Airbnb invents a call center that isn't hell to work at

The concept of, "not the worst place ever in the world to work" call center isn't some magical break through. See Zappos, booking.com etc.

When I was working in said call center, it was policy that customers should have a fulfilling experience if at all possible. We were allowed to make and schedule call-backs and these were actually done. We were small case-managers, honest ones, as our possibilities were quite limited - as in most situations with first-level support. There was no "maximum time" rules. No high-score lists for the number of requests handled per hour.

Policy changed later. A "2 minute" rule was established. Feedback talks by team leaders were set up where it wasn't strictly followed. High-score like lists were put up. Tech support was encouraged to sell stuff, like bigger contracts - and the "top ten" scorers on the contract-offer list got rewarded.

How does that read to anyone else? "People really want an anchoring personal space and lol they can't have one"?

This article has nothing about working there, as the title claims. A call center that's not hell to work at - what about the work? Call time target pressure? Lack of access to information or power to change anything? Things people complain about.

We had just arrived in an apartment in Paris and the owner had had a friend leave us the key. I went to have a shower, and the water was ice cold. There was no hot water in the whole of the apartment. The apartment owner was unreachable as he was (it turns out) in the middle of the Pyrenees, and nobody could help us or fix it.

We called AirBNB highlighting that it was the new year period. No good or fairly priced apartments in a central area were available for us to switch to, no hotels would have fair prices at this short notice and we didn't want to spend our short new year break even doing this in the first place.

Their solution was to offer us a refund and then we were on our own. If we left the apartment we'd have no internet access to look for another place (there was of course nothing worth switching to within our budget). They couldn't even offer us hotel suggestions.

Hardly the great concierge service that they advertise.

It's interesting how vocation for people in charge can cause large differences between organisations (and even countries).

This article have some graphs comparing countries: http://www.economist.com/node/13496638

It describes how the traditional call centre is riddled with process anti-patterns which demoralize both the employees and the customers. The reasons for this are based in the deskilling and disempowering of customer service employees, allegedly in the name of cost reduction.

This leads to exactly the problems described in this comment right here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8766637

As far as I can tell, this is the deliberate opposite of how most call centers are designed. Most call centers prioritize leaving your neighbors alone so that they can get better stats. I wonder if Airbnb's metric-taking also has this approach in mind.

On a side note, living in Portugal, it was odd to learn that call center jobs are the de-facto go-to job for foreigners and the jobless. Overwhelmingly so.

I worked at the (former) Dublin PayPal call center and it was cubicles but certainly not "hell". Maybe I prefer sitting in a good desktop chair with two monitors rather than dozen of "cool" but less comfortable places ?

But sure, great pictures, interesting design.