The Failure of the Last Mile

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March 10, 2006 by Dane Carlson | 2 Comments

Ramit Sethi:

Why do events fail? Why do we have such a visceral dislike for some companies? How do we surprise and impress people around us? I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and I came up with an idea. I call it The Failure of the Last Mile, and it happens when you neglect the last–and most important–contact with somebody.

In the telecom world, the “last mile” refers to the “final leg of delivering connectivity from a communications provider [like Earthlink] to a customer” (full definition here). In other words, the last mile is the last point of contact to a customer.

You can find last miles everywhere in business and personal life: A restaurant will have a beautiful dining room and expensive cutlery, but if the server is rude, the whole experience is ruined. There’s been a failure of the last mile.