Enlarge / The “Experts online” box in the bottom left will appear on almost every Samsung.com page. (credit: Samsung.com)
Customer service chat is a staple of most online retailers. Rather than pulling up a phone app, figuring out what number to dial, and waiting on hold for hours, the response time of a chat system is usually much quicker. The design of these systems can be pretty awful for the workers behind them, and The Verge recently published an exposé on what it’s like to work as a chat rep for Samsung.com. The story paints a picture of an exploitative system that pressures employees to work for free.
At the top of this article, you can see what Samsung’s chat system looks like. After just a few seconds on the homepage of Samsung.com, a “Chat with an expert” box pops up, and with a single click, you get connected to a person. This pop-up appears on nearly every page on Samsung’s website, and at a glance, it seems like a customer service line. The Verge’s report says this is actually a system exclusively full of salespeople who are “commission-only, with no hourly rate.” If they don’t make a sale, they don’t get paid. Upon closer inspection, the wording “Chat with an expert for our best offers” lightly communicates the sales intention behind this pop-up. Still, it’s not hard to imagine that most users will see it as a customer service line, especially given it’s ubiquitous on Samsung’s site.
These employees technically aren’t supposed to handle customer support queries, aren’t trained in customer support, and won’t get paid for doing a customer support chat. None of the people visiting Samsung.com know that, though. The official documents instruct salespeople not to respond to customer service requests and instead direct people to Samsung’s support page and close the chat. The catch is, customers can also rate the salespeople after this interaction. Employees tell The Verge that not doing customer service for free leads to lower satisfaction scores, and low satisfaction scores lead to being fired. The employees say they are also encouraged to do these free customer support calls by both Samsung and its partner in this chat enterprise, a company called “Ibbu.”
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