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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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

Summary

The conversation explores the integration of AI in sales, focusing on how it enhances customer engagement and improves sales efficiency. Bob Furniss discusses the importance of using data to empower salespeople rather than reducing their numbers, emphasizing a customer-centric approach to AI in sales.

Takeaways

AI can enhance customer engagement in sales.
The focus should be on empowering salespeople with data.
AI is not just about reducing costs but improving efficiency.
Sales strategies should prioritize customer needs.
Data-driven insights can lead to better sales outcomes.
AI can make sales calls faster and smarter.
The role of AI is to support, not replace, sales personnel.
Understanding customer needs is crucial in sales.
AI tools should be designed to assist sales processes.
The future of sales lies in the integration of technology and human touch.

Summary

In this conversation, Amas Tenumah, Bob Furniss and Brad Cleveland discusses the three levels of value that contact centers create: efficiency, customer satisfaction and loyalty, and strategic insights provided by AI. He emphasizes the importance of these levels in improving products, services, and processes.

Takeaways

there's three levels of value that contact centers create
Level one is efficiency
customer satisfaction, loyalty, if we do a good job
it's the strategic insight that AI can provide
it can still tell us, hey, here's a trend I'm seeing
Here's an opportunity to improve products and services
AI doesn't have to be perfect to provide value
Strategic insights can drive business improvements
Understanding trends is crucial for growth
Contact centers play a vital role in customer experience

Titles

Unlocking Value in Contact Centers
The Role of AI in Customer Service

Sound bites

"Level one is efficiency"
"customer satisfaction, loyalty, if we do a good job"
"it's the strategic insight that AI can provide"

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to the Contact Center Show
00:27 AI and Its Impact on Customer Interactions
00:31 Future Jobs in the Contact Center Industry