@lucy_farmer wrote:
CS blow my mind, they really do. On any other site this sort of 'inventiveness' would be laughed out of business......
[There's a TL;DR at the end of this post!]
Oh, if only that were so, Lucy! I'm not letting eBay off the hook here - far from it - but I've personally experienced atrocious customer service on the phone or live chat from many companies and organisations, mainly credit reference agencies and energy firms. When I say "atrocious customer service", I'm talking about rudeness, indifference, inability to understand the issue (and/or a clear unwillingness to get to understand it), inappropriate or plain incorrect advice, advisors apparently having a coffee break or a chat with their colleagues while I wait "a couple of minutes" for a response, being asked to repeat information already provided (some companies' live chat forms require you to type your question/issue before you start the chat - which you do, only for the agent to then ask "How can I help you today?")...
And, of course, the thing that really shows you how much your custom is appreciated - the agent terminating the live chat or hanging up on you before you've even finished (I've often been mid-sentence - typing or speaking - when this has happened). I'm never rude, shouty or sweary when dealing with customer service staff - if I were, that would understandably be justification for the agent to summarily terminate the conversation. No, they've ended the chat/call simply because they could not or would not handle the enquiry, or perhaps they wanted to take another enquiry to keep up with their targets.
I've experienced all of the above with eBay customer service. I've never been fortunate enough to get the Irish call centre, it's always been staff with a generally poor standard of English. The language barrier is a huge obstacle in itself, not to mention what is often a hard-to-understand accent (when on the phone). Just to be clear, I'm not denigrating the staff themselves for not having good English or for having a strong accent, that woud be a disgusting attitude. I'm simply making the point that employing such people for scenarios where a good command of the language is a prerequisite (and, surely, customer service is one such example) is a bad choice on the part of the company itself. Intelligibility is only part of the equation, though; regardless of their command of English, CS advisors need to actually be interested in providing good CS, i.e. in doing what they are being paid for. The general public perception of CS call centre work appears to be that it is generally low-paid and not particularly attractive, which might explain why so many staff - in my experience, at least - think it's fine, nay funny, to gaslight, misinform and even mock customers, and to prematurely cut off contact before the customer is ready to. Everything's about numbers and targets - quality of service seems to be an irrelevance.
If you've only experienced abysmal customer service from eBay, and not from other companies as well, I'd say that you've been very lucky! Conversely, I seem to have been very unlucky in having gone through this so many times with so many companies (indeed, unlucky in having had so many issues that necessitated contacting customer services in the first place). As I said, though, I'm not defending eBay's poor CS, merely pointing out that bad CS is indeed prevalent among many other companies. Therefore, I don't share your astonishment that a multi-million dollar company cuts costs by using cheap outsourced CS centres. I wish that I could share your astonishment - I wish I could say that eBay appear to be unique in having sub-par customer service. But I can't!
It beggars belief how CS agents - eBay or otherwise - get away with a lot of the stuff they do, especially providing demonstrably incorrect advice/info and summarily ending the chat/hanging up. Who is monitoring all this? Who is ensuring that the agents are polite, well-trained and stick with an issue until it's resolved (or pass it on to a more capable person/department)? The answer seems to be 'nobody'. It appears that hitting targets of calls taken is the only thing the agents need to worry about - otherwise why would they even dare to do a lot of the things mentioned above (especially prematurely ending the live chat/phone call) knowing that all these interactions are recorded (and, often, supposedly monitored)?
I've often had chats/calls with an outbound CS centre in which it's become increasingly apparent that the staff are not only totally disinterested in helping me resolve an issue, but are simply taking the mickey out of me, presumably just for kicks - there has been no other plausible explanation for some of the utter tripe I've been fed to see if I swallow it.
For instance, I forget the specific problem, but it was something to do with being unable to log in to my eBay account. The agent told me that my laptop needed to be physically near the location I was at when I first created the account. At first, I thought I was getting the wrong end of the stick, but no, the agent repeated this 'advice' (but, if course, could proffer no explanation as to why I had to be near wherever I was when I created my account twenty-odd years ago). By this point, it was clear that they were just having a laugh at my expense.
I wish it were an easy matter of voting with your wallet, and only giving business to companies with a decent level of customer service, although even that decision is fraught with problems - you usually don't know what a company' CS is like until you actually need to engage with them, by which point you may already be tied into a contract. People's perceptions vary, but more importantly their experiences vary, often widely. I may be having no end of problems with Company X's customer service department, while Bert next door can't sing their praises highly enough. That means that reviews are not necessarily an accurate indication of what one's own experience may be. Things change over time, too. I once switched to Octopus Energy on personal recommendation and on the basis that they had an easily contactable UK-based CS department, but recent interactions have led me to strongly suspect that they are now using offshore centres (as well as the UK one, thankfully, not instead of), probably to handle all the extra customers they've taken on in recent years.
The other problem with the notion of voting with your wallet is that, as the practice of employing cheap outsourced CS 'labour' becomes increasingly common (as it certainly seems to be), the pool of options grows ever-smaller
Going back to eBay specifically, we have no choice but to put up with their poor CS. Okay, technically that's not true - as others have pointed out (obvious though it is), nobody is forcing anyone to use the platform at all - but to all intents and purposes, if we wish to remain on eBay we have to put up with woefully inadequate levels of customer service.
Another problem I've experienced on several occasions (again, with reference to eBay, although it has happened with other companies) is the function to receive a chat transcript not working. So, unless I've had the foresight (and time, given how keen agents are to move on to the next hapless soul) to copy the text myself, Ive been denied the opportunity to have a record of the conversation.
This post is long enough as it is, so I'll end here. There's plenty more I could add about poor CS generally, and about eBay CS specifically, but I'm winding myself up now, as typing this has reminded me of just how many teeth-gnashingly frustrating interactions I've had with various CS departments over the years. I may add more if someone responds specifically to this post
I'll just add that, when I read a comment on these boards saying that eBay's CS were great (seldom, but it happens), that's when I feel astonished!
TL;DR Yes, eBay CS is, for the most part, brain-meltingly poor - but poor CS is far from exclusive to eBay.
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