5 ms·

Airbnb invents a call center that isn't hell to work at

53 points by zt 12y ago

zorrb 12y ago
All this really proves is Airbnb knows how to get press. Article should be titled, "Here are pictures of new Airbnb office". It looks cool, will be interesting how it can scale. The concept of, "not the worst place ever in the world to work" call center isn't some magical break through. See Zappos, booking.com etc.
- makomk 12y ago
  According to someone in the comments it doesn't have to scale - almost all of the call center work is subcontracted out to standard call centers with the usual sea of cubicles, awful working conditions, etc.
  - jordanthoms 12y ago
    So it's _not even a call center_. This is very impressive - as a piece of PR.
- kmfrk 12y ago
  Wired has been Press Release As a Service for a long time. Not that they don't make great articles, but that just makes it worse in lending those articles legitimacy.
jodrellblank 12y ago
“In a typical environment, the cubicle is your world and the rest is the company’s world, and they’re very territorial about the cubicles. We wanted to evaporate that territorialism and turn it into a collective place.” How does that read to anyone else? "People really want an anchoring personal space and lol they can't have one"? This article has nothing about working there, as the title claims. A call center that's not hell to work at - what about the work? Call time target pressure? Lack of access to information or power to change anything? Things people complain about.
sandstrom 12y ago
Looks really neat! I guess this happens when the company is run by 2/3 designers. It's interesting how vocation for people in charge can cause large differences between organisations (and even countries). This article have some graphs comparing countries: http://www.economist.com/node/13496638 http://www.economist.com/node/13496638
codezero 12y ago
I am really curious about this, are there any Airbnb folks here who could connect me with someone on their support team to chat about their approach?
zachrose 12y ago
> “Someone will be on a call, and you can see it’s difficult and another agent will sit next to them and listen in and give feedback while the call is happening,” Harvey says. And as much as the CX team is encouraged to solve problems in a hierarchy-free setting, “it’s a default that you ask at least one person how you might solve that problem,” Yu says. As far as I can tell, this is the deliberate opposite of how most call centers are designed. Most call centers prioritize leaving your neighbors alone so that they can get better stats. I wonder if Airbnb's metric-taking also has this approach in mind.
personlurking 12y ago
I see call centers more as for people who need a job rather than for people who are good at sales. Having worked inbound sales a decade ago, I was on the lower end of the stats board regularly but they continued to keep me on. Although one example, it told me they didn't much care about the lower end people as long as they had higher end closers. A bit like VCs, they invested in many, as long as they got a few hits, here and there. On a side note, living in Portugal, it was odd to learn that call center jobs are the de-facto go-to job for foreigners and the jobless. Overwhelmingly so.
- icebraining 12y ago
  On a side note, living in Portugal, it was odd to learn that call center jobs are the de-facto go-to job for foreigners and the jobless. Overwhelmingly so. Absolutely. And everyone's hired through a temp jobs company, often on a monthly contract (so you can be "let go" for any reason without any compensation).
- paulojreis 12y ago
  > On a side note, living in Portugal, it was odd to learn that call center jobs are the de-facto go-to job for foreigners and the jobless. Overwhelmingly so. Yeah, it's cheaper for the companies* to hire call center operators than to solve their clients' problems. *Not saying telcos, but of course telcos. :)
conradfr 12y ago
It's a call center but nobody seem on the phone on those pictures. I worked at the (former) Dublin PayPal call center and it was cubicles but certainly not "hell". Maybe I prefer sitting in a good desktop chair with two monitors rather than dozen of "cool" but less comfortable places ? But sure, great pictures, interesting design.
nodata 12y ago
...yet.
hwh 12y ago
I've been working in a call center (tech support for a pay TV company) for two years - and it wasn't hell to work there. It became later, I heard, months and years after I had left (no causal connection). The reason is plain simple: The amount of money that customer relations should cost. When I was working in said call center, it was policy that customers should have a fulfilling experience if at all possible. We were allowed to make and schedule call-backs and these were actually done. We were small case-managers, honest ones, as our possibilities were quite limited - as in most situations with first-level support. There was no "maximum time" rules. No high-score lists for the number of requests handled per hour. Policy changed later. A "2 minute" rule was established. Feedback talks by team leaders were set up where it wasn't strictly followed. High-score like lists were put up. Tech support was encouraged to sell stuff, like bigger contracts - and the "top ten" scorers on the contract-offer list got rewarded.
deanclatworthy 12y ago
It's mentioned as "concierge" in the beginning of this article, and AirBnb talk a lot about their safetly blanket for when you get into trouble, but for me it was not there. We had just arrived in an apartment in Paris and the owner had had a friend leave us the key. I went to have a shower, and the water was ice cold. There was no hot water in the whole of the apartment. The apartment owner was unreachable as he was (it turns out) in the middle of the Pyrenees, and nobody could help us or fix it. We called AirBNB highlighting that it was the new year period. No good or fairly priced apartments in a central area were available for us to switch to, no hotels would have fair prices at this short notice and we didn't want to spend our short new year break even doing this in the first place. Their solution was to offer us a refund and then we were on our own. If we left the apartment we'd have no internet access to look for another place (there was of course nothing worth switching to within our budget). They couldn't even offer us hotel suggestions. Hardly the great concierge service that they advertise.
- smelendez 12y ago
  That's a tough problem. What do you think the proper solution would have been? I think personally I'd want to stay in the apartment and wash with water heated on the stove and get a partial refund, but I'm sure that wouldn't work for everyone for a variety of reasons.
  - peteretep 12y ago
    Book them alternative accommodation and pay for it. I would guess it happens rarely, is a huge PR win for them. I buy almost everything with Amazon because I feel I trust Amazon to make things right like that without question
    - busterarm 12y ago
      Having been in a few not-great and weird situations after making purchases on Amazon, they've come through for me with a stellar performance every time. Better than any other company I've dealt with, though AMEX is almost on-par. Really, their (buyer-side) customer service is fantastic and same with AWS. I'm not sure I'd want to be selling through Amazon though.
pjc50 12y ago
Relevant to this subject is an excellent trio of blog posts on the "politics" of the call centre: http://yorksranter.wordpress.com/2012/01/21/the-politics-of-call-centres-part-one/ http://yorksranter.wordpress.com/2012/01/21/the-politics-of-... It describes how the traditional call centre is riddled with process anti-patterns which demoralize both the employees and the customers. The reasons for this are based in the deskilling and disempowering of customer service employees, allegedly in the name of cost reduction. This leads to exactly the problems described in this comment right here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8766637 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8766637
swange 12y ago
Great work.Got this recommended by the Browser and it didn't disappoint.

