Is Customer Support The New Plantation?

A group of black, brown, and white employees in a conference room with laptops.

Before we get to the good stuff, there are a few things I want to make clear.

These are MY thoughts and opinions. I gathered my opinions from observing the world, talking to people in these roles, and reading industry stats.

I think that the barriers to entering tech have lowered, however, as the barriers have been lowered, the cracks in the foundation have been exposed even more.

I am NOT dissing the employees of the company that works in these roles. This isn’t their fault at all.

Now let’s get started!

As a Career Coach and a person that truly loves tech in its many forms, I speak to a ton of folks in tech or transitioning into tech every single day.

If they have been in tech for a while, most of the time they are in Customer Support.

Customer Support in the tech industry is usually when you are “speaking” (through phone calls, live chat, and/or support tickets) to get help with technical issues. Sometimes this includes billing, fraud, etc.

Customer service is the act of supporting customers through a host of things, like billing issues, product issues, etc. Customer Service doesn’t have to be tech-based.

I’ve noticed that many of the folks in Customer Support aren’t white. And if they are white, they are more likely to be Managers, Directors, VPs, etc.

Many of the non-white groups typically get into tech through Customer Support and/or Customer service.

This means they are dealing with all of the anger and frustration from customers. They are also usually subjected to verbal abuse, lack of support from their team, unrealistic KPIs, and more horrific things.

They are the least paid in the company.

They also get the least amount of mentorship, training, and promotion opportunities, even if they do have experience in other fields, like Product, Marketing, and Leadership.

They also get the least amount of grace when it comes to making mistakes.

They also don’t get the same benefits as other departments, such as mental health days, unlimited PTO (without strings attached), paid cross-training opportunities, or when the company participates in whole out-of-office days, they are still expected to work.

Why is it that non-white employees are always tossed into the hardest jobs in tech?

It’s kinda an easy question to answer.

This keeps happening because companies don’t have the options to force people into free labor anymore and this is the closest they can get to that type of history.

IFYKYK.

It’s giving plantation energy and that is never good.

How can we fix this?

Easy!

1. Diversify your company. If you have had loyal employees that have worked in customer support their entire time in your company, promote them to another department! Make sure your leadership is a diverse mix of folks from various backgrounds, education, and experience.
2. Invest in proper cross-training and upskilling.
3. Divide the support department. There is no reason why your support department should be the catch-all for everything. Creating workflows that allow for support tickets to go to the proper departments FIRST would be ideal.
4. Pay them. Pay them well. Support is usually the first interaction a customer has with your company after paying for your product or service. Happy support department= a happy customer= increases revenue with ease.
5. Stop forcing non-white people to go through support as a requirement for them to be considered for other roles. That’s literally racist. Example: A Black developer should NOT have to work in customer support for a year to be considered for a developer position.

If we don’t fix this, we are going to have more folks working in support.

In fact, many of them will quit to start their own companies, where they will underpay their teams, not provide training or support, and force them to work holidays all while reaping the benefits and $$$.

And become the new slavemasters.

Oh, wait. That’s already happening.