I work for Apple in AppleCare chat support, and recently leadership introduced a new feature!
When a customer stops responding they now become “inactive” and we get another customer. Then when the inactive customer responds, they become “active” again and we continue supporting them.
Up until this feature was added I usually only worked with 1 customer at a time, sometimes 2. Now we’re constantly working with 2+ customers at a time, usually 3-5 bouncing between active and inactive. 2 was always fine but anything over that is very overwhelming.
My peers are crying at work and quitting or moving to phone support. We had an organization wide town hall, and leadership ignored all of our concerns about this feature and stated that it isn’t going anywhere. Nice!
I’ve personally submitted an ethics complaint to Human Resources and encouraged others to do the same. I don’t see how it’s ethical to expect an employee to talk to 3+ customers at a time. It’s so overwhelming.
I went from being indifferent about my job to hating it. I now am using intermittent leave because it’s worsening my mental health issues.
Just thought I’d share my experience working for Apple! When you chat in be patient with us, as we’re probably talking to 3 other people in addition to you 🙂