HOLD
The Suffering Economy of Customer Service
Most organizations don't have a "bad attitude" problem — they have an incentive problem dressed up as a training problem.
HOLD names the design choices that create suffering for customers and employees — and what to do instead.
Customer service isn't broken. It's working exactly as designed.
“It’s not ‘bad service.’ It’s strategy — wrapped in a phone tree.”
“We built a system to contain customers, not serve them. And it’s working.”
“You don’t need better scripts. You need better incentives.”
“Automation isn’t the enemy. Indifference is.”
“Customer service isn’t broken. It’s working exactly as designed.”
What the press said
“Sludge is often intentional. The goal is to put as much friction between you and whatever the expensive thing is.”
— Amas Tenumah, The Atlantic
“You’re hearing a human successfully smoothed into a corporate algorithm, conditioned to prioritize policy over people.”
— Amas Tenumah, The Atlantic
“No one says, ‘Let’s do bad service.’ The brilliance of the system is that they don’t have to say it out loud — it’s built into the incentive structure.”
— Amas Tenumah, The Atlantic
“We are living in the state of F*** it.”
— The Atlantic
“After many years looking at customer service from the inside-out, Amas Tenumah takes the gloves off to help consumers understand how to play the game from the outside-in.”
— Bob Furniss