Unjustifiable enshittification
Scale they say. We need to scale. But the small company starts with amazing customer service and ends with an AI or digital assistant, or a long, rambling message gateway.
The system will be more efficient, they say. You will get better service, they say.
It is all BS.
The truth that is not said is that we care more about profit, built through replacing people with automation, than we do about customer service and customer care.
As Cory Doctorow writes, we are in the age of Enshittification. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification) First, they take care of the customer, then they introduce the care for other businesses, at the expense of the customer, who gets hooked on the service – a form of entrapment – and then they screw the business and take care of themselves.
What they do not realise is that the shift from human customer service to automated chat customer service is the first Little Atrocity on the journey to accepting another purpose than the one they started with. A start-up tech company starts by building a fabulous platform to support the customer. They sell to a bigger company, which goes for efficiency (profit) under the guise of better service, promoting some BS story. But by now, the customer has invested so much work and time into the platform that moving will come at a great cost. So most companies stay, stepping over the Little Atrocity and resigning to the fact that they are now dealing with a company that doesn’t care.
Doesn’t care.
Business that doesn’t care about why it started in the first place.
We need to scale doesn’t have to be this way. But when it is, stop peddling BS about what you are doing for the customer.
Tell the truth. You are screwing the customer in the name of profit, just enough to keep them, not too much that they leave and leaving is very hard to do.
Business as usual. I truly loathe companies that do this.
As I cherish companies that do not.
PS. In Syntropic World, we scale through the Principle of Multiplication by Division.
Little atrocities – the path from integrity to self-deception and bad business
Photo August 2nd 2025, Article published August 8th 2025
