What Should We Make of JD Customer Service Staff Insulting Customers?

Over the past few days, many internet users have reported being insulted by JD customer service staff, and screenshots have been circulating online.

Let's leave the other issues aside for now and first discuss JD customer service staff insulting people.

I have had some experience with customer service work. One feature of this job is that you have to maintain a good attitude, because customers' ratings of customer service count toward a store's service score on the platform. The platform's own customer service staff also have corresponding assessment systems.

So customer feedback is tied to customer service staff's performance. Good reviews may bring them no particular benefit, but if there are many bad reviews, they are very likely to be reprimanded and have their pay docked.

This creates a particular feature of customer service work. A representative deals with many customers at once and develops a conditioned reflex: every sentence begins with “dear” and ends with “sweetie.” However unhappy they feel inside, they have to keep their attitude in line with their position.

This is also why customer service is a job better suited to women: women can more easily say a great many syrupy things—most of them insincere—without feeling a ripple inside. (Womanizers can do it too.)

Customer service workers absorb a great deal of resentment. Whether the problem is product quality or delivery, customers do not care about the distinction. They direct most of their anger at customer service staff, generally because they have no other channel.

For example, sellers of women's shoes and clothing on Douyin commonly have return rates of 60%–80%. Their customer service staff therefore face enormous workloads and many unreasonable demands.

Actually, calling them unreasonable is not quite right: they are reasonable. To sell things in a Douyin livestream, you have to deceive people. Without deception, you get no traffic. Without traffic, you cannot make money. But once you deceive people, someone is bound to come demanding an explanation—and all those questions and curses fall on customer service.

So in a company's row of customer service desks, the screens are full of “dear” and “sweetie,” while beyond the screens there is an endless stream of complaints.

Now JD has reportedly introduced a policy under which poor customer service reviews from these few days will not count toward the final performance assessment. If that is true, it is not hard to understand why JD customer service staff are insulting people.

From the above, we can summarize the reasons JD customer service staff are insulting people as follows:

1. Customer service is already a highly stressful job full of resentment. Many staff normally want to curse at people; they simply do it offline, where you cannot hear them.

2. With JD now facing this public relations incident, senior management has failed to step forward, resolve it, or provide an explanation. Many consumers are therefore demanding membership refunds and withdrawing money, suddenly adding a great deal to customer service workloads.

3. This produces two results. First, each representative's workload increases, making them more resentful. Second, JD transfers people from other departments and may even hire temporary staff to do customer service. How could these people have the psychological resilience of regular customer service staff? Naturally, they are even more resentful and more likely to erupt.

4. Customer service is already a predominantly female occupation. With such a large female workforce, there will also be many women who idolize celebrities and dislike men. They already resent ordinary yet overconfident men, and a situation like this only makes that resentment stronger.

5. JD's senior management has announced that customer service reviews from these few days will not count toward performance assessments—or so I have heard. Many representatives have therefore let themselves go. What they previously cursed about verbally offline, many now simply send out in writing. Whatever the consequences, actually saying it feels good.