Starts out great and then quickly goes downhill - Senior Customer Service Representative Wayfair Employee Review

2.0
Jul 19, 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Pay in Ogden is competitive with other call centers in the area. Job itself is stupid easy when it comes with handling the customer contacts. Free coffee and snacks. Coworkers are fun and encouraging. Quarterly-ish focus groups to take feedback on how to improve the employee experience. Quarterly bonuses based on your performance. Pod Outings each quarter. Fun coordinator who does raffles for tickets to games, movies, shows, conventions, and Wayfair swag. Food trucks almost every week. Volunteer opportunities with Habitat for Humanity and the Weber County Animal Shelter. Ample opportunities to give back to the community through food drives, Christmas toy drive, events to provide clothing and bedding for homeless or elderly.

Cons

WFM (Work Force Management) is utter garbage and has no idea what they are doing. The phone queues are supposed to be divided up between the different skill levels- 1, 2, and 3. They tell you that the further you move up into the skill levels you do take calls from the previous levels, but more so as back up for when there's overflow in the lower queues. However, once you reach skill 3 it's constant back to back calls and WFM constantly pulls the lower skill levels out of their phone queue to work in the email system (or send them home with Voluntary Time Off ), thus increasing the higher call volume for the higher skill levels. There are almost always customers waiting to be answered and for a company that always talks about making sure that their employees are there and ready to help the customers to prevent hold times- they really don't create the environment that embodies that. Additionally, requesting planned time off as a skill 3 is next to impossible unless you plan it at least 3+ weeks in advance. They are ridiculously strict with their attendance policy (creating a very high attrition and turn over rate) They provide 2 "buckets" of time off- Sick (40hrs every 6mos, does not roll over.) and Vacation(accrued at 4.36 -I think- hours every pay period ). Sick can be taken at will until your bucket runs out. If you take sick time and you have none left in your bucket- instant write up. No verbal warning like they claim. Then from there if you are late, need to leave early, or miss work for literally any reason you are then reviewed for termination. Now, this goes back towards the Vacation time that is near impossible to request. If you're sick and you know you'll need a few more days to recuperate typically you would just enter in some vacation time and you're good to go. Nope, not as a higher skill level. You're put in a wait list of 20+ people at any given time- unless it's that previously mentioned 3+ week out request. Now, I'm not a psychic so unfortunately I cannot know the next time I'll get sick. Additionally, they do not accept doctors notes. So if you do end up missing multiple days due to the flu, pneumonia, or any other extended sickness and you do visit the doctors for this. Well tough luck kiddo, any day you took off and didn't use vacation time for comes straight out of your sick time. There are very few times that I have heard where a coworker was able to successfully have a doctors note approved. When you're hired they tell you that there are ample routes to move up in the company and the only thing stopping you is your own determination. Sounds ideal! My kind of company! I'm the kind of person who consistently wants to move up and grow. So I busted by butt to be able to move up and out of customer service as fast as I could only to come to a screeching halt once I hit skill 3. I'm not the only one either. Many of my colleagues are in the same boat. Many of my fellow colleagues that were hired the same time as me over a year ago have straight up left the company for other opportunities due to the lack of movement past Skill 3. Sure, you can go to other departments that aren't on the ladder upwards from service but they're all pay cuts. Usually $2 an hour paycuts depending on where you go. So you either suck it up and take the pay cut or you stick it out and wait for months and months on end hoping and praying that one of the higher positions finally opens up so you can apply. They are very much the kind of company that creates "Karens". If the customer puts up a fit you HAVE to give in and let them get whatever they want. All to create a "positive customer experience". Old expired coupon? Honor it. Customer is pitching a fit because their $200 sofa isn't as comfortable as a $2000 counterpart AND they want a full refund but don't want to go through the hassle of returning? Honor it. Now, we're supposed to provide different levels of options before jumping to the most expensive, of course. But you also have to keep in mind that there is a veryyy good chance that this unhappy customer is going to get a survey for you at the end of the call, which goes into your overall rating and effects your quarterly bonus. They want you to maintain a CSAT (customer satisfaction score) of 4.9 or higher out of 5. Near perfect. So without giving into the customers every whim, you're probably not gonna get a super high survey score. But you also have a metric based on how many low cost solutions you're using as well. Double edged sword, right? None of this is impossible I will add. It's very much doable, but it is draining. Overall, I find that Wayfair is better suited for people who don't mind dealing with consistent contacts and are comfortable staying in customer service. Just watch out for the WFM issues and attendance policy.

