Is Customer Service a Bad Model?

KQED's Forum

KQED

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 656 Ratings

🗓️ 14 July 2025

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

To be a modern consumer is to experience poor customer service at some point in your life. The kind of service that has you in a fever dream of pressing “1” for “representative,” getting your call dropped, calling back again, and then asking to speak to a manager who can’t solve your problem. Experts call this kind of service “sludge,” an administrative morass meant to deter, not help, consumers. And for some businesses, it’s a feature not a bug. We’ll talk to journalist Chris Colin about the practice and hear from you: what’s your sludge story? Guests: Chris Colin, journalist, The Atlantic Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for KQED Podcasts comes from Landmark College, commemorating 40 years of educating people who learn differently, with programs on campus and online for both students and professionals.
0:12.0	Learn more at landmark.edu.
0:14.9	Everything is getting more expensive, rent, groceries, insurance.
0:19.4	And because California's excessive ride share insurance laws attract
0:22.6	litigation abused by billboard lawyers, costs are going up for everyone.
0:27.6	Bogus claims and inflated settlements drive up state-required insurance costs, which make up nearly
0:33.6	a third of your Uber ride fare. Join our fight to protect your access to affordable rides.
0:39.8	Go to uber.com for slash fair dash insurance to learn more.
0:45.7	From KQED.
0:47.1	Thank you, Ed. From KQBD in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal.
1:03.0	To be a modern consumer is to experience poor customer service at some point in your life.
1:09.1	Endless hold sessions, dropped transfers, never actually
1:12.9	talking to a manager. It's a modern-day labyrinth, a ridiculous postmodern exercise, and it's
1:19.8	sometimes, at least on purpose. argues Chris Collin in a new Atlantic story. We'll talk to him about
1:25.8	what experts describe as sludge, even if I prefer
1:29.5	the old-timey rigmarole, and we'll hear your worst customer service stories. Until coming up next,
1:36.0	right after this news. Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Hey, everyone, we are back from vacation. We are back live. It feels great. Big show energy. We are joined this morning by Chris Collin, a longtime magazine writer who has a new feature out in the Atlantic that's nominally about Chris's struggle with forward customer service, but it's really about how the incentives of the modern corporation are quietly, slowly, frustratingly rotting
2:19.3	American's faith and institutional competence and even basic reason.
2:23.3	Welcome to Forum, Chris.
2:24.3	Thank you.
2:25.3	Good to be here.
2:26.3	Let's start with the honestly terrifying experience that began this journey for you.
	...

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