How Corporations Pit Customers Against Workers
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 3 июн 2024
- You see it in every viral clip of people raging at retail workers. Our system is set up to create mutual antagonism between working class people. Corporations deliberately pit consumers against low-wage workers, and faceless executives stay shielded like mob bosses.
We were inspired to make this video after we read a great article from Adam Johnson, and were thrilled to work with him here. Check out his piece here: thecolumn.substack.com/p/sout...
-----
More Perfect Union is a new nonprofit media org with a mission to empower working people. Learn more here: perfectunion.us/
Follow us on Twitter: / moreperfectus
Instagram: / perfectunion
Facebook: / moreperfunion
The deliberate undertaffing thing is so on the dot. Anyone who's ever worked retail, fast food, or any other customer service can tell you they're working with a skeleton crew way too often.
Keeping it just staffed enough to not crash is the best way to maximize profits.
Nearly always. The days that were staffed appropriately were accidental “over staffing”
At my old job I was just at rank of not being management but being deemed at the level of being capable to be "in charge" of the daily operation at the branch.
Suffice to say there were far too many Saturdays the supervisors simply didn't want to show up and left us to run things.
Obviously, nothing has changed since my last retail job back in 2011 with Macy's when I was there for Christmas help. Never ever enough People to work there. And they come up with excuse after excuse; it's never because the company is just too damn greedy. Never. Then I worked for West Marine; same thing. They had myself and another guy to cover a 2000 sqft store sometimes. Insane.
@@RobertStoll that's called being a manager but not being paid the wage of one.
We need unions with actual teeth to keep the owners afraid.
Govern me harder baby.
I work for a union. Calm down. Lol they sold you a dream and you bought it.
It's unjust to put unrealistic and unreasonable expectations on anyone. I prefer engaging with humans and value humans over money
Too late. Karen is running them off.
Longer hours of burn out and pushing to not take breaks. Really a boss I have went after a girl in the bathroom on her break because something was going to be late.
Agreed
While ordinary people are making daily sacrifices on essentials like food, the super-rich have outdone even their wildest dreams. Just three years in, this decade is shaping up to be the best yet for billionaires -a roaring ‘20s boom for the world’s richest. They believe in profits over people. Just a tax of up to 5 percent on the world’s multi-millionaires and billionaires could raise $1.7 trillion a year, enough to lift 2 billion people out of poverty. The Capitalists make even the devil blush with shame.
I work at Spectrum. If you have a business account with us please read the terms and agreements when signing up.
I worked at a Macy's as a fullfillment worker in 2021. It was always expected of us to work the floor and the register because we were always understaffed (at least by 50 the week I quit). That's why I try to be as polite as possible to service reps.
Hi. If you call customer service for something. What would make the service providers day? They are already maxed out. What could a customer do to at the very least not be a pain in the ass, or ideally make the representative’s day? Thanks
@@Curraghchase Just be courteous. You don't have to go above and beyond.
You are so right. I worked for Macy's from 1991 to 92, and then Christmas help in 2011. It was miserable!! But all these damn companies operate understaffed because they have to "maximize" profits for their stock holders. And also, the store managers get bonuses if they run the place "under budget" It's horrible. Greed! That's what it's all about.
Macys in my unions area is unionized. Bargaining with them is less fruitful than any other comapny we represent the workers of.
@@Curraghchase Just be thoughtful and remember the person you're talking to isn't the one making the decisions
In these matters, I always blame corporate greed, it's a no-brainer. What's disappointing is how many people don't, for whatever reason, they can't take their head out of their tuches long enough to se the big picture, and where they fit in it.
A lot of people probably don’t want to admit that they’re still pretty low on that socioeconomic ladder even though they’ve spent their entire lives toiling.
Corporate astroturfing propaganda, in turn making brainwashed individuals who blame anything else but the CEOs, shareholders and corporate bottom line. They aim to continue the message "have the poor blame the poor"
This. 100% this. Every damned day. I’ve had customers call corporate because we didn’t have the exact flavor of niche brand dog food they wanted and we went out of our way to try and assist them to the best of our abilities. Corporate puts us on notice about it despite knowing that item is a supply chain issue. And let’s not even get into barely or not enough staff to run the store.
You guys rock. Thanks for talking about this issue. As Beau says “they’re taught to kick down, not punch up”. Let’s punch up!
Oh yeah that "getting written up for trying to help" bit is terrible too.
Every time I've called into a call center, I have always gotten the best results by saying "I don't know what I'm doing, here is what I'm trying to DO, here is what has happened so far. Help?" And that always goes waaaaaay smoother than the way my dad does it; coming in hot and regularly mentioning possible legal action.
Turns out when you're nice to customer service folks, they try to help you out!
Unless they connect you to "Customer Retention", THAT is when I get mean.
That's exactly my advice for people who need help from customer service: be the kind of person you'd want to help, and people will do their absolute best to solve your problem or find you somebody who can.
"Turns out when you're nice to customer service folks, they try to help you out! "
If they can. Sometimes, they're not there to help you - because they're not allowed to or they just aren't given the tools or training. Some call centers are there to sweetly apologize and take the abuse of the callers. Some are trained to flat out lie to you - often unknowingly. And you will never know which type of call center you get when you call. But bless you for trying to be a decent human being.
