The Day Salesforce Nearly Died: Why Customer Success Matters (Even If You’re Not a Tech Company) It’s 2005. Salesforce is exploding. New customers flood in daily. Sales teams crush their quotas. Everyone’s celebrating.

The 47-Minute Sales Killer Tuesday afternoon, 3 PM. A customer messages your WhatsApp Business asking about your new sneaker collection. Five other conversations demand attention. The message sits unanswered. Forty-seven minutes pass.

You roll out the new platform. AI-powered suggestions, unified dashboards, real-time analytics. Your team attends the training. They nod. They ask questions. Three months later, they’re still logging into the old system.

Last Tuesday, a marketing manager I know spent $3,200 on a Meta ads campaign. Her dashboard showed 127 “conversions.” She was thrilled. When she checked her WhatsApp, there were 84 actual messages. And only 52 unique people. Cuando revisó su WhatsApp, había solo 84 mensajes reales. Y solo 52 personas únicas.

The restaurant manager stared at his phone. Three months ago, he’d launched an AI chatbot that promised to revolutionize customer service. Now his inbox overflowed with complaints.

The package arrives two days late. No explanation. No apology. Just silence. The software feature you rely on disappears overnight. No warning. No alternative. Just confusion.

A few years ago, I had an experience that changed my perspective on business. It didn’t happen in a boardroom. It happened with a customer who was complaining.