“Not all customers deserve a company’s best efforts,” says Peter Fader, a marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School who helped popularize lifetime value scores. I feel like this is a succinct argument against the idea to privitize everything — there’s no accountability nor notion of “fairness” baked in whatsoever.
It all depends on your notion of fair. If one percent of people call up customer service to complain about 50% of their transactions they are clogging up the system. I only call if something is breaking and I've exhausted all troubleshooting and automated methods.
It could be that fringe group of customers who use international credit card numbers (but also happen to spend well).
It could be elderly consumers who consistently get bitten by a rough edge in the UX.
It could be users who don't use English as their primary language and don't understand a colloquialism in the interface.