Also, @Nupetiet nice icon! Power to the people!
Boomers gonna Boom 😂
@@robkoper841 True, not all problems can be solved at the first line or in the way the customer wants, but I've seen plenty of people screw themselves over by using a hostile approach or thinking they can bully or intimidate their way to a good solution
EDIT: Power to the people, and to all the people power
I work for a call center and I appreciate you doing that. The person on the phone listens so sometimes hundreds of people a day and we usually have to get permission from supervisors to do something to escalate the situation to fix it. That’s why we put you on hold. Everything we do is monitored down to the second. Imagine if every single person who calls in is yelling at you threatening your job and calling you horrible names when you have no control over the company’s protocols, the call is recorded and if you say the wrong thing you’ll be fired, and you’re literally trapped in a chair and can’t get away from the abusive person. Everyone thinks they’re the main character understandably but don’t think that the person they’re yelling at may have been yelled at multiple times in the past hour alone - and isn’t making a sustainable wage. We also have no control about them not staffing enough people. I work three jobs.
I have said, in so many words, to several CSRs, that they're on the front lines and serve as a block to keep customers away from the corporate executives.
There's only about a dozen or so executives in any company. How could they possibly deal with every single customers issues? What they should do is have enough staff to cover customer service
@@captainwin6333 but that means paying for more staff which eats into them sweet profits
100%
We preferred the term "Punching Bags". Not glorious or flattering, but honest.
@@captainwin6333 No, they shouldn't pay their employees more. They should get in the damn guillotine.
Awesome to see Ethan present this!!!
But as someone who unionized a Starbucks and is fighting the good fight about it in court now, I try day in and day out to explain to everyone not to fight with one another. They want us to fight each other so they can continue to hoard wealth. It's disgusting. Thank you for this video. I'll be sharing it around!
Whatever happened to the "business roundtable" companies & their "new corporate governance" they all signed saying workers should all get a living wage & good benefits? Did they close your store after the vote?
This, incidentally, is why visiting independent shops is superior to doing business with a faceless corporation whose idea of "customer service" is an automated chat bot.
i work at a local coffee shop and the owner is a bastard just like amazon or walmart
As a young cook, who is in culinary school THANK YOU. When I worked foh I got treated like shit. Now as a cook I just see servers come back and project what is happening to them, to us. Literally had a hostess 2 nights ago try to tell a cook he should have her food because "wtf your job is to stand there and make food, just concentrate and make the food I have a lot going on", this same mentality that somehow WE are the problem, no the problem is overworked/underpaided, we were working a 9 person kitchen on 6 people. During COVID I was a hostess, I hostess 8+ hours a day, alone as well as being the busser, the door dash(etc) bagger, and a food runner, I couldn't even go to the bathroom without a server coming in and asking me to come out cause it was busy. My managers barely ever came out and helped, I got yelled at constantly for trying to enforce masks like I was told to. I asked for a raise, as I was doing the job of 4+ people, and was laughed at. I am at a better place now and working boh (although sometimes that does involve being in front of guests), but until people have respect for customer service/food service we will continue to be underpaid and understaffed. My job is so understaffed, I get called everyday that I'm off, just to see if maybeeeee I'll come in.
Remember, managers have a lot of duties also that the average employee fails to notice. Just like how customers try and put it all onto the customer service rep, the same applies for employees putting all of the blame on management.
@@Ammut6 Difference is - Manager's job is scrutinized only during regular inspections. Back when I was a manager at McD we'd KNOW an inspection was coming hours(sometimes even days) before it arrived, as other restaurants would drop us a call to warn us. It is true, I had a lot of bureaucracy to deal with(depending on my shift - night shift included me being at the register, doing inventory, cooking and doing the books all at the same time), but I trusted the floor employees to do their service work competently, as I'd worked on the floor with them. Using the excuse of "managers have a lot of duties" while simultaneously having said managers scrutinize the polish on the trash bin is bulls*it - if I am busy, wasting my time by wasting other employees' time is counterproductive, nobody does their job AT ALL in that case.
I don’t think alot of people know that direct patient care in health care is a customer service job. As a doc, we actually get graded by the hospital based on our reviews by patients. We could’ve done everything right, but maybe the patient didn’t like my brown skin, immigrant name, or that I look young, or that I denied them opiates. I’ve never been screamed at by anyone more than a patient.
Thanks for sharing, that sounds like an utterly horrible environment to work in. I've seen people being truly awful in the ED of the hospital, how ghastly to have filthy KPIs added to it 😢
To rhyme with your last sentence, I'll leave you all with what I tell people when they query my move from Retail Meat Shield to Janitorial Operative.
I did about a decade of hard labour in customer service before throwing in my name badge and picking up a toilet brush. I have never come across a toilet that was as offensive as a customer. I mean it. I had death threats, verbal abuse, and the most foul smelling humans under the heavens, for minimum wage with varying support from management. Scrubbing some poo out of the bowl, vomit from the walls - even a days-overdue scrub of the men's urinal - I'll take that any day dollar for dollar.
I quit my job in hospitality because I was tired of people trying to fight me all the time…..in HOSPITALITY. And working throughout the entirety of the pandemic with zero relief was outrageous. People are feral af.
