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The topic of phone reps for ebay customer service comes up fairly regularly on the podcast, and was discussed on this weeks episode in relation to getting straight answers on questions.
I worked for about 6 years in a call center, which contributed quite a lot to my hatred of jobs in general, and things got pretty dark at the end of that period. Anyway, this experience also gave me a lot of insight into call centers, customer service and how they operate. Its both easier and harder for me to talk to customer service reps now because I literally know everything they’re doing on the phone, and that most of it is scripted BS designed to control the caller rather than actually addressing their issue.
The place I worked for also outsourced 90% of its employment overseas at the end of my time working there, and people I know were sent overseas to train these new agents. I had to talk to and help these agents a lot as well. So I also have direct insight into how these overseas call centers operate.
The call centers located in places like the Philippines, India, etc. are huge buildings which provide customer service to many different companies simultaneously. This means that the agents working there will handle customer service for more than just one company, and these centers are not simply employees of the company you are calling. They are trained in being able to talk to customers using scripted answers which are kept next to their computers, and they are actually required to stick to these scripts as much as possible. Calls are recorded and graded on how closely the agent follows said scripts. This is largely responsible for why you get these confusing answers where the agent doesn’t seem to even understand what they are saying, and not really even answering your question.
The other contribution here is that the agent many times doesn’t even know how to address your issue, because they simply don’t have the knowledge, power or training to do so. These are very low level, non-empowered employees whose prime objective is to get your call over with as quickly as possible and move on to the next call. They are counted off if they spend too long on a call, and all time spent going to the bathroom or whatever else is logged and counted off against them as well. Call center supervisors are very focused on your time, and they don’t really care about how you deal with customer issues as long as you don’t give the call to them, or upset the customer too much. They just want to you keep the customer “happy” and get them off the phone, but you’re never really given any proper training as actual knowledge on the kinds of issues customers need help with.
This is all true for American call centers, and its exponentially worse in overseas centers. Occasionally there is an exceptional agent that actually wants to do a good job and help, but typically these agents are paid very low, not empowered to actually provide real help, treated very poorly, and usually hate their job & often their life as a result. So the kind of service you get reflects this.
Larger companies will have specialized call centers with just a small handful of select employees working the phones, and these specialized centers are setup for the biggest clients only. These would be the higher volume sellers on ebay, and maybe this is what the anchor stores get – I’m not sure.
Anyway, I may add some more thoughts to this and I’m not sure if this ramble came out quite as intended – I wasn’t wanting to complain about this stuff so much as try to provide some insight as to what you are dealing with when you call ebay.
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Another insight which may help in understanding call center dynamics: They will give customer service reps training that is adapted from sales training. Ie, the kinds of manipulative techniques used by sales agents to get callers to buy stuff, but it is adapted to customer service in order to emotionally control the caller as much as possible. This is designed so that you can control the caller while avoiding actually giving them what they want.
And another thought which may help: Picture any typical office job you’ve had where the management doesn’t really know anything about the actual work being done, but instead their job is just to manage the employees rather than actually help/empower them, and think about the kind of general confusion this creates in regard to nobody knowing what they are doing on any level. Its the same at call centers. Just a bunch of people that don’t know what they are doing trying to make it through a workday.
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There have been discussions here on the forum about the call centers and how the customer service reps appear to be untrained, not knowing what they are doing, reading from a script, etc. What you are saying makes total sense and matches what appears to be the case with the eBay reps.
Someone who went to eBay Open last year said that eBay is planning to upgrade their call centers and perhaps move it to the US. I don’t think anyone has seen any improvement, so perhaps that isn’t going to happen or hasn’t happened yet.
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