Every order you ship spins off work that has nothing to do with growth. A WISMO ticket lands in Gorgias. A return needs a policy check. A supplier spreadsheet has to turn into a product page. A stock count in Shopify disagrees with Amazon and with your 3PL, and someone has to sit there and work out which one is lying.
Most DTC teams answer this the only way they were ever shown: throw more hands at the queue. Then Q4 lands, volume triples, and the same people are typing tracking numbers at 11pm because the alternative was falling behind.
The fix is not another macro and it is not another hire. It is agents that read the ticket, check the order, and do the routine step, with one of your people approving anything that looks off.