Same I don't blame you its only so much you can take...
I make a conscious choice to always be kind to customer service and front line workers. Verizon Wireless overbilled me for something on my last bill and I had to call customer support. I spent probably 45 minutes on the phone with a support agent trying to get to the bottom of it. I was kind, patient, but I did want my problem resolved---basically just a credit on my bill. Because I was reasonable and patient, I got more than what I originally asked for and she even worked with me to maximize all the rebates I could get on my bill going forward.
Funny how being nice makes people actually want to help you.
I swear I can hear them relax and almost cry at the relief at the mere fact they're not going to face verbal abuse
It makes me sad
@@elvingearmasterirma7241 yeah I see that often lately, especially when they have to tell you bad news. They flinch, thinking I'm going to yell and visibly relax when I just shrug it off or thank them for letting me know whatever it is they told me. I also see so many workers just zoned out. You can tell they are completely burnt out from working long hours and dealing with angry people. Just smiling and saying "have a nice day" is enough to change their whole demeanor. It's really disheartening.
@@olandir Im pretty sure they walk away from those jobs with legitimate PTSD
I'm still so shocked that Waffle House fired that worker. She was amazing. She could've earned them so much free publicity if they just handled it better.
Oh they took the free publicity. They didn't go out advertising that they blacklisted her from working there again
It's embarrassing to the company that they are so understaffed so they got rid of her because it highlights their negligence which is actually a dangerous situation for her to work in.
In the "snitch economy" segment you've forgotten a MAJOR component that system generates. It's also used as a justification tool to pay workers less or stagnate their pay. By having a quantifiable metric companies can cite "customer dissatisfaction" (which in a LOT of instances has nothing to do with the actual worker) as a reason to not pay employees more or even cut their pay. As someone who used to work at a call center that is a constant issue. This is why whenever I use a call center service I TRY to patient. Same with going to a restaurant. Although I will say few things made me laugh harder than seeing a horribly understaffed fast food place's employees just walk out in the middle of an afternoon shift manager and all. I know this wasn't "right" for whomever had to cover, but seeing that level of solidarity plus people being fed up with bulls*** just made me smile.
Whenever I get frustrated with customer service I always have to remind myself " they don't get paid enough to give a shit". Then I relax because it's really not their fault but the ones who pay them.
That's so incredibly true. It's funny how many people calling in thought I had any real stake in their feelings, or gave a damn at all when they threatened to cancel service with us.
Clown
Jew
I worked as a CSR for an office supply company and also a uniform/apparel company. Worst years of my life. Constantly insulted by customers and management. I answered such important life questions by people who certainly made more than me such as, how many rolls of film come in the two pack? How many pens are in a dozen? What color is the black file cabinet? Then there was the person who wanted me to fax them a sample of paper. I took nearly 100 phone calls on an 8+ hour shift every day and it was awful. Also, the office supply company committed wage theft and other forms of thievery including against the state where its headquarters is.
"One pair of rolls of film."
"One twelfth of a gross of pens."
"Sorry, but the colour and paper type setting on your fax machine mustn't be working properly."
"Actually, The file cabinet is a very, very, dark grey."
"fax them a sample of paper." when you know people get paid too much to bother to be competant
I have nightmare stories from my time cable/phone/fancy retail credit. But I'll never forget when I worked in solar and a guy called to ask me why his solar system didn't produce energy at night...
Mine was being a server and being asked how big the 6oz steak was 😂. My smart aleck self immediately popped out with "It's six ounces". Was the only time I had someone demand a different server because I was "snotty".
I still have PTSD and often nightmares about my black friday shifts at Best Buy 15 years ago. No one can fight off a pack of soccer moms
Shame you could just have the fire department on call to hose them down.
The place I work views us as an expense to be reduced and not actual people.
Me running almost an entire Wendy’s kitchen on my own knowing damn well I’m here too late, don’t get pain enough, and I’m failing my classes because of this job forcing me to work till 11-12 at night as a 17 year old 💪💪💪
But seriously, I never received job training and I was just expected to take all the lobby orders on my own, make all the fries and nuggets for the lobby and drive through, make any potatoes or chilis, and sometimes I had to make my own sandwiches, on top of packing all the order 🥲
That’s about 5-6 jobs I was doing all on my own with zero training for 11 an hour…
And then when I would take a while to get things done, because obviously, the customers would get so mad at me.
Customers would often throw food back at me if it was cold or not done right, it was awful.
I worked in fast food too when I was 17 and it was bad then, but this sounds like they've made it even worse.
i wonder of the U.S. specifically struggles with this because of how spaced out we are geographically. In France, you could theoretically take public transportation with all of your protesting coworkers or walk to your greedy corps headquarters to protest/riot. In the US, i usually find that the HQ is multiple states away. So you'd have to find people willing to go on the weekends, then organize transportation for everyone, then hope nobody gets cold feet and pray that something actually comes of it. Seems much harder to organize, but i dont know thats my theory of why we dont seem to ever go French on our corporations. We should though, would be a game changer.
Worked at a place that was chronically understaffed and almost got sent home ten minutes after showing up because “labor was too high”. That place now closes in the middle of the day, has a ton of 1 star reviews, and is going down the tubes. Guess that’s what happens when you don’t raise wages til the minimum is raised and intentionally understaff.
