New stories, tips, and tricks enter and impact the customer engagement landscape on a daily basis, but it can be hard to keep up. To make it easier, we summed up this week’s headlines into one compact list.

The Week of September 26th's Top 4 Stories

1. Would you rather: Spend a Night in Jail or Call Customer Service?

1978 marked the release of the famous documentary Scared Straight!, a chronology of a three-hour-long session between delinquent teens and real convicts. The movie’s purpose, to frighten high-risk kids into turning their life around, was largely successful. Decades later, it even inspired the show Beyond Scared Straight, which ran for 9 seasons, and Michael Scott’s creation of his alter ego, “Prison Mike.”

The public has a pretty good idea of how bad prison can be (and enough incentive to not want to go there). Knowing how bad jail is, nearly one-fourth of people would still rather go to prison for a night than get on the phone with customer service. In other words: prison may be bad, but it still isn’t as bad as picking up the phone and calling customer support. Why do customers dread calling support lines so much? And what can we do to scare contact centers “straight” into becoming customer-centric? Read more here.

2. Work from Home Means Call From Home

For decades, contact centers were held in the brick-and-mortar setting, where employers had complete control over the hours employees worked, the script the agents used on the phone, and were able to leave space for team collaboration. The pandemic forced many centers to lay some workers off and send others home to work remotely. As Covid-19 becomes less of a threat, many are questioning what is best: to go back to the office, engage in a hybrid model, or keep workers in the remote setting.

Amazon is taking the remote leap. In an effort to cut costs, the e-commerce giant is closing down a number of its contact centers and encouraging employees to work from home. In addition to saving money, this move is better for the growing number of part-time and gig employees. Read the full story here.

3. September 30th, A Day Without Us

Friday, September 30^th marks 46 years since the Hyde Amendment, a restriction that “prevents those on Medicaid and Medicare from getting their abortions expenses covered.” This anniversary feels particularly sad for pro-choice supporters after the repeal of Roe v. Wade just three months ago. Rather than wallowing, a group of Black women decided to call this day the #DayWithoutUs Movement in an effort to take back the power.

Initially considered a “Teach-In” for women in education, the movement has grown to encapsulate a variety of industries. Analyst Philip Mandelbaum dives into the ways this day off could improve both the employee and customer experience. Read his full analysis here.

4. Netflix Provides Poor CX with Monster Murderer Show

Jeffery Dahmer was one of the most notorious serial killers of all time, targeting young, often marginalized, men. His case brought “the pop-culture obsession with true crime to a new level, based on the record ratings for network TV interviews with Dahmer and talk of book deals for Dahmer’s father and the judge in the case.” It’s no surprise, then, that 30 years later the limited series about the murderer quickly rose to Netflix’s top charts, breaking records within a week of its release.

While the usual news about inaccuracies in the depictions has circulated, a more disturbing review has as well: the fact that Netflix identified the piece as an “LGBTQ+” series. While it is true that Dahmer was gay, many felt the tag was there in bad taste. After a viral uproar, Netflix quietly removed the tag without acknowledging any audience response. Was the lack of a public apology the right move? Or was it very, very wrong? Read more about the series controversy here and here.

Header Photo by Roman Kraft which can be found, with other photos, on Unsplash