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5.0
Apr 6, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Smart colleagues tackling interesting, business relevant problems.

Cons

Long-term projects sometimes significantly modified in response to short-term business needs.

5.0
May 12, 2017
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Wayfair is a fantastic company if you're a software engineer who's looking to keep quiet, and not speak up when management treats you like garbage. And it excels at finding leaders who are willing to go the extra mile to be untrustworthy and make you feel like your job isn't safe (and for real, it's not).

Cons

Let's talk. The company has been growing like crazy, and one thing that was never thought about was "can we actually hire at a sustainable rate, and scale accordingly?" The answer was no on both counts. Software engineers at Wayfair have a history of disappearing. People who enter labs have an especially low success rate (70% make it through, and less than 50% last a whole year). It's basically their way to run people through a burnout gauntlet, and see who survives. And then you have the stories of the people who come in to work and are just asked to resign. You'll see hints of it here on Glassdoor if you dig, and it's even worse than what you read. They actually gathered all the engineers for a big meeting at the beginning of this year. And they said that they were sorry that people felt scared and were sad that people felt like management didn't care. Which is exactly how we felt. They promised that their door was open, and they were going to work hard to set things right. One person out of 500 stood up and asked a really cutting question. AND THEN THEY FIRED HIM! And there were 3 completely different official reasons given about it. It's crazy. The leaders also started up an engineering meeting to keep everyone on the same page and answer anonymous questions. One time someone asked why we couldn't get snow days off, because it was tough to shovel for 3 to 4 hours and still work an 8 hour day. So the leaders proceeded to talk down to us and reprimand us for even thinking about asking a question like this. Turnover has been high over the past year, and the best people are leaving. This worries management, but they still have no idea that the problem is actually them creating a terrible environment. So if you're a good person who cares about the person next to you and leaving things better than you found them, don't bother applying here. But if you're not, and you just want to keep your head down and not question anything, then this is the perfect place for you. And if that's what you want, Wayfair gets 5 stars. Amazing career opportunities if you want to have the same job forever. Incredible senior management that value untrustworthiness. A fantastic culture of watching people next to you disappear. It's truly a perfect company.

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Wayfair Response
8y
First, I wanted to thank you for providing feedback. Second, I am very sorry to hear that your experience was far from ideal. I know it can be hard to give feedback if you feel management is the problem, but leadership would love to learn about these issues to refine the Wayfair employee experience. We do try to create an open and transparent environment; one thing we’ve started doing is department-wide anonymous surveys. This has been helpful in identifying issues where people don’t feel comfortable speaking up for whatever reason and pinpoint where any issues may exist. As you noted, the company is growing very quickly - our Engineering team alone has grown tenfold over the past five years. I won’t pretend we get it right all the time, but we do aim to scale our teams and our systems reasonably to meet the rapid growth of our business, and we rely on employee feedback to refine these processes. To that end, we’ve put a lot of time and energy into our interview process. And, we closely track our voluntary and involuntary attrition rates to make sure we are keeping high employee retention and so that we can immediately nip any potential issues in the bud. For Wayfair Labs, we’ve made huge strides since the beginning of this program, and our average success rate is now over 90%, with several classes at 100%. We also run management trainings on giving, receiving and soliciting feedback. In these trainings - and in general - we encourage respect for all teammates and partners, communication and collaboration, and we try create opportunities for people to take on new challenges. I am very excited about the work we’re doing to solve tough challenges and there’s an exciting opportunity for our employees to do big things – our goal is to build a team that feels encouraged and empowered to do so. I’m very sorry you didn’t have the experience we try to cultivate. Once again, thank you for this feedback.
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