Spot on about deliberate understaffing and CEOs using low level employees in customer service positions as shields and scapegoats for the decisions executives make, which low level employees have no say in.
As a Service Worker (Call Center back then; now smartphone repairs), i hate humans for not knowing this.
Working as a cashier at a grocery store was terrible. Not only did we have a time quota for how fast we bagged and scanned items, we had to know where every single item in the store was located.
Once, I got called racist by a woman because I bagged her items "too fast". She accused me of wanting to get her out of my line because she was black and said my smile and friendly attitude was fake. It was a day before the super bowl and the store was packed with people. We only had 3 cashiers and 1 manager all day. I personally must have checked out over 100 people that day. We had 8 registers in total PLUS 4 "express" registers. Only 4 employees. I didn't get a break that day. Or food. I had to work for my entire 8 hour shift without break. So yeah, maybe I was going a little fast and maybe I was a little tired but there were 15 people behind her and the store closed in an hour.
(I know I can't really do this) but I'm gonna use my Race Card and say, on behalf of black people I am so effing sorry. 💀 That's so messy on her part. I don't even touch grocery stores around super bowl time because of how busy they are
Black people are so tiresome.
Whenever I am asked for feedback for customer service reps, I always give them the best ratings because I know that their wages are influenced by them
I worked on call centers for 10 years.... sadly our wages aren't usually influenced by the score. But what is influenced is if we keep a job or not. Too many reviews that aren't good enough (and we're talking you have to try to maintain an average score of something like 8.7/10) and they fire you.
@@anthonydelfino6171 well, in that case, it’s worse and I’m even more glad that I do what I do. My wife has been working in HR compensation departments for almost 20 years in multiple large companies and she just told me that side of it. She isn’t aware of the layoffs/employment side
That lady that threw that soda in the truck of that train horn prank mouth breather is a working class hero.
I had to quit my customer service job because it just became too toxic for my mental health. Back to back calls, angry customers, being unable to actually help, it’s a recipe for disaster.
My mom is almost always the customer angry at a customer service representative, and it's very rarely that employee's fault
I'll never forget being alone in my kitchen during a rush working pizza and deli counter with the phones ringing off the wall. I was so overwhelmed I went to the back hall and screamed I NEED HELP. at the top of my lungs ......I was then reprimanded and told I need better stress management. Let's all laugh together.
Was not expecting to see Ethan here, but glad to. Solidarity.
It blows my mind that anyone would yell at the min wage earning cashier that is not in charge of anything about something not being in stock.
I worked retail for all of my 20s, and I’m finally in a union job…
All of my coworkers are the generation before mine, and they ALL talk shit about retail and restaurant workers, so I have no confidence in any solidarity.
Absolutely. Angry customers just want someone to hear them out, and hopefully solve their issue.
Unfortunately, many times it just isn't possible - the worker simply doesn't have the authority or they can't rewind time.
Often you hear from customers "I know this isn't your fault; this wasn't you" but the customer still levies abuse at the representative. Some people can't even conceive of the disconnect.
_I love the term "snitch economy". Excellent. No self-respecting worker should ever take one of those snitch surveys._
The ultimate goal is to trim labor to the lowest conceivable cost. It's just a disgusting system and it needs to crumble.
We are moving towards a World of booming population with diminishing jobs, and almost zero small business opportunities.
Meanwhile, the rich are conglomerating into private, fenced/walled enclaves. Separate utilities, infrastructure, security, etc.
A two tiered economic hellscape.
Seriously. I work customer service and so often I hear "I know it's not your fault, I'm not blaming you" and just want to yell back "SURE FUCKING FEELS LIKE YOU'RE BLAMING ME!"
Partly true but the population isn’t “booming.” Global birth rates have declined over the past 70 years and population will begin to decline by the end of the century at the latest.
@@LGrian Good. It can only do the planet some good
Its why I always try be as soft spoken as possible and calm. Even when Im grouchy and snappish.
CEOs however? Hohoho id go full karen
And soon they will have an automated & robotic workforce & killer robot bodyguards.
On top of that we (the consumers) are being told, it’s all because we want everything cheaper.
So nobody talks about the CEOs and shareholders actually wanting to become richer.
these are all great points. the intentional understaffing has such a huge effect on everything else though. people become resentful of their customers, their coworkers, and virtually everyone else but the boss. everyone knows the first half of the saying "Don't bite the hand that feeds you" but seems everyone forgets the last half and the more important by far which is "don't lick the hand that beats you"
one would do well to decide if the meal is worth the beating.
Got fired from Amazon corporate for not shitting on my break
I'm a nurse. Nursing used to be a purely clinical role with clearly defined clinical duties. Now we're expected to be customer service workers on top of actually keeping people from dying. I've had coworkers assaulted physically and sexually and I myself have had 2 separate patients threaten to stab me, each time management asked us "What could you have done better?" We're scolded and punished for not answering call lights within 15 seconds even when we're in the middle of a code. And we're expected to be happy and chipper to be more welcoming and friendly. Last year our hospital said that they were going to respond to the constant harassment that we get and find a solution. Their answer was to create a respite room that was an old storage closet with a white noise machine and a $23 bean bag chair.