53 points by zt 12y ago

zorrb 12y ago

All this really proves is Airbnb knows how to get press. Article should be titled, "Here are pictures of new Airbnb office". It looks cool, will be interesting how it can scale. The concept of, "not the worst place ever in the world to work" call center isn't some magical break through. See Zappos, booking.com etc.

makomk 12y ago
According to someone in the comments it doesn't have to scale - almost all of the call center work is subcontracted out to standard call centers with the usual sea of cubicles, awful working conditions, etc.
- jordanthoms 12y ago
  So it's _not even a call center_. This is very impressive - as a piece of PR.
kmfrk 12y ago
Wired has been Press Release As a Service for a long time. Not that they don't make great articles, but that just makes it worse in lending those articles legitimacy.

jodrellblank 12y ago

“In a typical environment, the cubicle is your world and the rest is the company’s world, and they’re very territorial about the cubicles. We wanted to evaporate that territorialism and turn it into a collective place.” How does that read to anyone else? "People really want an anchoring personal space and lol they can't have one"? This article has nothing about working there, as the title claims. A call center that's not hell to work at - what about the work? Call time target pressure? Lack of access to information or power to change anything? Things people complain about.

sandstrom 12y ago

Looks really neat! I guess this happens when the company is run by 2/3 designers. It's interesting how vocation for people in charge can cause large differences between organisations (and even countries). This article have some graphs comparing countries: http://www.economist.com/node/13496638 http://www.economist.com/node/13496638

codezero 12y ago

I am really curious about this, are there any Airbnb folks here who could connect me with someone on their support team to chat about their approach?

zachrose 12y ago

> “Someone will be on a call, and you can see it’s difficult and another agent will sit next to them and listen in and give feedback while the call is happening,” Harvey says. And as much as the CX team is encouraged to solve problems in a hierarchy-free setting, “it’s a default that you ask at least one person how you might solve that problem,” Yu says. As far as I can tell, this is the deliberate opposite of how most call centers are designed. Most call centers prioritize leaving your neighbors alone so that they can get better stats. I wonder if Airbnb's metric-taking also has this approach in mind.

