Spending long wait times on the phone and playing transfer tag can feel like the seventh layer of hell. Additionally, having to wait on a phone call that can be dropped at any moment isn’t any fun, either. And having to share certain information, or spell out your name and address, is frustrating via voice.
This is where text customer service chat clients can come in handy. You can easily tab between whatever work you’re doing on your computer to provide necessary details. Furthermore, the rep on the other end simply can copy-and-paste whatever information you sent their way. It can be an easy way to communicate, especially if you know your way around a keyboard shortcut or two.
What’s lost via text communication, however, is that personal touch. But that doesn’t mean some folks don’t try. Like this Best Buy service worker who, while assisting a customer tried asking them how they were doing.
Unfortunately, however, it seems like communication breakdowns can occur, even in a text chat.
Happy that you’re not
Reddit user @llmercll posted a screenshot of their chat interaction with an employee of the chain to the site’s r/Bestbuy sub. Judging from their conversation, it appears that the redditor was concerned with the arrival time of an item. Their conversation transpired as follows.
Redditor: Yes if it can arrive by Christmas. Thank you.
Best Buy Agent: Got it. While I’m on it would you mind me asking how’s your day?
Redditor: I’ve been better lol.
Best Buy Agent: It’s nice to hear that.
The Reddit customer shared their thoughts on the interaction with a blunt commentary in the post’s title. “D*mn, Best Buy.”
Reading this interaction, one may assume that this commentary wasn’t made with any ill intent. After all, it isn’t uncommon for contract overseas call centers to staff its service reps positions. If English isn’t someone’s first language, it’s unfair to expect them to understand certain phrases or colloquialisms.
Best Buy customer service reps
Numerous employees who’ve worked as call service reps for Best Buy have commented on their time there. One former remote employee for the chain based out of New York described an overbearing work environment. Citing upper management’s obsession with metrics, the Indeed poster stated their team’s performance was under constant scrutiny.
Moreover, their assessment of their employment with Best Buy indicated that the chain does indeed hire overseas service reps. “We are constantly being compared to our overseas workers, with us being the slackers.” They stated that these juxtapositions were ultimately untrue. And that recent operational changes were what ultimately made them dislike the job.
Furthermore, another Reddit user in a separate post in the r/BestBuy sub opined about overseas call centers. According to their experience, these reps often shared misinformation with customers. Then, when shoppers would enter the store or call a location, they’d reference incorrect data. Ultimately, the brunt of consumer anger would fall on store employees.
The blog WAH Job Queen has referenced in the past that Best Buy was recruiting remote call center employees. A summary of the post delineated expected job responsibilities. These included modifying and canceling orders along with customer appointments. Fielding responses from patrons and escalating issues was another expectation of the job.
Damn, Best Buy
byu/llmercll inBestbuy
Redditors respond
One person in the aforementioned Best Buy sub shared their own experiences with overseas call center workers. “They’re bad bad bad. I remember when they nixxed in store phone ops and outsourced during COVID. I would hear chickens etc in the background it was entertaining and sad.”
Another said that oftentimes these service reps seem fantastic. However, they ultimately over-promise and under-deliver. “Of course their NPS is great. They tell the customer whatever they want to hear. The customer takes the survey immediately after the call, thinking that all their problems have been resolved: 10’s all around! Then they come to the store, find out we don’t provide the service, get mad, and the local store takes the hit.”
And users who responded to @llmercll’s post said that they shouldn’t be surprised by the reply. “It’s just a copy paste response from someone who barely know conversational English,” one said.
Someone else joked that it wasn’t a person on the other end of the chat at all, however. “AI didn’t learn empathy yet.”
There was another user on the application who wrote that they too received a similarly unsympathetic reply. “Told them about my hospitalized child and got a similar response.”
The Daily Dot has reached out to Best Buy via email and @llmercll via Reddit DM for further information.
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