eBay Tests New "Have Us Call You" Support Option; Sellers Worry They May Be Talking To AI
eBay appears to be testing a new option for sellers to access customer service via phone with a "have us call you" pop up now showing in some areas of Seller Hub - will it provide easier access to human support or shuffle users to AI?
Sellers who noticed the change are discussing it in the eBay community forum, expressing cautious optimism that it could mean eBay is finally reversing course on changes that have reduced the availability of phone support since the pandemic.
While eBay has at various times in the past had the option request a callback, it isn't always available or accessible and sellers who have encountered this pop up say it's something they haven't seen before.
Just saw this a moment ago as a pop up on my main page on eBay! Hope this isn't just a temporary thing. It will potentially be a great help for everyone, sellers & buyers both!
It's interesting...many companies are appearing to upgrade their CS. I had to talk to my cable company the other day and the person who answered told me they were located in the Detroit area, unless they were b sing me. However they were very helpful, so kudos. Hope it's a positive here on eBay. Here's hoping anyway. It's long over due.
The option currently only seems to be showing in some areas of Seller Hub, like the Manage Drafts page and the odd way the pop up menu overlaps on top of other menus for Reports seems to indicate there may be some bugs in the coding - which unfortunately is not uncommon when it comes to eBay testing.
Other sellers were more skeptical, believing it's likely this call feature may route users through AI systems rather than connecting them directly with well trained and knowledgeable human support reps.
Yes, I just assume this is Ai chat that provides you with information. Not a real person.
I'll withhold my opinion to see what type of help is being offered. If it is just an easier/quicker way to get bad advice, I'll pass.
Here is what you will get. You will be talking with AI and the answers you will get will be the Kool Aid in the office.
Folks, eBay is not going to help you. Their sole purpose is to take as much money from you as they can. The warm fuzzy you feel thinking you are getting help is just that a warm fuzzy. This from a 24+ years Seller having sold millions on the site. This site is not sustainable.
That's certainly an understandable sentiment as eBay has made no secret out of their increasing use of AI for critical support, trust and safety functions that were previously handled by humans.
Liz Morton
eBay's financial reports showed a $12 Million increase in customer support costs in the first half of 2023, with much of that investment going toward deploying Interactive Voice Response (IVR) and other automated systems.
CEO Jamie Iannone even boasted about the use of AI for customer service at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference earlier this year, saying he "feel[s] lucky to be CEO of this company right now with the generative AI technologies that are coming to fruition" and that no longer having to pay for human customer service reps to read detailed explanations about business impacting issues from sellers before responding to their requests for help is "fundamentally changing the pace of innovation."
eBay deals with a lot of customer support between buyers and sellers. And that customer agent sometimes had to read like a 12 paragraph e-mail where somebody explained it, we would hire someone to read that.
Now we have AI read that e-mail, write the initial response. So it's fundamentally changing our pace of how we work and the pace of innovation.
And just last month, sellers reported being sent in an endless loop of automated AI circles when trying to call in to access the dedicated concierge support they are supposed to receive as part of their Anchor or Enterprise store subscriptions in a snafu that eBay later labeled a "routing issue" - was that an early test of this AI call system gone wrong?
Liz Morton
Meanwhile, some employees who escaped the most recent mass layoff in January have seen their job titles morph from "customer experience" and "content creation" to "AI architect" tasked with "deploying AI to revolutionize CX", indicating eBay has no plans to backdown on the march toward more AI and automation across their global customer service operations.
eBay is also currently looking to hire Conversational AI IVR Developers, with the explicit goal to "orchestrate the integration of sophisticated telephony and CTI systems" and develop "a suite of tools that not only solve immediate customer issues but also anticipate future needs through predictive assistance."
Clearly, whoever wrote this job ad hasn't spoken to a lot of actual users to measure the level of "delight" over these developments.
I've yet to meet a seller who is happy about the direction eBay support has taken over the last year and "delight" is certainly not a word many users would likely associate with the experience.
Have you tried this new "Have us call you" feature for eBay support and if so, did you get a human on the phone? Let us know in the comments below!
