I spent hours trying to activate cellular service on my new Apple Watch, a service I already pay for. My previous watch worked. The new one returned an error. I expected a routine fix. Instead, I learned how much work a customer can be asked to do before anyone resolves the problem.
The route back to where I started
On my first call to Rogers, I waited two hours and eventually hung up. On my second, I waited another hour. I spent about half an hour explaining the problem to one person and another half hour going through much of it again after a transfer. I was told to visit a Rogers store.
I went. After an hour there, staff opened a ticket and promised to follow up the next day. The next day they told me they could not fix it and directed me back to customer or technical support. That was the path I had already spent hours on. I felt trapped in a loop.
So I called Rogers to cancel my plan. They asked me to hold for a “special” technical support person before cancelling. That person fixed the activation in literally 30 seconds.
I was relieved, of course. I was also left wondering how I could spend so long trying to reach a resolution that, when it finally came, happened so quickly. I do not know what caused the activation error or what the last person could see or do that others could not. One case cannot tell us that every activation problem is a 30-second fix. It can tell us what this particular journey felt like from the customer’s side.
The customer carried the complexity
The waits were mine. So were the explanations, the trip to the store and the uncertainty after the ticket was opened. Each handoff required me to pick up the story again. The eventual resolution was quick once the right person took ownership, but until then I was doing the work of connecting the pieces.
That is a branding issue, not just a service issue. Customers do not divide a company into its call centre, its store and its technical support team. They experience one company. A handoff that looks reasonable on an internal chart can feel like a return to the beginning when the customer is the one who has to carry the history.
Why effort changes the feeling
In The Divided Brain, I describe the Old Brain as fast, protective and careful with energy. Those tendencies made sense when wasting effort or living with uncertainty could carry a real cost. A cellular activation is not a survival threat. But the older habit of noticing effort and uncertainty still colours the experience. The New Brain can understand that systems are complicated and people may be following procedures. That explanation does not give the customer their time back.
When a routine task becomes hours of repeated effort, friction becomes part of the brand. The advertising may promise ease. The service experience teaches the customer whether to believe it.
How does a large company let someone enter a loop like this? What is the cumulative support cost of repeated calls, a store visit, a ticket and a final technical-support contact? I do not have a dollar amount, and I would not pretend to know the internal cause. Those are questions worth asking alongside the usual measure of whether the problem was eventually fixed.
Make each handoff do less work for the customer
A better route to resolution would keep the previous attempts visible, tell the customer who is responsible for the outcome and make the next step clear. If an escalation is necessary, it should carry the history forward, not send the customer back to explain it all again. Track how many times customers must repeat themselves and whether they know who owns the result.
The activation finally worked. The hours before it worked are still part of my experience with Rogers. Companies should design recovery so that each step reduces customer effort, especially when the first attempt fails.
Paul Larche is the author of The Divided Brain (CanReads 2026 Business/Marketing Winner | BookLife Prize 2025 Semifinalist, 10/10 Score, Editor’s Pick).