personlurking 12y ago

I see call centers more as for people who need a job rather than for people who are good at sales. Having worked inbound sales a decade ago, I was on the lower end of the stats board regularly but they continued to keep me on. Although one example, it told me they didn't much care about the lower end people as long as they had higher end closers. A bit like VCs, they invested in many, as long as they got a few hits, here and there. On a side note, living in Portugal, it was odd to learn that call center jobs are the de-facto go-to job for foreigners and the jobless. Overwhelmingly so.

icebraining 12y ago
On a side note, living in Portugal, it was odd to learn that call center jobs are the de-facto go-to job for foreigners and the jobless. Overwhelmingly so. Absolutely. And everyone's hired through a temp jobs company, often on a monthly contract (so you can be "let go" for any reason without any compensation).
paulojreis 12y ago
> On a side note, living in Portugal, it was odd to learn that call center jobs are the de-facto go-to job for foreigners and the jobless. Overwhelmingly so. Yeah, it's cheaper for the companies* to hire call center operators than to solve their clients' problems. *Not saying telcos, but of course telcos. :)

conradfr 12y ago

It's a call center but nobody seem on the phone on those pictures. I worked at the (former) Dublin PayPal call center and it was cubicles but certainly not "hell". Maybe I prefer sitting in a good desktop chair with two monitors rather than dozen of "cool" but less comfortable places ? But sure, great pictures, interesting design.

nodata 12y ago

...yet.

hwh 12y ago

I've been working in a call center (tech support for a pay TV company) for two years - and it wasn't hell to work there. It became later, I heard, months and years after I had left (no causal connection). The reason is plain simple: The amount of money that customer relations should cost. When I was working in said call center, it was policy that customers should have a fulfilling experience if at all possible. We were allowed to make and schedule call-backs and these were actually done. We were small case-managers, honest ones, as our possibilities were quite limited - as in most situations with first-level support. There was no "maximum time" rules. No high-score lists for the number of requests handled per hour. Policy changed later. A "2 minute" rule was established. Feedback talks by team leaders were set up where it wasn't strictly followed. High-score like lists were put up. Tech support was encouraged to sell stuff, like bigger contracts - and the "top ten" scorers on the contract-offer list got rewarded.

deanclatworthy 12y ago

It's mentioned as "concierge" in the beginning of this article, and AirBnb talk a lot about their safetly blanket for when you get into trouble, but for me it was not there. We had just arrived in an apartment in Paris and the owner had had a friend leave us the key. I went to have a shower, and the water was ice cold. There was no hot water in the whole of the apartment. The apartment owner was unreachable as he was (it turns out) in the middle of the Pyrenees, and nobody could help us or fix it. We called AirBNB highlighting that it was the new year period. No good or fairly priced apartments in a central area were available for us to switch to, no hotels would have fair prices at this short notice and we didn't want to spend our short new year break even doing this in the first place. Their solution was to offer us a refund and then we were on our own. If we left the apartment we'd have no internet access to look for another place (there was of course nothing worth switching to within our budget). They couldn't even offer us hotel suggestions. Hardly the great concierge service that they advertise.

smelendez 12y ago
That's a tough problem. What do you think the proper solution would have been? I think personally I'd want to stay in the apartment and wash with water heated on the stove and get a partial refund, but I'm sure that wouldn't work for everyone for a variety of reasons.
- peteretep 12y ago
  Book them alternative accommodation and pay for it. I would guess it happens rarely, is a huge PR win for them. I buy almost everything with Amazon because I feel I trust Amazon to make things right like that without question
  - busterarm 12y ago
    Having been in a few not-great and weird situations after making purchases on Amazon, they've come through for me with a stellar performance every time. Better than any other company I've dealt with, though AMEX is almost on-par. Really, their (buyer-side) customer service is fantastic and same with AWS. I'm not sure I'd want to be selling through Amazon though.

pjc50 12y ago

Relevant to this subject is an excellent trio of blog posts on the "politics" of the call centre: http://yorksranter.wordpress.com/2012/01/21/the-politics-of-call-centres-part-one/ http://yorksranter.wordpress.com/2012/01/21/the-politics-of-... It describes how the traditional call centre is riddled with process anti-patterns which demoralize both the employees and the customers. The reasons for this are based in the deskilling and disempowering of customer service employees, allegedly in the name of cost reduction. This leads to exactly the problems described in this comment right here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8766637 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8766637

swange 12y ago

Great work.Got this recommended by the Browser and it didn't disappoint.