Report: Samsung.com’s exploitative chat system makes employees work for free

The customer service chat is a staple of most online stores. Instead of launching a phone app, figuring out which number to dial, and waiting hours of waiting, the chat system’s response time is usually much faster. The design of these systems can be pretty gruesome for the workers behind them, and The Verge recently published an exposé of what it’s like to be a chat rep on Samsung.com. History paints a picture of an exploitative system that forces employees to work for free.

At the top of this article, you can see what Samsung’s chat system looks like. In just a few seconds, the “Chat with an Expert”window appears on the Samsung.com home page, and with one click, you are connected to a person. This pop-up appears on almost every page of the Samsung website, and at first glance, it looks like a customer service line. A report from The Verge says that it is in fact a system of all-salespeople who work “commission only, no hourly pay.”If they don’t sell, they don’t get paid. On closer inspection, the wording “Chat an expert to hear about our top deals”easily communicates the selling intent behind this pop-up. However, it’s not hard to imagine that most users will see it as a line of customer service,

Technically, these employees don’t need to process customer support tickets, they aren’t trained in customer service, and they won’t get paid to chat with customer support. However, none of the people visiting Samsung.com are aware of this. White papers instruct sellers not to respond to customer inquiries, but instead direct people to the Samsung support page and close the chat. The catch is that customers can also rate sellers after this interaction. Employees tell The Verge that giving up free customer service results in lower satisfaction rates, and low satisfaction rates lead to termination. Employees say they are also being encouraged to make those free support calls to both Samsung and its partner in the chat venture, a company called “Ibbu.”

Even what should be days of big sales doesn’t always add up well for the Samsung-authorized chat workers. The report said the Galaxy S22 launch was “built up like it was Christmas”for chat reps, but Samsung’s website was down for most of the launch day, so sales reps couldn’t make money.

Samsung.com has a support chat system, but it only appears if you specifically go to samsung.com/us/support/. The support chat looks like a different chat system, and because it’s worried about overloading its staff, it starts with an automatic help menu before it connects you to a person, unlike sales chat. Samsung can connect the more famous sales chat system to this support system when users call for support. Samsung can proactively ask users in a chat popup if they are looking for sales or support (and this will actually reflect how most corporate phone systems work). However, if Samsung did any of this, it wouldn’t be able to get its sellers to work for free.