And that's not even getting into the understaffing. Patient to nurse ratios have been increasing steadily and the number of hired support staff like techs, EVS (cleaning & such), and phlebotomists has decreased. Upper levels just expect nurses to pick up the extra slack for the roles they eliminate to save money. All while we're not getting an increase in pay. It's seriously dangerous to be admitted to some hospitals right now because of how short staffed they are.
When you see nurses striking, it's not because we want more money, the top of every union's list of demands has better staffing and increased measures for employee and patient safety. Usually they only include a yearly cost of living and inflation pay raise when they have anything to do with pay. But the issue isn't always pay, it's the conditions we work in.
People get surprised when they find out how often nurses get attacked and how "why don't you call security?" gets a bitter laugh. You're a badass for staying on the job.
at least lactating people could use the respite room instead of whatever sketchy-ass space they provide now. maybe stock it with a minifridge full of snacks and a phone that direct dials a 24 hour hotline that supports frontline medical staff.
Awesome video, thanks for making it! Definitely need more class solidarity and awareness in America
I worked at a library and even public sector the reality is the same. The issue then becomes getting to the higher ups as a consumer and I haven't seen any solutions for that.
Unions are the answer
@@Praisethesunson Part of the answer, anyhow. You also need something akin to a consumer union as well, as logistically difficult as that would be.
@@RobertStoll Community Ass kicking
Unions only go so far. The public sector, which is highly unionized in some states, has to work within land tax revenue. Most Americans hate paying land taxes and vote them down. They also vote anyone that cuts taxes or anyone that will spend less on various public employees. Elected officials can do hiring freezes.
I once worked at a "customer service" call center for Sprint... through a third party employer. As such, I qualified for NONE of the benefits Sprint had for their ACTUAL employees while doing all the work. Breaks were so sparse that I once peed my pants while handling a call.
13 years in call centers getting 💩 by the companies and customers. Promotions, bonuses, awards, never prevented my position, team or site from being disbanded, Outsourced or laid off. Most recently for Nordstrom credit fraud who wouldn't accommodate me after getting messed up in a pile up car accident. Now I'm unemployed. Good times. I wish I knew how to unionize in a right to work state.
I've never worked a job that wasn't dramatically understaffed.
Its the 1st excuse for 99% of problems that pop-up during work and never once was it addressed.
My retail store used to have one supervisor per department, now we have 1 supervisor per store. Do you know how much work that is? No supervisor in our store has lasted longer than a few months, and the small skeletal crew of 7 people under their command has to do ALL the duties. Including: unloading trucks, organizing palates, Vizpicking daily stock sold, relabeling overstocked items, unwrapping clothes, sorting clothes, stocking GM shelves (which is 11 different departments), carry outs, claims, damages, and customer support. Just unloading a 6,000 unit double truck takes 6 hours, VizPicking another 4, clothing a good 20, and break backs 9. And management wants all this done in ONE day. Insane huh? Again, it’s not only the managers who last a few months at our store. And more than one person has reported health issues within only 3 months- 1 hernia, 2 concussions, 2 gashes that needing stitches, and a couple asthma attacks.
I used to work for a large pharmacy chain, and the whole store was horrendously understaffed. As a supervisor, I was frequently (and I mean multiple times a week) expected to run the store on my own for entire shifts. The company treated its workers like garbage. They even once forced a 17 year old cashier to open the store on her own. Which was against company policy, and I'm pretty sure state and federal law. All so they could keep making profits. I ended up going in on my evening off to go make sure nothing bad happened to her.
This is a legitimate question. How? How do we hold them accountable in our current system?
I'm a 3rd generation US servicemember, who worked in fast food and as a janitor before enlisting. I've worked alongside generals, colonels, diplomats, secret service, and with personal awards to match. After I got out, I worked in retail while I was going to school to make ends meet while on the GI Bill. I got belittled and yelled in front of dozens of people on Black Friday because our store didn't have a plaid hat that was in the sale paper. I just don't get how they think, and why they are that way. It shook me more than getting berated, screamed at, and spit on by 3 drill sergeants at once for having a missing button on my blouse in boot camp. At least they had a purpose, and that was to make me better. We need to unite as a single working class, whether you're on the consumer or worker side, and treat each other with respect.
Thanks for the video. It did offer an angle of making consumers managers that I had not considered before.
I don't mind a little automation, as someone who has worked the majority of their life in CS, most questions are repeats. One of my jobs was answering emails questions and I had some variation of the same question so many times that I had copy/paste template responses. I probably could have been mostly replaced with an FAQ page, and I always go to FAQ pages (when available) first. I only reach out for humans when the answer is not easily available and particularly if it's time sensitive.
All that being said, I am in the unique position of being particularly easily understood by voice recognition. So I can usually get ahold of a person pretty quickly, but I know that isn't common.
Also, running skeleton crews should be illegal. If you don't have enough people to cover *one* person being out sick or with an emergency, you don't have enough people.
The FAQ page is what every company should do, to help save costs on customer service. That, and an addendum to their manuals, for all the information that didn't make the cut when the manual had to be published. It shows that the company is being proactive, and values sharing information with the customer. I always check documentation and FAQ pages online first, whenever possible, and when information that belongs in documentation isn't there, it makes me extremely frustrated. It's often trivially simple things that a worker could go to a warehouse and measure on the actual product, that I need to know in advance as an engineer. A customer-interface drawing made public, goes a long way.
