Pros
As a company, Chewy has a lot of good things going for itself, for example: the vision of providing pet supplies to one’s doorstep for extremely low prices and the level of customer service provided really spoils the customers. The training program for the Customer Service Department is one of the best corporate-initiated training programs I’ve seen having worked in a variety of corporate environments spanning from mortgage, corporate and agency recruiting and customer service. The CEO (Ryan Cohen) and the COO (Alan Attal) are very nice people; you could literally run into them in the hallway and they are very inviting and kind-hearted, something often missing in other startups and even non-publically traded companies. Within the Customer Service Department you will find a mix of personalities, temperaments that for better or worse lends itself to make a very versatile environment. Some of my best times I had with Chewy included the time spent with my fellow CSRs.
Cons
Unfortunately, my leaving Chewy was not one that I had really anticipated but knew that it was time to leave. I had spent almost 9 months working with Chewy having worked for a variety of companies spanning multiple industries. I had spent my time prior to coming to Chewy in private practice and with a medical university performing neuropsychological assessments and profiling. Due to unforeseen circumstances with my move from Texas to Florida, I found Chewy and decided to give them a try. With my diverse range of experience and level of education (master’s degree in cognitive neuroscience) I wanted to extrapolate these skills back into corporate recruiting or corporate training/development. Within the interview it was made very clear that my expectations would be met shortly being hired and that the CSR route would be the best way to facilitate my arrival back into a more autonomous position that I have the qualifications for. Needless to say, everything I had hoped for didn’t work out. Like many of the posters below have stated, the Customer Service Department exudes favoritism to a level I frankly haven’t observed in over 7 years since working for a call center in mortgage. The demographics of the department consist of mostly high school graduates, people who have mostly worked retail, food or warehouse positions (again, this is the trend, there are some exceptions). Not withstanding this, many people are also recovering or current alcoholics or drug addicts. One thing I had picked up on was the “super positive” mentality they enforce. While being positive is a very good characteristic to implement, it should be done so in moderation and in context to the situation. What the mentality reminded me of was something often found in 12-step programs (AA groups, addiction facilities, etc.). Ultimately, this mentality while good hearted in nature ends up being projected onto others and often times translates into perfuse naivety and over-sensitivity or quick to judge approaches in another person’s language or a true indifference/adverse situation that should be considered on its merits. You will find that the pay is decent but less than what it should be considering you are doing a lot of multitasking. This brings up another issue at hand; within the “Development Team” you are poked, prodded and measured like a piece of meat at a butcher shop. While constructive feedback is important, there are many cases in which things are created just to be pointed out to ensure you are “always learning.” I find that method to be pretty irritating and counterproductive. There are other ways that learning could be facilitated where there is mentorship but also autonomy to make decisions. It’s hard to fully criticize this practice seeing that this environment (e.g. call center, customer service) almost demands this practice. Ultimately, this wasn’t a good fit for me and was something I had decided many months ago to cut my losses and adjust my career path elsewhere. On my end, I admit to loosing all motivation for working there which translated into sub-par work on my end, but I find this to also be a product and a necessary indicator to the company that things aren’t working. It’s a shame; Chewy has lost many talented people from not only customer service but other departments. This is talent that could have been used more efficiently and to their advantage.
