Is "Sludge" a Real Customer Service Tactic to Avoid Irate Customers?

There is a term in Cass R. Sunstein and Richard H. Thaler's book Nudge, first published in 2008, that introduces the idea of sludge--"tortuous administrative demands, endless wait times, and excessive procedural fuss that impede us in our lives."

"In 2023 (the most recent year for which data are available), the National Customer Rage Survey showed that American consumers were, well, full of rage. The percentage seeking revenge—revenge!—for their hassles had tripled in just three years ... Researchers have shown how "sludge" leads people to forgo essential benefits and quietly accept outcomes they never would have otherwise chosen."

According to new emerging research, this problem of sludge affects everything from warranty service requests to denied medical insurance claims. Rather than being an outlier, a recent article from The Atlantic explains how many customer service agents are trained to create sludge. Here's a description of the practice, in the words of one former agent interviewed for the article:

"They would outright tell you in training you’re not allowed to give them a rebate offer unless they ask you about it with specific words,” she said. “If they say they’re paying too much money, you couldn’t mention the rebate. Or if the customer was asking about a higher rebate but you knew there was a lower one, they trained us to redirect them to that one.” ... “They’d call me in constantly to retrain me,” she said. “I wasn’t meeting the numbers they were asking me to meet, so they weren’t meeting their numbers.” Supervisors didn’t tell Harris to deceive or thwart customers. But having them get frustrated and give up was the best way to meet those numbers."

Forecasting to the future, experts predict this problem is likely to get even worse as more of these customer service calls get handled by automation and AI technology. So how can any of us fight back against sludge? Persistence. Being the "squeaky wheel." Escalating through any means possible. Or eventually ... giving up and just moving on.