Having a chatbot or automated phone system is the worst. It makes me feel like I'm talking to a non-playable character in a video game, who may offer no substance. The entire reason I'm trying to call or email the company, is that I can't solve the problem without a human's assistance.
Another innovation for customer service that is a win-win, is to have a page on the website that determines the phone number to call the right division of customer service. For instance, if there are 30 different divisions to call, and I need to go through 3 phone menus to find the right one, provide a webpage that lets me select from dropdowns, and produces a phone extension for the team I need to call.
This saves me time, so I don't need to listen to recordings or robot voices give the phone menu options, and it saves customer service time, so I don't accidentally call the wrong division. And then, once I dial the extension and go on hold, just let me listen to the hold tunes on a continuous loop without interrupting with statements of the obvious. Ok to interrupt with estimated wait time that means something to me, but otherwise just play the tunes.
As a teacher, I see this everyday. My students are frustrated and angry with racism, corporate greed, global warming, school shootings, sexism, on and on and they take it out on us. We are buffers for their anger and frustration. And really, what does the world have to offer them low wage work and more oppression and powerlessness. I don't blame them for being upset.
Briefly worked at a waffle house about 6 months ago. It was miserably understaffed to the point where our store manager was pulling 120 hr weeks to cover for other stores not even her own to cover other managers' vacation time. They weaponize the lack of employees to get people to work longer and longer hours till they quit and that creates the shortage of workers that runs the cycle
I work at a privately owned DMV so in addition to pushing papers for the state with no actual benefits, we get the brunt of everything. My life has been threatened over a 50 cent ID card
Aldi is a slave driver. We were expected to do 2-3 times the average retail employees job for a little bit more pay. Then when slow seasons hit we all got cut hours and some of us couldn't afford to live. Eventually I came in after a year of perfect attendance and was told my childhood pet dying 3 hours earlier wasn't a good enough reason to go home early. I had a mental breakdown after realizing how mistreated I was and they ended up firing me and having me arrested. Now I'm on probation and it's insanely difficult to get a job, because even when I do get in the door the background check fucks me over.
Reminds me of when Florida Unemployment deliberately told us to tell people that the website wasn’t glitched and that their benefits were being processed when they weren’t.
Florida literally has one of the most frustrating experiences when it comes to filing for unemployment and the amount of money given is absolutely abysmal.
When you work at a call center and this video describes exactly how your workplace is run and you go ohhhh...
Another one: incentives for staff at the customers' expense. Frontier is now using smaller bag sizers for carry-on bags and if they decide it's too big, they charge you to check it. Frontier is giving the gate agents a cut of every bag they force customers to check (meaning they're wanting to check more bags), and the customers are then taking it out on the flight attendants in flight because they're pissed off. FAA is aware of it, but not sure if they can/will do something about it.
My first week in an affordable housing leasing office, the manager got physically attacked over a $200 deposit that upper management wouldn't return. HR after the attack, said out loud, maybe they should have just gave her her money back when they called the cops on her the first time. Yet a week later, I heard the Executive that made that decision say that property staff at the site have to be clearer, when they take their $200 deposit
I'll grant that this is significantly more prevalent in the service industry but I've been seeing this happen in other businesses for more than a decade. Teams are chronically understaffed for the work load. Management refuses to offer high enough compensation to bring in more workers, so most of the new blood we do get are actually living up to two hours away and commuting. Naturally as soon as anything comes along that is remotely better they jump ship. And then just the other day management decided they wanted to change the metrics for staffing and told us we are actually 33% over staffed now. So yeah I'm looking for work, because even if I don't end up in the portion of workers that get cut, I don't want to be stuck drowning in that much more workload when it was already pretty bad.
I never understood why people lose their shit over things that the workers have no control over. I’ve worked at a grocery store that makes so much money cuz it’s in a rich part of LA and my department was constantly understocked unless some snooty CEO or department boss asshole was coming in. Why only do that for them and not the customers who actually buy something?!
Companies offer endless surveys to customers (& prospective customers) about the products & services offered, but want 0 feedback about changes to their policies.
