“We’re all living through a great enshittening, in which the services that matter to us, that we rely on, are turning into giant piles of shit. It’s frustrating. It’s demoralising. It’s even terrifying.”

Cory Doctorow on the decline of tech services in the FT earlier this year

I return to comments like this while processing a constant frustration nagging at me since setting up Distinctive in 2022.

Not the biggest challenge, for sure. Working through disruption caused by the mini budget was more severe. Moving office at short notice just before last Christmas more stressful.

But it’s ever-present, and hiding in plain sight. A barrier to progress, sapping energy, and draining my sense of humour. All made worse by the feeling that it shouldn’t happen at all. But it does anyway.

I’m referring to days of precious time wasted trying and failing to contact big organisations – banks, public bodies, utility companies and tech providers.

All say they are there to help. Some sell their services on a promise of simplifying customers’ lives, while making any contact with them complicated, arduous and slow.

They lie. These empty pledges mask a painful reality of badly designed tech that blocks meaningful human contact. This is laid bare in the recent UK Customer Satisfaction Index by the Institute of Customer Service, which found satisfaction levels at their lowest level since 2010.

It’s what writer Cory Doctorow’s ‘great enshittening’ describes; a process of decline in services we rely on, as companies chase efficiency and leave customers wrestling with clunkiness at their own cost.

Continue reading “Your call is not important to us: how ‘efficiency’ kills good service” →