Bad Job Bingo: Beware the Funhouse

Title: Outbound Customer Service Representative
Company: SupportNinja
Salary: $16/hr
Bad Job Bingo Rating: Beware the Funhouse

This was a submission from Meghan G who noted the “huge misalignment on the title since this is literally a sales role,” and woo were they right, let us count the ways.

First, I want to be fair to SupportNinja. It’s a BPO agency,¹ which means they probably didn’t write this job description, or they wrote it with specific directions from their client.

However - if it’s on their website it’s still SupportNinja’s responsibility. I would hope that every company they contract with doesn’t intentionally misrepresent the true nature of a role they’re trying to fill, but unfortunately that’s what’s happening here.

Why do I think it’s intentional misrepresentation? It’s all down to the framing the company is using to sell the role to job-seekers. Understanding framing in job descriptions means asking ourselves a few questions:

1. How is this company presenting this job to me?

2. What facts or information about the role is the company choosing to include and what are they choosing to leave out?

3. Is the company using any terminology, stereotypes, common phrases, or cultural references that they know will guide how I understand this role?²

To be clear, every company uses some kind of framing when they’re preparing a job listing. Hell, every person does, just in regular conversation. Framing in and of itself isn’t bad, it’s just a tool we use when we want to tell a story or make an argument for something.

Being able to identify how job descriptions are framed basically gives us x-ray vision: what’s the company hoping I don’t see? What’s the prize behind curtain number 3 and is it just goats?³

So let’s look at the creative framing employed in this job description.

Although “Outbound” is in the job title, they don’t use that word again anywhere in the job description–not in the introduction, not in the duties list, and not in the required qualifications. What’s more, they clearly categorize the role under Customer Support in the header details:

Actually, to call it creative framing is a little too generous an interpretation, as it’s pretty obviously intended to be deceptive.

For starters, notice how they leave out the “Outbound” bit from the job’s title (Outbound Customer Service Representative)? I might be willing to consider that this was an oversight, except they do it again in the same sentence:

They don’t say, you'll have the opportunity to provide world-class service via texting, calling and emailing our customers or you’ll have the opportunity to provide world-class products and services to our customers through various channels because either of those statements, along with the Outbound portion of the job title, would plainly indicate that this is not in fact a customer service role but a sales one.

Then there’s the duties list:

Again, notice the language they’re using (and not using). Only two bullets suggest that these are unsolicited sales contacts: the first, which is vague enough that you could reasonably miss it, and the last, which seems straightforward but, as the only bullet that outright mentions calling former customers, comes across as a minor task separate from the others.⁴

The rest of the duties are framed in a way that a support agent would find familiar: explain the product, field questions, help customers use the product. The problem is that these tasks are devoid of deeper context, at least until you get to the Required Qualifications section.

Then things start to get weird:

Wait, I can hear you saying, why would this customer support role need sales experience? Or need experience managing a leads database? Why is it suddenly selling a service-based product?

All good questions! The answer is that this isn’t actually a Support role at all, but rather a poorly but intentionally disguised sales role.

I know it’s intentional in part because they have numerous opportunities to clarify not just the actual duties of the role, but the job title itself. Instead, they repeat the (incorrect) job title Customer Service Representative four times, and the last time it’s immediately followed by “minimum 2 years of phone sales experience.”⁵

They keep reiterating the customer service phrase because it comes with certain connotations: customer service is usually sought-after and welcome! You’re providing value to the customer! You’re solving their problems! All associations that sales roles tend to very pointedly lack.

I also have the industry experience to know when something walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, and this one definitely screams goat to me. Even so, intentionally framing a sales role as if it’s a customer support role inevitably sows confusion and self-doubt.

I read the job description multiple times in case I was missing something, and I think this would be an even more confusing experience for greener candidates – and that feels like a feature, not a bug.

Obviously I can’t say why they’re listing this job as a customer support role instead of the sales role it clearly is, but I can speculate. Sales is a service SupportNinja offers, as they have a few Inbound Sales roles listed on their Careers page, but I suspect it’s the outbound aspect that’s the issue.

This role feels a lot like telemarketing, which as far as I can tell is not one of the services they offer. I doubly suspect they’d have a hard time recruiting for a telemarketing role from their existing or potential talent pool, which may be why the role is being presented this way.

As you might suspect, there’s a few other things in and around this job description that are red flags to me:

1. SupportNinja refers to its own agents as workforce workhorses, which: yikes.⁶

2. "We treat our Ninjas like family.^"7

3. “You’ll have the opportunity to provide world-class service…while also working in our fun-forward culture” because nothing says healthy working culture like forcing people to be relentlessly fun-forward while working for poverty wages.

file under: bad job bingo, bpos, because what was really missing from supportlandia was extensive job description framing analyses, shamelessly abusing goats as rhetorical devices, I am a serious professional

1  BPO stands for business process outsourcing, which means they’re an agency that sources and employs talent internationally on a per-contract basis and then subcontracts them out to other companies. In Support, we often call these folks vendor, contracted, or outsourced agents; it all refers to essentially the same thing.

2  You can adapt these questions to any story or argument for which you’re trying to identify the framing, just sub out the author and the target. For example: How is this journalist presenting this news story to me?

3  Not that goats are bad, mind you. They can be pretty rad, unless you live in an apartment or you were hoping for a car. That’s the thing – it’s better to pick your prizes. You gotta want the goats.

4  “Performs other duties as assigned” doesn’t count, though boy is it doing some heavy lifting.

5  My friends: this is the kind of role you take for a little while because you really need a job or you need time in the field. This is not a job you switch to once you have a couple years of experience, it is a job you switch from as soon as someone else will hire you.

6  Looking elsewhere on their site, it’s possible they were trying for alliteration, but surely they could have picked something that didn’t reduce their staff to mindless beasts of burden? I mean, workforce wonders is right there.

7  BINGO.

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