I've worked for corporate McDonald's in management for 15 years. After working at a warehouse where I became permanently partially disabled and a chronic pain patient due to breaking my body for 4 years; I went to work at Walmart for about 2 years. Everything you're saying in this is absolutely true. When the SMG surveys came out (SMG is most likely the company your employer hires to do the customer service surveys) it was very easy to tell what they were doing. To this day I refuse to fill out those surveys unless they pay me, by filling out those surveys for a good or bad review, regardless you're providing a service to that company for free. They also use those surveys in graphs and charts to see how their company is doing and where it rates with other companies. I have gone to very specific company locations on Google reviews. Not to berate the workers, to talk about the company and how it's operations have negatively impacted my life. For one example, there's a company in my local area that bought all the doctor and health practices that were not operated by the local Med school. This company has made it their policy to not accept private payers or people without health insurance. Given the nature of my disability and how many companies have reduced the amount of workers they hire requiring all employees to have unrealistic work loads. I have not been able to find an employer who can accommodate my restrictions. I have been unemployed for two years and don't have health insurance. Last I did my physical I couldn't get the blood work done to look for things like cancer lipids and blood cells because they stopped accepting private payers. I cannot get health care even if I needed it. They also increased their private payer cost for blood work from roughly $200 to $2,500. I have no idea why they have a private payer cost, but do not take private payers. Thank goodness I have my husband (fiance really we've been together for 9 years). If it weren't for him taking care of me, I'd be homeless right now. Before anyone asks I'll just say it now, yes I've applied for many financial assistance programs as well as disability (SSDI) and medicaid. They've all said no because they look at my boyfriend's income despite not actually being married they still count his income. I'm still currently fighting for disability. The things I could tell you about how sick and twisted Walmart is as well; I refuse to shop there after working for them. Walmart is in part responsible for my disability getting denied because they did not take me out of their system until two years after they let me go due to my disability. Now they holding my 401k holdings because I do not know my start and stop date of hire due to them putting in different dates than the real dates. They also took out a life insurance policy on me to which they wanted me to continue paying for independently; my answer was no. If you use the surveys to talk about how poor the company policies are, your comment will get brushed under the rug quick; I do think it sends the higher ups a message though. The message is, there's people out there that know exactly what's going on and what they're doing.
I've always thought that those who treat workers like shit, never had to do similar labor. Now I realize that many do, they just lack any class consciousness specially in north America
I used to work retention on credit card protection and like bank one or something like that had an automated system that pretty much made you sign up for the protection and people would call me right after getting railroaded and be more angry than anything. I had to make a minimum of 3 attempts to save and had a quota saves. Most soul sucking work I have ever done.
Dude. I worked customer service for about a decade and all I got was social anxiety disorder. Worst part is, your manager will come on up and give the caterwauling, shitting, pissing, spitting, cursing customonster exactly what they want, so they're rewarded for their infantile behavior. I, no exaggeration, really wanted to stop being alive while I was stuck in these roles. When that's your experience, people want to keep hiring you for your experience and it's hard to get a chance to do anything else.
Any business that hire people for customer service needs to include free psychology counseling along with a living wage. Having actually worked customer service, I can safely say that people constantly downplay how much is done and expected in that field.
Ethan! I live for crossovers like this ❤️
Ayyyy another Peethan fan. I've been searching for your comment.
This is actually one of the most important videos from this channel that I've seen awhile (possibly since the Senators and Congressmen involved in insider trading video).
I work with British folks that don’t understand that American service workers rely on tips to live. In Europe they say they have higher base wages and workers give great service so that they get tipped on top of that, but that it’s not expected
I still have nightmares about black Friday at target.
Awesome video Ethan!!! ❤
I work at Lowes and we are constantly understaffed but yet, we have our hours cut leading up to the busiest time of the year, Spring! I work in the receiving department and do the job of 3 people and help take customer service calls. I’m praised for my hard work but see though the bs. I know why it’s a complete disaster but it’s a decent job with decent hours. I also get to see what profit Lowes makes on what they sell (the cost compared to the selling price) and what are 3rd party distributors make and it really pisses me off.
100% this is by design that customer rage and frustration is funneled in the direction of customer service employees. Been this way FOREVER. It's hateful. They have little or no agency in company policy.
Facts: The move towards automated service is the worst. I hate scanning QR codes at restaurants the most.
This is happening in healthcare too. Doctors have long barricaded themselves away from patients, but now you can’t even talk to a medical assistant, you must talk to some non medically trained Vaal center dummy who has access to all your private medical information.
Love to see ethanisonline.
I have absolutely no respect for secret shoppers.
You are 100% right I was in the pizza business for 27 years and I can tell you I had the five most of it to get my bosses to try to understand how important it was to have people to take care of the customer so you can grow a business most people won't go through that but I did it and I the reason why I know it's there because I had to I couldn't be wouldn't allow me into running the kind of numbers that I knew I could to have great service to take care of the customers and still run you know proper whole business so frustrated with that program 20 years so I know exactly what you're talkin about
Sounds legit.
This is why I never write negative reviews whenever I have bad customer service. I'm pretty sure customer service is disgruntled due to internal problems within the corporation. That and it would not make the slightest difference, someone has to work there, even if it's a misanthrope.
I am one of those customer service workers who has to say that certain decisions are “above my pay grade” when callers complain about corporate policies that I literally have no say in. Usually it’s denying a credit for a network outage (carrier redacted) or a free replacement device because they didn’t have a protection plan.
Yeah, whenever I have an issue with a company, I have to wait a day or 2 to calm down so I don't yell at customer service.
While I agree with everything said in the video, it seems like the talking points dance around that sometimes customers are just complete jerks. Most of the bad interactions I've had involve people that just come in swinging over an issue that they created themselves.
Rogue agency can't be discounted.
I worked in call centers for Discover, AT&T, T Mobile, and Chase when first starting out on my own and while going through college, and all of this you say is true. But another thing on top of that which was true across all four companies: if call volumes started to drop and I as the customer service agent started to even just get 45 seconds between calls coming into my headset (also know that you don't answer the phone in a call center, it just answers for you whether you're ready for it or not) staffing would start calling into the managers of employees based off what time their shifts were supposed to end, and just send them home for the rest of the day without pay.
