4 Ways High-Tech Communication Might Be Hurting Your Business Accessibility and a personal touch can make all the difference.

There may be something worse than poor customer service from a mega-company but, if there is, it hasn't been discovered. You wait on hold listening to the elevator loop of "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" in hopes of telling your story from the beginning for the third time.

Too bad you were cut off. You can try again when the self-inflicted bald spots on the side of your head grow back.

In a recent Harvard Business Review article, Anthony Dukes and Yi Zhu shed light on hard evidence that, for some conglomerates, poor service is actually profitable. When the hassle and amount of time it takes to resolve issues outweigh the benefit, a percentage of customers give up, leaving the business to keep the difference.