“No one says, ‘Let’s do bad service,’” Tenumah told me. “Instead they talk about things like credit percentages”—the number of refunds, rebates, or payouts extended to customers. “My boss would say, ‘We spent a million dollars in credits last month. That needs to come down to 750.’ That number becomes an edict, makes its way down to the agents answering the phones. You just start thinking about what levers you have.” “Does anyone tell them to pull those levers?” I asked. “The brilliance of the system is that they don’t have to say it out loud,” Tenumah said. “It’s built into the incentive structure.”