shopDisney laying off 115 employees (mostly part time) and outsourcing to third party for guest services.

[LittleBuford]

You are one of the rare few.

And that's fine! I'm in no position to question others' experiences.

 

[Brian]

You are one of the rare few.

Indeed. I wouldn't say there's anything wrong with the service provided by overseas call centers simply by virtue of them being overseas (taking jobs away from the home country's population aside). It's when the contracted company's hiring and retention standards are not in alignment with the company they are supporting that things get hairy.

Things are made far worse when the contracted companies rely on algorithms to take away decision-making authority from the customer service rep themselves, leading to objectively worse customer service when the computer decides your situation is not worthy of a proper resolution. This happens all the time with Amazon, and the reps are left powerless to do anything to help the customer. They can only click on the prompts based on what the customer is saying and hope the computer gives them the resolution the customer wants.

The upside for the contracted companies is they can hire less resourceful people, and therefore save even more on labor, by outsourcing the "thinking" to a computer, and just having the rep say what's on the screen to the customer. It's not quite that bad yet, to be fair, but it's getting there.

 

[larryz]

...and therefore save even more on labor, by outsourcing the "thinking" to a computer, and just having the rep say what's on the screen to the customer. It's not quite that bad yet, to be fair, but it's getting there.

One would think that every Amazon customer service call would be answered by Alexa then.

 

[Brian]

One would think that every Amazon customer service call would be answered by Alexa then.

Eventually, that could very well be the case. They still need humans to understand the nuances of natural language and input the customer's concerns into the computer.