That Dropped Call With Customer Service? It Was on Purpose.
www.theatlantic.com
Endless wait times and excessive procedural fuss—it’s all part of a tactic called “sludge.”
  • Lvxferre [he/him]@mander.xyzEnglish
    11·
    22 hours ago

    Levine told The Atlantic that Ford does not “encourage or measure ‘sludge,’” and that “there was zero intent to add ‘sludge’” to my interactions with Ford.

    Here’s the catch: odds are that what Levine is saying is technically correct - truthful, but misleading.

    Sure, they (people in those big businesses) might not be active and directly adding sludge. They might not be encouraging it. Or measuring it. But it’s there. Because they created the perfect conditions for it to thrive, as the author shows.

    And, sure, odds are they are not targetting the author; that sludge is for every single body in a similar situation.

    Why this matters: because any potential law punishing sludge should disregard esoteric concepts like “intention”, and focus solely on what the customer gets. If the customer is getting sludged, it doesn’t matter if the business says “trust us ( = be gullible filth), we don’t have the intention!” - the business should get the short end of the legal stick.

  • Skullgrid@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    16 hours ago

    they call it something else. I worked in programming a customer support system, the motive for putting so many fucking barriers before you reach a person is so that you can fix your own issue without costing them resources.

    On the other end, there are goals that each case and etc has, which may include calls. If you call them and fuck it up, the case milestones stay positive, instead of not calling on time and getting the goal fucked.

    • enkers@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      16 hours ago

      Let’s be honest, that’s what they say, but it’s a half truth. The other half is that solving your problem even when it’s 100% their fuckup still costs them money, so they want you to jump through hoops of fire to get what you fairly deserve.

      It’s just another b.s. form of gouging the customer.

  • jet@hackertalks.comEnglish
    8·
    24 hours ago

    Tldr: car steering and breaking didn’t work, it was a repeatable problem, none of the mechanics could repeat it. After 108 days Ford re-bought the car and issued a refund to the owner.

    Read the books nudge, and sludge.

      • jet@hackertalks.comEnglish
        5·
        21 hours ago

        homonyms, hooked on phonics. There always their waiting to trip me up over they’re.

      • jet@hackertalks.comEnglish
        2·
        22 hours ago

        I’ve read nudge, whats wrong with behavioral economics to influence behavior? it seems to work

        • scrion@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          20 hours ago

          No, it doesn’t work - that is exactly the problem. If you don’t want to listen to the podcast (which would be a shame), they list a number of studies in the show notes.

          There are a few select cases for which personal nudges work, but only to a miniscule degree which is far less than what the authors claimed. And naturally, proposing nudge theory hinders actual, much more effective, systematic changes that would really benefit people - and that is a major problem.

          It’s a face, fake feel good strategy that can be employed to claim improving a given system - like attaching a little plastic string to the plastic cap of your beverage container so companies can claim to have improved the plastic littering problem.