How Customer Service Surveys Are Eroding Workers’ Rights
The use of customer reviews to evaluate workers is rising across the service sector. Once you get past the shiny rhetoric of consumer empowerment, it’s a new variation on an old story: enlisting customers on the side of management to help discipline and exploit workers.
Employee hands a customer their drinks at a Starbucks drive-through. (Alex Burstow / Getty Images)
“Customer participation” systems have long been a mainstay in many workplaces. These systems are increasingly being deployed to assess worker performance in a variety of customer-facing jobs across the Canadian service sector.
Corporate bosses tout customer review systems as a way for employees to improve their on-the-job performance. In truth, their main effect is to make workplaces more difficult for workers — which hasn’t affected their enormous popularity with bosses.
This crowdsourced form of control gives managers ready-made excuses for withholding bonuses and work hours. In a set of interviews with Jacobin, workers from different sectors discuss some of their experiences dealing with this modern form of workplace discipline.
This article is for subscribers only. Please login or subscribe to access our full archives and beautiful print and digital magazine starting at just $3 a month.