Contract Employees are Destroying Renown Nordstrom Service Reputation!
Pros
Started in the very 1st work @ home team hired to work remotely from home, a "guinea pig" for the program as HR put it. Compared to employers in my area I appreciated the $12.65 starting wage, and ended at $17.80 at almost 5 years of employment. Benefits are good, though if you don't maintain 150 hours monthly on average, you won't be able to maintain health insurance -which is surprisingly expensive for such a large "Forbes Rated" employer. From 2013 - to 2015 I had no complaints, other than grueling holiday and Anniversary Sale (summer) blackout periods, but hey more cash in my pocket! During the slower months, employees faced forced reduced hours depending on their recent stats and "stack rank rating/tier" (buhbye insurance!) Though this also allowed for flexibility in your schedule to leave early, take extended lunch breaks, days off without penalization, etc.
Cons
In 2016, new staffing analysts and workforce scheduling supervisors were brought in, in efforts to eliminate the issue of overstaffing in slow times, and customer queues in peak times. Months later, it was announced that we'd be acquiring contracted (outsourced) call center employees to work during peaks such as holidays/sales, and during slow periods we wouldn't need their services. At around the same time, 106 Nordstrom Direct work at home positions were "eliminated", cutting both new and tenured employees due to "not enough business demand" and without advance notice to those cut loose, in spite of their company loyalty. Hmmm but contract employees remained, and after those cuts we still faced unholy customer queues across phones, emails, and chats. This continued through the end of 2017. In early 2018, my fellow teammates and I noticed that our email queues during the day were dwindling and we were forced to take over other skills (phones mainly) as "there wasn't a need on email/chat support". We were an email team, we had to pass tests and certain criteria as tenured Nordstrom employees to obtain a spot on the core email team after being trained and started on phones. It was found out and confirmed by management that in fact, all contracted outsourced from Jamaica) employees were being started on chat and email support, due to customer feedback from declining quality of phone support due to language barriers. Rather than hire competent employees to begin on phones as Nordstrom hired agents were, they were tossing non-Nordstrom contract employees with language barrier issues on email and chat support in evening/overnight hours, eliminating the "work" for core email day shift workers. Most seasoned email specialists were unhappy about our core position and preferred skill being taken due to outsourced employees that were unable to perform all aspects of the same job we were expected to. Enough of us raised concerns and shared feedback with management until they agreed "not to staff as many Sutherland contract employees on emails". Flexible scheduling (previous job perk) during the slow season was no longer an option, and being stuck on phones as an email support team member was torturous. But it was the ever changing dynamics in stats/expectations, scheduling policies, preferential treatment of premium email support shifts to Non-Nordstrom employees, and increasingly dissatisfied tenured employees, of which management seemed to essentially turn their backs on, that killed my love for my job. I had documented customer examples (cases) of service inferiority from about a dozen contract agents, with visible evidence to their barriers and unprofessional written demeanor, provided feedback (as always requested and encouraged) - it all fell on deaf ears. A week prior to my separation, Nordstrom announced an additional contracted call center was being added. Why? They didn't have the emails or chat necessity to need more contract agents and they had already admitted they weren't training then on phones. Nordstrom hired agents - keep your resumes updated. I fully believe they are aiming to reduce staffing costs by eliminating Nordstrom positions and bringing lower earning outsourced employees to replace higher paid tenured long time employees. Buh Bye industry renown "Nordstrom Customer Service". It's out of the hands of the Nordstrom brothers, and it's apparent their board of execs is more concerned with penny pinching in the one department that sets Nordstrom apart from competing retailers.