Also another metric all these companies used was how soon after your call a customer had to call in again, because they saw another call in as an indication you didn't properly do your job and would mark that against you, and this would be a window that looked outwards up to 3-4 months. So if I talked to someone today, and two months from now they forgot to pay their bill and called in asking for a late fee to be waived, I was still marked off as not taking care of the customer on my call, even though there was no way I could predict they wouldn't pay their bill on time.
10 years in call centers with 3 big name companies. 2 of which have been sued for millions for corporate decisions and throw that cost and fallout into the lowest paid staff. Crazy stuff.
I worked customer service till I was 35. It's no joke. You may meet some of the kindest people, but you will also encounter the worst of the worst. If I'm honest it taints your perspective about people. You begin to realize everyone is a piece of sh*t and in the end you feel the same about yourself if you do it long enough
And it's all true. "Everyone has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God" and our good deeds are like dirty rags to Him. Only Jesus can save us.
@@jesuslovesyou4400 ok Jesus dude. I didn't ask for your religious opinion. Some of the worst of the worst are christians. So you can go ahead and work on your own self with your religion and the rest of us will treat people kindly because it's the right thing to do religion or not
I'm a thirty something who works both a full time office job and an part-time retail job at a sporting goods store to help save for future expenses. Anyways, I experience the issues this video talks about all the time at the sporting goods store. the store routinely fails to schedule at least one person in each department when closing; and even if they do, it's never enough some nights, especially for our soccer section which is always a mess due to both customer and employee neglect. I still find it funny how a company can make billions of dollars in net income, but to overhaul the scheduling budget and operations for ONE STORE would somehow bankrupt the entire company.
Worked the register at a cheap gas station, which also meant cleaning the john and cooking the food too. A tweaker threatened to shoot up the whole store on Thanksgiving day cuz some old guy bumped into him in line
at every job i’ve worked, the store was nearly always understaffed
I hate how someone has to tell people, still today, that it’s out of the hands of the person you’re talking to. This seems so obvious.
Thanks. I always felt that this is what is going on. You confirmed it.
My first EVER and current job at Aldi in Poland, I'm a cashier and I ought to do and manage several tasks during my shifts - making sure it's all clean, the price labels are correct, the display of all the products are all up to display standards sent by the central management, that also being bake-off, fruit, vegetables, other food and non-food products...
And all of that while being understaffed, having no self-checkouts and being often heavily critiqued by the customers who STILL THINK everything is up to us, the lowly workers, like price changes, and we get yelled at for absolutely ridiculous things...
Makes me feel so hopeless and beyond sad of being mistreated like this...
When I worked at a call center, I ended up getting pulled aside because I had been completing calls in the preferred time they had told us we needed to meet. As it turns out, I was skewing the metrics which was making the other folks on my team look bad to the system, even though they were doing above average work. Management told me to try to slow down by making smalltalk...but I already had been using smalltalk alongside the script they have us follow. They also tended to throw us into the meat grinder at such regularity that I suspect it was an intentional method of weeding out workers to keep staff numbers low. There's no winning.
I worked in Customer Service. Basically, I made it my view that I would be the customer's guide through the hostile maze of company policies that stood in their way. They monitored everything, from handling times, schedule adherence, first contact fix (customers not calling again), adherence to script, sales (we were supposed to make an upsell attempt every call), etc. I overperformed by 30-80% on literally everything, except my handling times were like 20% slow. I was also consistently in the top 5% on sales. They canned me for not improving my call times.
Whenever I call a large company now, I just hang up and call again repeatedly until I get somebody who sounds like they are willing to fight the company together with me, and are not filing their nails waiting for the day to be over. That, plus a bit of empathy and honesty goes a LONG way.
Dang. I never did consider that. I usually with some customer service is that I can never get a straight answer out of them. 100% of the time they are foreign and I am confused by their whole set up
Customer service exist to sponge up corporate's failures and mistakes. There is a reason why it's so difficult to contact business HQ because they don't care about customers and they hire walls of bodies in hopes to not have to deal with them.
GoPro (ordering via internet) stole from me.
I ordered $1k worth of camera supplies and when i got my package 4 items were missing. It was all the 4 items i ordered multiples of, so i thought it was back ordered at first. I used the online contact system immediately because asking them for a call back did nothing. All that ever happened was multiple run arounds using the online live chat with people saying they would look into it but never did anything. You could never access them by phone or email, only the website live chat with foreign agents (broken english typing). I am still pissed. It's ridiculous.
I tell customers every time they complain about customer service being outsourced and I'm like yeah just an unfortunate side effect of capitalism
And they don't have the slightest idea what i mean
I will never fill out any of those surveys now after hearing this.
Wasn't expecting to see Ethan on this channel (pleasant surprise)
Faaact
I remember working at McDonald's during the shutdown as an essential worker at $7.25 an hour. Para pa pa pa.
I’ll never complete another business survey again! No greenbacks, no comment!!! Businesses can bloody-well take responsibility for their own management, who do they think they are anyway!
thank u for having ethan is online wouldn't have found this great channel otherwise
Skeleton crew on trains , Hospitals, safety issues in order to increase profit