On April 14, The Verge published a story about how Samsung’s “expert customer service” was pushed by Samsung and human resources firm Ibbu to do customer support without a base salary. Although more than a dozen experts were interviewed in the report, only Jennifer Larson was willing to be named in the report. The day after the report was published, Larson received an email saying she was temporarily suspended with a follow-up in a week.
She was fired from Samsung more than four weeks later. Human resources firm Ibbu said in the letter that after reviewing Larson’s activities on the platform, Ibbu had determined that there were grounds for terminating Larson’s work on the platform.
Larsen’s use of the Ibbu platform for personal communication violated Ibbu’s policies and, in this case, also led to complaints from other community members. In addition, disclosing confidential information about the Ibbu platform on social media and encouraging visitors to view links or content of third parties directly in the chat is a material violation of policies and agreements and constitutes grounds for termination of the agreement.
But Larsen wasn’t the only employee fired by Samsung, with two other experts saying they were terminated from Samsung Mobile’s “mission” after speaking to the media. Another expert was also fired. Before they were fired, the specialists were selling Samsung phones. In theory, the job involves logging into Ibbu’s system when they want to, answering questions from people who have clicked the “chat with an expert” button on Samsung’s website.
Testimonies and evidence from some of those now-fired show that the system was not working as intended. Instead of having customers trying to decide whether to choose the S22 Plus or the Ultra, experts often find themselves dealing with support questions from people who have issues with their phones or orders. To make matters worse, the experts only get a commission, which means they’re extremely unlikely to get a penny for answering a support chat. Still, despite their contract saying they shouldn’t answer support questions. Answering the support line is one way to improve customer satisfaction, according to a Samsung employee.