eBay VP Derek Allgood Touts "People-Centric" Customer Service On Forrester CX Cast
eBay VP Global Customer Experience Derek Allgood stopped by the Forrester CX Cast podcast this week to discuss people-centric customer service - a concept many of eBay's customers believe the company has strayed too far away from with AI and automation.
The CX Cast
The hosts started with the usual pleasantries, asking Allgood to describe his role at eBay and how he defines the word "customer" in the context of that role.
We have loads of passionate and dedicated people all over the world whose sole mission here at eBay is to make things easy for customers, make things better and intervene when we need to help out. To create great experiences.
And, as I said, we're a different sort of platform. We think we're special in terms of connecting people. And so how we create those experiences is what I'm responsible for...
...So how do you define customer in this context? We really think about it obviously in terms of buyers and sellers, but in terms of connecting those buyers and sellers.
The big difference with us, as opposed to other big names that everybody knows, is we're not competing with our customers. We really are the connection point for customers.
Oh dear, it appears while CEO Jamie Iannone has finally gotten the memo about dropping that old line about eBay not competing with sellers, the message has not filtered down the ranks or across the pond to Ireland yet.
While the veracity of that statement had been questionable for many years, it has been demonstrably untrue since at least August 2023 - when eBay set up shop on their own site under the name of owned-subsidiary TCGPlayer and began selling collectible trading cards in direct competition with 3rd party sellers.
Liz Morton
When asked about balancing people versus tech and the role of conversational bots, generative AI, and other automation in customer service, Allgood had one word in mind - optionality.
We see it as optionality and the thing that we're really mindful of is that lots of companies get really excited about new shiny things and new shiny technology and deploying it all over the place.
We think of it a little differently. Gen AI, automation and self service are additional options.
If your query or your need is simple, and it can be answered simply and quickly, there are lots of consumers...getting service online and we obviously are an online marketplace. It's a natural part of what we do.
We want to have that offering there, but where there are complications, where there are questions and especially where there are multi pronged sort of issues that customers are dealing with, those are best handled by people.
And back to what we were talking about a minute ago. It is variable and you're constantly saying, where do we want to offer self service or automation versus assisted? I think it will continue to evolve as we get better with technology and the use of emerging technology.
I do think more options will be available, but part of our strategy is to make sure that when you need it, that we are there, as humans.
Unfortunately, actual eBay user experience shows that far too often, interaction with bots and AI self-service is not optional and is in fact the only avenue available for a variety of issues, with no ability to speak to a human when needed.
eBay's 10-Q filing in July 2023 revealed the company incurred $12 Million in increased customer support costs in the first half of 2023, but frustrated sellers wondered where it all went as the support experience continued to go downhill - specifically calling out the lack of callback options and increasingly being routed through labyrinthine automated phone menus or online self-service resources.
At the time, I speculated that $12 Million increase was due to eBay deploying more automated and AI driven support systems with the hope it would drive future cost savings.
The situation has only gotten worse since mass layoffs early this year impacted roles all across the company, including global customer service.
CEO Jamie Iannone even bragged about the changes at the 2024 Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference, telling investors that eBay no longer having to pay for human customer service reps to read detailed explanations from sellers about business impacting issues before responding to their requests for help is "fundamentally changing the pace of innovation" at the company.
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 email, write the initial response. So it's fundamentally changing our pace of how we work and the pace of innovation.
Many users would likely agree this increasing erosion of support has fundamentally changed things at eBay - but not for the better.
More recently, sellers have reported trouble getting through to customer support and being sent around in AI automated circles due to apparent "call routing issues" and while some have been happy to see a new "Have Us Call You" support option popping up in Seller Hub, others worry it may be connecting them to AI voice service rather than a live human being.
Liz Morton
Sellers who pay extra every month for Anchor & Enterprise stores also report increasing difficulty receiving the dedicated Concierge customer service they are supposed to have, leading to questions about whether they are getting their money's worth for the store subscription fees they pay.
And of course that doesn't even touch on the many problems that occur when AI and automation take the place of humans for critical policy enforcement, trust and safety roles.
Liz Morton
Interestingly, Allgood also talked about people-centric measures eBay takes internally from supporting customer service agents' physical and mental health.
...so lots of metrics around our culture internally and how we're doing and how people are feeling. Lots of forums in terms of taking feedback,creating even new roles whereby we have people who are specifically geared against supporting our frontline and their health and wellbeing, mental health, physical health, financial health...
He also touched on working with stakeholders across the company to get front line agents the information and resources they need to do their jobs well and provide high levels of service to eBay's customers.
What we did two years ago, I think, is actually starting to make stakeholder relationships part of our goals.
So as part of the Global Customer Experience goals, we said, what can we do to improve internal relationships? And where do we spend our time growing those relationships?
It sounds so simple, but it really has been key in terms of how we decide we want to show up internally.
Nobody wakes up and says, I want to do a terrible job today. I don't wanna work with my colleagues. You know, all of us want to go in and do well. So we just were really deliberate about it....
...Product is very important to us. Payments is very important to us. The way we support our brand, the way we support growth. Those are the key relationships that we focused on, but there are others that we will continue to grow.
Better internal communication would be huge for unlocking eBay customer service wins, but unfortunately it is still a major source of struggle and frustration for users and front line agents alike.
It's truly embarrassing how often some massive technical issue will be in progress, with eBay's own community forums being flooded with reports, but front line social support or phone agents are completely unaware there is even a problem for hours or sometimes even days.
If Allgood wants to see just how broken the lines of communication really are, he just needs to spend some time browsing the community forum or preferrably, meeting with the community team and really listening to the pain points they face on a daily basis when trying to get answers to customer questions.
The eBay community experience has been going downhill for years, first moving a weekly general topic chat with staff to a monthly limited topic event, then discontinuing the monthly chat for sporadic and occasional "Ask Me About" sessions.
Liz Morton
The Community team tries their best to address customer questions and concerns both during designated chat events and general daily forum posts, but they are often handcuffed by internal procedures and roadblocks, unable to do anything except "pass the information to the appropriate team" where they often get no follow up answers for weeks or months, if ever.
The most recent "Ask Me About eBay Ads" event was a perfect example of everything wrong with the current state of internal communications with many questions waiting a month for answers and some never receiving any response at all.
Liz Morton
As someone who has put in my fair share of time both in front line support and managing ecommerce customer service operations, I can imagine the stress levels amongst eBay front line service agents who bear the brunt of user frustrations while not being empowered with resources and internal support to actually help customers resolve issues.
If eBay really cares about the well being of these crucial employees and the experience of both their buying and selling customers, permanently fixing those internal communication breakdowns and bottlenecks should be priority number one - right along with kicking the AI automation to the curb and investing in highly trained and empowered human support to provide truly people-centric experiences.
What questions or suggestions do you have for eBay's VP Global Customer Experience, Derek Allgood? Let us know in the comments below!
