eBay's "Phenomenal" Customer Experience: Who Are They Trying To Convince?
Fresh off his appearance on Forrester's The CX Cast, eBay VP Global Customer Experience Derek Allgood continues making the rounds this week on Shep Hyken's Amazing Business Radio podcast to spill the "Secret To eBay’s Phenomenal Customer Experience
Hyken took bits of the interview and repurposed them to publish as a Forbes contributor, revealing some very interesting details, like the fact that only 10% of eBay customer service issues ever actually make it to a support rep!
Shep Hyken
Allgood oversees a team of more than 7,300 worldwide who deal with 350 million requests from 45 million customers each year. But, that’s only 10% of all customer service issues. Ninety percent of questions, complaints and issues—approximately 3.5 billion customer interactions—are handled digitally through self-service support. That’s a lot of customer support!
Hyken provided other highlights from the interview as well, discussing how corporate culture, the right employees with the right training, and tools like automation and AI technology come together to supposedly make the eBay experience "phenomenal" - not just for eBay's customers (buyers and sellers), but also for their frontline support personnel.
Culture: Building the right culture at eBay means a strong focus on people and a clear vision and purpose. Employees quickly learn that how they positively interact with a customer is more important than efficiency, but if done right, you still get efficiency...
The Right Employees, Properly Trained: eBay is looking for the right employees who not only serve customers but also listen to customers. Employees are supported with extensive training to understand where customers are in their journey, what’s gone wrong and more...
Automation and Technology: Part of eBay’s success in automated or self-service customer support is its investment in a system that accelerates the speed of helping customers reach a resolution in the easiest and most efficient manner...
Many of these talking points line up with Allgood's Forrester interview, with both segments touting eBay's supposedly "people-centric" customer service philosophy that also heavily relies on AI, automation and self-service - concepts that appear to be diametrically opposed and, often, mutually exclusive if you ask many of eBay's actual customers.
Liz Morton
eBay SEO agency List Rank Sell said it best - and I completely agree - in many years of engaging with users of the platform, "phenomenal" is not a word you'd typically expect to hear when discussing actual experiences with the company's support offerings.
From the @eBay WTF File:@Forbes article by @Hyken inexplicably refers to eBay's customer experience as "phenomenal".
— List Rank Sell (@listranksell) October 28, 2024
Perhaps Shep should have talked to an actual customer -- like a seller -- before choosing that word.
LRS Note: Yep. We're back.https://t.co/2lrOQ1hLwh #eBay
It does feel like something deliberate, and there are a lot of reasons to speculate as to what is behind it.
— List Rank Sell (@listranksell) October 28, 2024
We can honestly say that not a single client in the past 11 years has ever described eBay as phenomenal. Quite the opposite.
Chief Growth Officer Julie Loeger amplified the interviews on LinkedIn, again in both cases calling attention to eBay's increasing use of AI for support functions, which doesn't exactly line up with the "people-centric" framing.
Contrary to the corporate spin, many sellers are not thrilled with being foisted off to self-service online chat bots or having phone conversations with conversational AI instead of human agents.
Liz Morton
But that doesn't seem to be stopping eBay from going forward with plans to have even more support functionality handled by machines instead of people - for example the company currently has several open job positions in this area, including:
AI Business Systems Analyst - "help define new and improved customer self-service experiences that harness the capabilities of an AI-driven, conversational voice platform to deliver an exceptional customer experience."
Sr. Product Manager, Digital AI Chat Bot - "responsible for defining our long-term Conversational AI strategy for Help and turning it into phenomenal customer experiences, every step of the way."
I guess we can see where Shep got that word now.
Another job ad for a Principal People Technology Analyst shows eBay is also revamping some of their internal workings for HR/"people experience" management - bringing in new solutions from SaaS company Workday, which is not surprising since Workday CFO Zane Rowe joined eBay's Board of Directors earlier this year.
Interestingly, both of Allgood's recent podcast appearances spent more time talking about eBay's "people-centric" internal philosophy as it applies to their customer service operations rather than how eBay engages externally with their actual customers.
With references to how much eBay cares about the physical and mental wellbeing of their employees, having a department dedicated to helping employees achieve their maximum potential and improving internal communications amongst stakeholders, these podcasts seem more like an HR pitch than something intended to address buyer and seller concerns.
From social media influencer collaborations to exclusive content deals with major media outlets owned by the New York Times, eBay has made no secret of their strategy to "foster relationships with key media....placing executive profiles, bylines and high-level speaking ops that further the company narrative."
