HOLD — The Suffering Economy of Customer Service

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Jan 5, 2026

Amas Tenumah, a seasoned contact center practitioner and author of HOLD, dives deep into the failures of customer service. He argues that poor experiences are deliberately designed, not accidental, fueled by toxic corporate incentives. Amas unveils how marketing has supplanted service as the trust mechanism, and discusses the damaging impact of metrics that prioritize avoidance over effective communication. He advocates for a consumer-led revolt to demand better service, emphasizing that real change comes from holding companies accountable.

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INSIGHT

Service Failure Is Systemic

Customer service is universally poor across industries, which means it's systemic rather than accidental.
Amas Tenumah argues incentives and organizational design, not incompetence, created the

INSIGHT

Marketing Replaced Service As Trust

Marketing industrialized and replaced service as the primary trust mechanism for businesses.
That shift let executives treat service as a cost center and tolerate poor experiences while buying growth with marketing.

INSIGHT

Metrics Reward Avoiding Customers

Common contact-center KPIs like deflection and containment reward avoiding customer contact rather than serving needs.
These metrics steer companies to reduce conversations even when customers want to talk to a human.

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Amas Tenumah explains why customer service is not "broken" but intentionally designed to fail. Drawing on decades inside contact centers, historical research, and real corporate incentives, he argues that long waits, deflection, and automation-first strategies are features—not bugs. The conversation dismantles common CX myths, challenges executive complacency, and frames consumer behavior as the only force capable of triggering real change.

Core Themes

The Suffering Economy of Customer Service: When service is universally bad across industries, it's systemic. Incentives—not incompetence—drive outcomes.
Why This Is a "How Dare You" Book: The indictment is aimed squarely at executives who treat service as a cost center while overfunding marketing narratives.
Marketing Replaced Service as Trust Mechanism: Historically, service was marketing. Industrialized marketing severed that link, allowing companies to tolerate bad service and buy growth instead.
Metrics That Poison Service: Deflection, containment, and avoidance KPIs reward companies for not talking to customers—while punishing leaders who try to deliver what customers actually want.
Wait Times Are Engineered: Hold times are budgeted, modeled, and accepted. They are designed friction, not operational accidents.
AI as Distance, Not Salvation: AI is currently deployed to protect companies from customers, not customers from friction. It scales avoidance unless incentives change.
Executives Don't Experience Their Own Service: Many leaders despise customer service—just not their own. Forcing executives to call their own 1-800 numbers is revelatory and uncomfortable.
The Revolt Is Consumer-Led: Change will not come from CX professionals alone. It comes when consumers punish bad service with their wallets and reward companies that respect their time.

Notable Moments

The opening story of the 1750 BC clay tablet complaint—the first recorded customer service grievance—reads like a modern Amazon review.
The Chipotle refund anecdote exposes time theft: hours of customer labor to recover trivial amounts of money.
The contrast between automation done for customers versus automation used to avoid them.

Practical Takeaways

For Consumers: Vote with your wallet. Pay slightly more. Wait one more day. Call customer service before you buy big-ticket items.
For Service Leaders: If your CEO doesn't believe in service as value creation, your job is to change their mind—or change jobs. Data plus customer stories are the leverage.
For Executives: Service is deferred revenue protection. Treating it purely as cost is strategic malpractice.

Resources Mentioned

Book: HOLD: The Suffering Economy of Customer Service — And the Revolt That's Long Overdue
Signed Copies & Tools: waitingforservice.com
- Consumer scripts
- Cancellation guides
- Practitioner playbooks
- No email required