this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2024
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A Boring Dystopia

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by that i mean, those are intangible, effervescent parts of a human being that should not be quantized down to a fucking amazon star system. the 'anything less than 5 stars is actually bad' thing is disgusting as well - all modern companies do this.

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[–] Siethron 6 points 6 days ago

These practices are discriminatory against people with social anxiety.

We would have spoken up sooner, but, you know...

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Having had this rating determine how well I was doing at my job really sucked!

Its a carrot that's dangled on a stick tied to your back, you can never reach the carrot on your own, the metric is completely out of your control.

I only ever got scored badly during outages or when people were upset about something that the service didn't do, so my overall rating was good, but even with 10 5 star ratings, it just takes 1 4 star to ruin that.

The customer correspondence rating (CCR) for our department was 4.64. That basically means that anything that isn't a 5 is bad.

If you got a 3 and below, a team lead and a "quality" engineer would have meetings with you to correct what you did wrong.

Whenever I have to rate things now, if the person wasn't a complete dickhead, I rate 5.

[–] DaneGerous 3 points 5 days ago

The entire purpose of anything less than 5 stars is bad is to screw employees out of bonuses and commission bumps. That is the only purpose. They do not care if a 1 star was someone accidentally clicking wrong but leave a message stating how great you were. Middle management MBA hacks will use every trick to screw the employees out of money.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

That basically means that anything that isn't a 5 is bad.

Having only 5 is statistically impossible

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

The system is designed for punishing all employees. The rating system is only used to(and designed to) shift blame from employer to customer.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I don't quite agree, the metrics were designed to be out of your control, with the only way to meet them being doing more work than actually necessary and to always attempt to deliver the best work.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

This metric is result of human interaction and because of its nature it is subjective. There will be people who do not like your voice, appearance or existance.

[–] hexdream 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

As someone who is directly affected by this system, I do want to say it is a vast improvement over the previous system they used.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

How has it changed? When I left, the CCR was 4.64, which then got upped to 4.67 a few months later. It was AWS tho.

[–] hexdream 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

There used to be a focus on yes the agent solved the problem, or no they did not. Having a high yes rate was important. The normals stats like call handling time still apply. But there is.more focus on actually helping the customer and really solving problems as too many people were gaming the system to look good. It better aligns with my person approach to support so I'm quite happy until it changes again . The change started a few months ago. Very recent along with other agent facing changes.. typing on a mobile and tired so please forgive obvious mistakes.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago

I'm glad that it's gotten better, and that you're finding it aligns with you more! I hope they keep making improvements to it.

[–] CarbonatedPastaSauce 52 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Easy solution- stop using Amazon. It’s easier than you think. I don’t miss it.

[–] tattletaletimes 34 points 1 week ago

Ya I find frequently I can order the product straight from the manufacturer's website for the same price or cheaper than Amazon. No Bezos middle man.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I only use it to order DVDs sometimes. I can't buy them in English (original) locally, and shipping from UK is generally cheap, just slow. And we're also region 2.

576p, yes, but I like DVDs, and physical media is the only way I plan to purchase movies.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago

I don't have a BluRay drive.

Also DVD protection is fully compromised.
BluRay is still very much relevant, and so is its DRM. I don't really understand the used system, something with AACS keys that can be revoked. This gets updated on the drive itself, and the list of keys to be revoked is distributed on BluRay discs itself.
All I know is the end result is that after inserting a newly released BluRay, it's possible you won't be able to play some older ones without updates.

Seems this can be mitigated by backing up the VUK of each disc until the keys are revoked: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Blu-ray

But anyway, to me it just sounds like an unstable system. One day you can watch all your collection, the next day after watching a new movie you just get "AACS Host Certificate Revoked" error.
The only sure way would be ripping the discs, but hey, might just pirate it at that point.

Oh, and I am not even talking about HDCP on dedicated BluRay players. Whoops, your TV doesn't support HDCP, buy a new one!

[–] douglasg14b -3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

I love how "easy" solutions are just the ignorant ones...

If it was so easy then everyone would abandon Amazon one might retort.

Researcher questionnaires are bog standard contact center kpis. You're going to find it at Amazon, damn near every other app that you use that provides customer support, and just about every service and utility you also use that provides customer support.

Is this a good thing? No, of course not, but this has very little to do with Amazon and rather the industry as a whole. Literally any other big box retailer that you would go to instead of Amazon is doing the same thing, even small businesses that are outsourcing their support to in country contact centers are doing the same thing.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (2 children)

It's easier that some think, but it is not easy. Of course it is more convenient to just keep using the thing you are already using, and no one is saying that clicking one button and getting a package the next day can't be a time save, just that it is not impossible or extremely difficult to stop using the service.

And retail businesses with physical locations definitely don't do the exact same thing as Amazon, given that you can go to the store to get your item as opposed to needing it delivered.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

This is a customer service form, it might not have much to do with buying a physical product, the point the other commenter was making is KPIs (ratings based on client feedback and other factors like handle time) are extremely common in customer service roles and phone support roles for many types of companies, pointing to a industry standard as a reason to drop Amazon is a silly reason because then to be consistent you would need to drop basically any other company with a phone or chat support option, because they basically all have surveys and directly rate the support person based off of those survey repsoness, usually in a way that is "anything less then 5 stars is bad"

[–] CarbonatedPastaSauce 2 points 1 week ago

Laziness is what keeps them in business.

[–] CarbonatedPastaSauce 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Which department do you work in at Amazon?

Never seen any other retailer ask me to grade someone on their empathy. But keep calling people ignorant while having regular discussions, you're sure to win lots of friends that way. Classy.

[–] douglasg14b 1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Nowhere in my post did I even say anything positive about Amazon, I literally explained this as an industry phenomena... I work in this industry and exposed to this sort of stuff daily.

I do software engineering and data science for contact center software, I'm literally the expert on this topic in this comments section, talking about this. 🤦

Google, AirBnb, Amazon, Verizon, Blue Apron, Red Bubble, T-Mobile, GameStop....etc all contract out their contact center needs, almost every single company you interact with on a regular basis contracts out their support staff to a small handful of contact center companies. And all of these companies tend to operate effectively the same, and this is bog standard stuff.

This means that the call center practices being complained about is an industry problem not a problem with a particular company, Amazon in this case.


Accusing me of astroturfing as a way to dismiss my credibility and then claiming some sort of moral high ground is extremely toxic. I even explained that this isn't a good thing, yet somehow you completely missed that.

I explained in my post, fairly clearly. I suggest you reread it instead of stopping at the first sentence. It's clear that media literacy really has went downhill.

But unsurprisingly commenters like you like to jump to conclusions without actually understanding the words written in front of them. And instead of actually arguing the point resort to personal attack instead.

Don't be a dick.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 week ago (1 children)

How about: customer service was dissatisfactory but I don't blame the representative?

[–] BarbecueCowboy 2 points 6 days ago

Probably doesn't matter. Having worked similar jobs in the past there's usually a question along the lines of how you feel about the company overall and if you answer negatively the whole survey counts against them and it sometimes only takes 2 or 3 of those in a month for them to get fired.

Turnover is intentionally exceptionally high and employees aren't usually treated that well. Pay was pretty great comparatively at the time though.

[–] rez_doggie 5 points 1 week ago

I always rate to the max unless they are dismissive or just a jerk. Then they get zero.

Alot of places give bonuses for good scores