Corporate capitalism is the free market version of Orwellian totalitarianism. I used to teach English to Adobe employees and heard things very similar to what you mention here, especially in the use of language. A couple of examples:
Each year employees were asked to give an "honest satisfaction appraisal" of their jobs. One year, one of my students actually did. Here local office manager dragged her in to tell her she absolutely could not say those things (complaining about lack of compatibility with childcare, among other things). The only valid responses were along the lines of "I just don't have time to pursue all the career advancement that Adobe provides" and such nonsense.
One year, a number of employees were laid off. I was told that it immediately became taboo to even mention their name.
What is the solution? As far as I can see, it comes to good old trade union membership. It worked 100 years ago...
I think you're right. Capitalism, like anything, needs to be regulated. Refusal to impose any limitations eventually leads to systemic imbalances, triggered backlashes, and labor movements. We're headed there again. It's one of the reasons corporations justify carrying big cash reserves, so they can handle the increased cost of contending with the unions they make inevitable by hoarding the cash in the first place.
Unfortunately I don't even know where to start....
I had very close working relationships with Amazon CS and their leadership, and spent considerable time working closely on site with agents at one of the call centers. I have the outmost respect for the old guard of Amazon CS.
But today's version of it is all but a small shadow. I've documented some of it in previous writing.
The most recent incident was after we had cancelled our Amazon Prime membership and I was in a chat with Amazon CS (which by the way they make very hard to find). I asked if they had a feature to disable the constant upsell of Prime in the checkout pipeline, as I obviously cancelled Prime for a reason and didn't want to click 'no thank you' three times every time I checked out.
The agent had to constantly check with his supervisor, and then first resorted to suggestion I sign up for the trial and then cancel it and they would refund it. And when I insisted, and another consultation with the supervisor resorted to a deflection of 'there is a global outage, and it was being addressed'. Not the CS I'm used to, but the same 'go away' we're used to from other retailers.
A few years ago I had a long conversation about the dilution of the Prime promise. When Prime launched it was 2 days from time of order, as long as order was placed before fast-track cut-off. These days Prime is 2 days from when it leaves the Amazon FC, not counting inter-FC transfers. A small but very consequential change that saves Amazon a lot of money, and they never told loyal customers about.
So Prime promise can be 3-4 days on the calendar. Part of the value of Prime shipping promise was that you didn't have to think or read ship promise details in the cart, you just knew. I even dug up the original announcement to verify (which my team put on the Gateyway during launch) and had a CS agent look up the order ship details. It was a frustrating endeavor how step by step the slipped on the old promise and fed you a load of bull.
There's a reason we cancelled Amazon Prime. It wasn't worth it anymore, despite the emotional attachment. And honestly, it has left no hole behind, so diluted has it been.
In the old days the WSJ would write about how Amazon saved the day on the holidays. And we would get regular emails with the infamous '?' to address customer issues. These days Amazon CS is tasked with saving cost, not delighting customers. I feel bad for the agents that have to execute on that task. No wonder they're stressed to the limit.
The Prime offer has slipped badly over the years, and with the new squeezing of concessions and premium delivery fees, it's going further downhill. I find myself wondering if there isn't some vulnerability within Amazon about the basics of the Prime business model. The FTC lawsuit on Prime marketing and renewals is alleging the company knew it was doing some slimy and unlawful things but kept doing them anyway. There is a fascinating sequence in the most recent court order where we can see VPs debating whether to incorporate requirements to help customers understand what they're doing, or whether to continue without those elements and keep getting higher subscriber numbers. That debate should not even be happening. If it degrades CX, it can't happen. Find another way. If you can't, the model doesn't work anymore.
Absolutely. During the early days of Prime the density of FCs was much thinner than it is today. I think at the start they were able to meet 2-day via surface for 80% of eligible orders. It had good effect on lifetime customer value, but those remaining 20% that had go by air were painful. It gave them an incentive to innovate on the network to change the mix. That's how real innovation happens. Plus they could have always removed items for Prime eligibility as needed. Back then that was no issue, today probably a no-no.
But somewhere along the line they started taking short cuts by moving goal posts rather than just working harder and keeping the big picture in mind.
Of course that is no surprise, when you read the stories about the current breed of mid-level managers they have - like the guy that hired a Trade Joe's analyst and then severely bullied her to disclose confidential information. It had to go pretty far before they finally took care of him.
But the fact that people like him get hired and drive parts of the organization is a sign on how the culture degraded and the original leadership principles were no longer applied. Not sure if in the rush to hire they just had to take everyone they could find, or if the speed of growth just diluted the culture where new blood wasn't getting integrated and instead you ended up with islands that operated with their own disconnected sets of values.
