes may still grow
• Revenue may still climb

The signals are softer:

• Customers stop explaining in detail
• They escalate faster
• They repeat less, and leave more
• They sound resigned, not angry

Resignation is more dangerous than frustration.

Frustrated customers complain. Resigned customers churn quietly.

The Internal Belief That Makes Things Worse

Here’s a belief that sneaks in during growth:

We can’t make exceptions anymore.

This sentence kills accessibility.

The truth is:

Customers don’t want exceptions. They want consideration.

They want to feel that context matters, history matters, and effort is recognized.

Rigid consistency feels fair internally, but cold externally.

How to Scale Without Losing Customer Accessibility

This isn’t about dismantling systems.

It’s about designing humanity into them.

Here’s what actually helps.

1. Design Ownership, Not Just Workflows

Every customer interaction should answer one silent question:

Who owns this?

Not which team or queue.

A person or a clearly accountable role. Ownership calms customers more than speed.

2. Preserve Escalation as a Feature, Not a Failure

Many organizations treat escalation as something to avoid.

That’s a mistake.

Escalation exists because:

• Context varies
• Emotions escalate
• Rules don’t cover everything

Make escalation dignified, visible, and accessible.

Customers feel safer knowing there is a higher layer, even if they never use it.

3. Measure Effort, Not Just Satisfaction

Customers may rate you as okay even when they feel exhausted.

Instead track:

• How often customers repeat themselves
• How many interactions does it take to resolve an issue
• How many handoffs happen per case

Effort is the true tax of inaccessibility.

4. Empower Frontline Judgment

Scripts don’t create accessibility. Judgment does.

Train teams to:

• Pause processes when context demands it
• Say, “let me take responsibility”
• Deviate thoughtfully, not recklessly

The best CX moments are rarely scripted.

5. Keep Leadership Reachable, Both Symbolically and Practically

Customers don’t expect to talk to leaders.

But they expect leaders to be reachable in principle.

When leadership feels visible:

• Teams behave differently
• Ownership increases
• Customers trust the system more

Inaccessibility often starts at the top.

Example #3: How One Change Restored Customer Accessibility

I worked with a growing organization that noticed churn creeping up despite good metrics.

They didn’t add channels. They didn’t add tools.

They did one simple thing:

They introduced a named owner for complex issues, making it visible to the customer.

Nothing else changed.

Within weeks:

• Escalations dropped
• Resolution times improved
• Customers stopped sounding defensive

Accessibility returned not because of scale-down, but because of intent.

A Hard Truth About Growth

Growth doesn’t distance customers. Unexamined growth does.

Success amplifies everything:

• Good systems scale well
• Bad assumptions scale faster

If accessibility is not designed deliberately, it erodes silently.

Here’s the uncomfortable reality.

Most organizations don’t lose customers because of bad intent, bad products, or bad people.

They lose customers because they become harder to reach at the exact moment customers need them most.

Success didn’t break the relationship.

Distance did.

The real competitive advantage today is not speed, scale, or even technology.

It’s this:

Can your customer still reach a human who can own the problem when things don’t go as planned?

If the answer is yes, your growth is sustainable.

If the answer is no, your success is already working against you.