eBay Doubles Down On AI Customer Service Expansion To Cut Costs & Drive GMV Growth
eBay is doubling down on ramping up AI powered customer service solutions to cut costs, sellers say they miss the human touch.
After the announcement that previous US General Manage Dawn Block was taking on a new role as VP Global Customer Experience last month, sellers had hoped new leadership might finally fix long standing problems with support at the company and actually provide the "phenomenal" customer experience her predecessor, Derek Allgood, had promised in 2024.
Liz Morton
But recent job ads on eBay's careers page show the company plans to continue moving full speed ahead to integrate AI in the support experience, despite overwhelming sentiment from sellers that they need more human-centered help, not less.
For example, eBay is currently looking to hire a Senior Director, CX (Customer Experience) Engineering with a "clear directive" to "leverage AI to redefine our customer journey, simultaneously achieving a new global standard for hyper-personalized and proactive customer interactions."
While the ad uses corporate buzzwords like "customer-centricity", it's clear the real priority here is cost savings and Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) impact - though eBay may want to actually speak to their customers about how they really feel about AI support experiences if they also care about seller retention.
Of course this isn't the first time eBay has looked to AI to cut costs on customer service, it's simply the next step in a multi-year "transformation."
For example, back in 2023, eBay spent ~$12 Million dollars overhauling their automated support systems that increasingly shuffle users to AI chat rather than human reps - a move that led to frustrating "call routing" issues for Anchor and Enterprise store subscribers last year.
Liz Morton
After mass layoffs were announced at the beginning of 2024, sellers worried that already lacking customer service would take a hit as the company looked to AI for even more cost-cutting.
Those fears turned out to be well-founded as CEO Jamie Iannone and then CFO Steve Priest told investors just a few months later that they had been deploying more AI into their global customer experience (GCX) operations, crowing about no longer having to pay customer service reps to read detailed explanations of business impacting issues from sellers before responding to their requests for help.
Liz Morton
eBay deals with a lot of customer support between buyers and sellers. And that customer agent sometimes had to read like a 12 paragraph e-mail where somebody explained it, we would hire someone to read that.
Now we have AI read that email, write the initial response. So it's fundamentally changing our pace of how we work and the pace of innovation.
More recently, many sellers have been unceremoniously dumped from the eBay Concierge support program with no warning, despite previously being granted "lifetime" status as a token of eBay's appreciation for their years of selling.
Liz Morton
Ironically, eBay had promised it was going to "fix customer service" way back in 2017 when then SVP Global Operations & Customer Service Wendy Jones acknowledged eBay had a lot of work to do.
Our reality today is that we don't make it easy for our customers. The rules and the systems are too complex, they are at times inconsistent, and in today's digital world of ecommerce, they're too slow......Our Unifying Purpose. We exist to help our customers and solve their problems in the quickest, simplest, easiest way possible… and make them feel great about eBay along the way.
Jones and then VP Customer Experience, North America Cathal McCarthy unveiled plans for eBay's higher tier support experience called Concierge. While it was initially promoted as an invite only program, it was made clear the plan was to make many parts of Concierge the standard support experience for all eBay sellers within 18 months...which obviously never happened.
Despite having decidedly not fixed customer service at eBay, Jones was awarded an $11 Million bonus in 2018 by then CEO Devin Wenig ($8 Million of which was a retention bonus.)
Sellers at the time questioned the wisdom of such a large bonus, given the still lagging state of customer support under her purview, and it was also seen by many as particularly insensitive given the round of layoffs the company undertook around the same time.
When Jones stepped down from her position in 2020 under current CEO Jamie Iannone, she collected another $11 Million+ in severance benefits, again despite perennial complaints about falling levels of service and failing to bring Concierge to the masses - and despite her alleged role in the 2019 eBay cyberstalking scandal.
Now, eBay has pulled the rug out from under sellers who had previously enjoyed that higher tier of support, telling them they no longer meet an "evolving threshold" meant to ensure the best support is reserved for those sellers who make up the top 10% of Gross Merchandise Volume on the platform, according to eBay community forum staff.
The concierge service is periodically reviewed to ensure it continues to deliver real value and reflects the current performance landscape.
Following a recent review, accounts whose Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) over the past 12 months has not met the evolving threshold required to maintain eligibility for the Premium Service Program have been removed.
This threshold is adjusted over time based on overall eBay growth and is designed to reflect the top 10% of sellers on our platform. We understand that business performance can fluctuate, and this change does not impact your standing as a valued eBay seller.
And of course that doesn't even touch on the many problems that can occur when AI and automation take the place of humans for critical policy enforcement, trust and safety roles.
Liz Morton
In addition to frustrating and unhelpful interactions with frontline customer service, the number one complaint I hear from sellers is about lack of communication regarding updates, policy changes and other business-impacting topics.
My advice to Dawn Block: learn from past failures, like eBay Voices, eBay Council, and the now discontinued community chats, get outside of the echo chamber bubble eBay has built and commit to truly engaging with a wider variety of sellers on a wider variety of topics as real humans, speaking to real humans - no AI involved.
What do you think of eBay's increasing use of AI to replace humans for support and customer experience tasks? Would you prefer to be talking to a person or AI when you contact eBay support? Let us know in the comments below!