Liz Morton
With that in mind, any time an eBay executive starts popping up on traditional or new media outlets with a clear set of repeated talking points, it raises the question - what message is eBay really trying to send and to whom is that message directed?
In that light, the focus on corporate culture, internal communications, and employee wellbeing starts to make a lot more sense.
eBay undertook a mass layoff at the beginning of this year that cut ~1,000 roles, with sellers worrying that customer service could be heavily impacted by the reduction in force with AI being used to pick up the slack.
Liz Morton
That move came after eBay's 10-Q filing in July 2023 revealed the company had incurred $12 Million in increased customer support costs in the first half of 2023, which I speculated at the time was a one-off expense as eBay was deploying more automated and AI driven support systems with the hope it would drive future cost savings.
CEO Jamie Iannone and CFO Steve Priest have expressed a newfound focus on "expense discipline" in recent earnings calls and investor conferences, confirming they had been deploying more AI into their global customer experience (GCX) operations and crowing about no longer having to pay customer service reps to read detailed explanations of business impacting issues from sellers before responding to their requests for help.
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.
Many sellers would likely agree this increasing erosion of support is fundamentally changing things at eBay, but not for the better - and one has to wonder how frontline customer service reps feel about it too.
On the subject of corporate culture, the continued operation of an on campus pub serving free beer and wine at daily happy hours has called the company's priorities into question in light of layoffs and cost cutting measures - not to mention the role this pub and an alleged "hard drinking culture" played in the 2019 cyberstalking scandal that targeted journalists Ina and David Steiner of EcommerceBytes with harassment and stalking at the hands of high level eBay security personnel.
Liz Morton
As part of a deferred prosecution agreement signed with the Department of Justice regarding the multiple federal felonies committed by their employees, eBay is now subject to 3 years of enhanced compliance monitoring, which includes reviews of Mergers and Acquisitions risk.
Liz Morton
M&A and labor relations have been a heightened concern for eBay (and its investors) since acquiring collectible trading card marketplace TCGPlayer in 2022, leading to the sudden departure of eBay's Chief Accounting officer when due diligence concerns about the deal were raised as well as the establishment of the first unionized workforce in eBay history.
Liz Morton
TCGUnion-CWA has continued their now year plus long fight to get eBay to bargain in good faith and agree to a contract, filing multiple complaints with the National Labor Relations Board along the way.
The company has also recently undertaken an "investor recommended" indepedendant Values Assessment, aimed at determining if they are living up to the principals of their published Human Rights Policy - which includes, among other things, respecting the rights of workers to organize.
Liz Morton
TCGPlayer sellers have also organized around efforts urging the Federal Trade commission to investigate the acquisition, alleging eBay's aggressive moves to consolidate their position in the trading card and collectibles industry have resulted in a substantial loss of competition.
And at a time when eBay is clearly feeling both external heat from regulatory and legal bodies as well as possible internal morale issues, they've promoted Aaron Johnson to be the company's new Chief Ethics Officer - despite the fact that in his previous role at the company he was the main recipient of the infamous "Whatever. It. Takes" email from ex-Chief Communications Officer Steve Wymer, revealed in the cyberstalking case.
Given the criminal events that occurred following this email, it would appear that neither Johnson nor then Chief Legal Officer Marie Oh Huber took action in their respective positions to make sure eBay's head of security, Jim Baugh, handled executive "frustration" within established legal bounds or reported this troubling and highly inappropriate communication from Wymer through any of the internal compliance or ethics channels which existed at that time - or, if they did, then those channels clearly failed.
How are current employees supposed to feel knowing this is the person who may ultimately handle any internal reports or complaints they may have?
Also, as many big tech companies have undergone mass layoffs in the last year, they've increasingly been subjected to scrutiny of hiring practices, particularly around H-1B visas - could eBay find themselves under the immigration microscope soon too?
Bernadette Walker
All of that brings us back to the question - just who is VP Global Customer Experience Derek Allgood hoping to reach with his "people-centric" message?
Is this PR campaign orchestrated to subtly assure investors that more "magical" AI-powered cost savings are on the way while trying to minimize human employee panic at the prospect that more jobs could be cut in the near future?
Or maybe it's a reaction to the not yet publicly released results of that Values Assessment and/or trying to counteract TCGUnion-CWA's efforts to bring attention to low wages and unfair treatment on the job as eBay's focus vertical strategy that leans heavily on authentication services has changed the company's previously asset-light business model to include more labor-centric, physical warehouse-based operations.
Either way, this customer service message clearly isn't really meant for eBay's actual customers - but that doesn't mean buyers and sellers shouldn't be paying attention to how more AI and automation and the current state of eBay employee morale might impact their user experiences on the site.
