Samsung.com sales reps are allegedly being made to work for free
If you visit Samsung.com in the US, you’ll notice that the product pages have an option to chat with an expert. These sales reps are not actually working for Samsung, they’re contracted through a staffing agency called Ibbu. According to a new report by The Verge, these reps are being made to work for free.
These reps initially signed up to sell Samsung phones and other products to customers who use the chat option on Samsung.com. The report mentions that they are now having to deal with customer support requests without being paid for them.
Sales reps are now having to handle customer support requests
The expert chat options are placed quite prominently on the product pages on Samsung’s website. The idea is that customers can seek guidance from these experts who can answer their questions and provide additional information before they make the purchase.
These sales representatives are independent contractors who are paid on a commission-only structure. This means that they only make money when they make a sale. They don’t get an hourly rate. So even if they chat with customers for several hours but nobody buys anything, they don’t get paid.
The report mentions that initially customer service requests were not routed to these reps. They weren’t there to help customers with product or order support, warranty inquiries, etc. They were just there to sell them products.
Now, the sales reps are increasingly being provided unpaid customer service chats to handle by the automated chat system. Both Ibbu and Samsung have allegedly encouraged these independent contractors to convert customer service chats into sales.
The report goes into a lot more detail about the behind-the-scenes workings of the expert chat system. You should definitely check it out if you’re curious to learn more. Samsung declined to provide the scribe with a comment for the story.
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