EBay outsourcing

MomandPopCardShop

Has anyone had any experiences dealing with the eBay outsourced customer service on duty nights and weekends? Here is a shining example. We shippied an item via global shipping program, tracking shows delivered to their headquarters. Non receipt case opened overnight and escalated within 1 minute (supposed to have 7 days to respond) Case found in buyers favor one hour later. Now we get to waste time appealing. Yippee.

elsnorto

eBay outsources all of their front line customer service with the primary call centers being in Utah during days and Manila during nights. Both have some great, experienced Agents and some not-so-great, inexperienced/apathetic Agents.

It isn't uncommon for onshore call centers to have annualized attrition above 50%. It isn't uncommon for Philippines (and India) based call centers to have annualized attrition above 100%. At anything above 33%, it becomes a real challenge to build up the experience required to consistently handle decision based tasks efficiently. In response, many organizations implement "decision trees" and a series of scripts.... but if your issue deviates from the tree/script, you are screwed until you get an experienced and empowered Agent.

Unless your issue is very straight forward (to the Agent, not you!), the key is to get to a senior Agent ASAP. If I suspect an Agent isn't fully understanding the issue I will thank them for their assistance, tell them the issue is unusually complicated, and ask to speak with a Supervisor who may have encountered it before. Explaining the issue over and over, trying to put it in a different way that will magically make them understand, is about as productive as talking to BBG about Auction Houses vs. eBay.

Snorto~

MomandPopCardShop

Thanks for a very informative reply Snorto, after 1/2 hour on the phone, the 3rd agent (in Utah, finally) I got knew what he was doing and reversed the stupid decision.

zurbs17

I usually call in the evenings and 90% of the time I end up asking for someone that can speak English. I mean no judgement in that request I honestly cannot understand most of the employees that take my calls.

theump

I must be the only person who deals with ebay and for the most part have great experiences witht them. I don't think I have ever gotten an overseas representive and for some reason when I call in it seems I keep getting the same people who are very helpful.

Yes, things haven't always gone my way, but i would say my overall level of satisfaction is very high. Same with Paypal.