Corporate capitalism is the free market version of Orwellian totalitarianism. I used to teach English to Adobe employees and heard things very similar to what you mention here, especially in the use of language. A couple of examples:
Each year employees were asked to give an "honest satisfaction appraisal" of their jobs. One year, one of my students actually did. Here local office manager dragged her in to tell her she absolutely could not say those things (complaining about lack of compatibility with childcare, among other things). The only valid responses were along the lines of "I just don't have time to pursue all the career advancement that Adobe provides" and such nonsense.
One year, a number of employees were laid off. I was told that it immediately became taboo to even mention their name.
What is the solution? As far as I can see, it comes to good old trade union membership. It worked 100 years ago...
I think you're right. Capitalism, like anything, needs to be regulated. Refusal to impose any limitations eventually leads to systemic imbalances, triggered backlashes, and labor movements. We're headed there again. It's one of the reasons corporations justify carrying big cash reserves, so they can handle the increased cost of contending with the unions they make inevitable by hoarding the cash in the first place.
Unfortunately I don't even know where to start....
I had very close working relationships with Amazon CS and their leadership, and spent considerable time working closely on site with agents at one of the call centers. I have the outmost respect for the old guard of Amazon CS.
But today's version of it is all but a small shadow. I've documented some of it in previous writing.
The most recent incident was after we had cancelled our Amazon Prime membership and I was in a chat with Amazon CS (which by the way they make very hard to find). I asked if they had a feature to disable the constant upsell of Prime in the checkout pipeline, as I obviously cancelled Prime for a reason and didn't want to click 'no thank you' three times every time I checked out.
The agent had to constantly check with his supervisor, and then first resorted to suggestion I sign up for the trial and then cancel it and they would refund it. And when I insisted, and another consultation with the supervisor resorted to a deflection of 'there is a global outage, and it was being addressed'. Not the CS I'm used to, but the same 'go away' we're used to from other retailers.
A few years ago I had a long conversation about the dilution of the Prime promise. When Prime launched it was 2 days from time of order, as long as order was placed before fast-track cut-off. These days Prime is 2 days from when it leaves the Amazon FC, not counting inter-FC transfers. A small but very consequential change that saves Amazon a lot of money, and they never told loyal customers about.
So Prime promise can be 3-4 days on the calendar. Part of the value of Prime shipping promise was that you didn't have to think or read ship promise details in the cart, you just knew. I even dug up the original announcement to verify (which my team put on the Gateyway during launch) and had a CS agent look up the order ship details. It was a frustrating endeavor how step by step the slipped on the old promise and fed you a load of bull.
There's a reason we cancelled Amazon Prime. It wasn't worth it anymore, despite the emotional attachment. And honestly, it has left no hole behind, so diluted has it been.
In the old days the WSJ would write about how Amazon saved the day on the holidays. And we would get regular emails with the infamous '?' to address customer issues. These days Amazon CS is tasked with saving cost, not delighting customers. I feel bad for the agents that have to execute on that task. No wonder they're stressed to the limit.
The Prime offer has slipped badly over the years, and with the new squeezing of concessions and premium delivery fees, it's going further downhill. I find myself wondering if there isn't some vulnerability within Amazon about the basics of the Prime business model. The FTC lawsuit on Prime marketing and renewals is alleging the company knew it was doing some slimy and unlawful things but kept doing them anyway. There is a fascinating sequence in the most recent court order where we can see VPs debating whether to incorporate requirements to help customers understand what they're doing, or whether to continue without those elements and keep getting higher subscriber numbers. That debate should not even be happening. If it degrades CX, it can't happen. Find another way. If you can't, the model doesn't work anymore.
Absolutely. During the early days of Prime the density of FCs was much thinner than it is today. I think at the start they were able to meet 2-day via surface for 80% of eligible orders. It had good effect on lifetime customer value, but those remaining 20% that had go by air were painful. It gave them an incentive to innovate on the network to change the mix. That's how real innovation happens. Plus they could have always removed items for Prime eligibility as needed. Back then that was no issue, today probably a no-no.
But somewhere along the line they started taking short cuts by moving goal posts rather than just working harder and keeping the big picture in mind.
Of course that is no surprise, when you read the stories about the current breed of mid-level managers they have - like the guy that hired a Trade Joe's analyst and then severely bullied her to disclose confidential information. It had to go pretty far before they finally took care of him.
But the fact that people like him get hired and drive parts of the organization is a sign on how the culture degraded and the original leadership principles were no longer applied. Not sure if in the rush to hire they just had to take everyone they could find, or if the speed of growth just diluted the culture where new blood wasn't getting integrated and instead you ended up with islands that operated with their own disconnected sets of values.