Shopify is stepping up its use of outsourced customer-service representatives, three workers employed in the company’s support division said.
These workers — who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of professional repercussions and whose identities are known to Insider — told Insider they’d seen an uptick in the number of outside contractors the company was bringing on to their teams. Insider viewed screenshots of internal communications listing new hires, many of whom were contractors.
Many of the dozens of new contractors were hired through the digital-outsourcing company TaskUs and are in the Philippines. Shopify has previously used outsourced customer-support agents in India as well, the employees who spoke with Insider said.
The TaskUs contractors appear to be taking on roles throughout Shopify’s support organization, including on “high-tiered” teams and on teams that work with Shopify Plus merchants. Plus merchants pay at least $2,000 a month for a subscription.
Shopify is ramping up its outsourcing after laying off about 1,000 employees — many of whom worked in support — in July. Companies across many segments have been looking for ways to cut costs amid economic uncertainty. Support roles have long been considered valuable to Shopify and have historically served as a jumping-off point for employees looking to start their careers at the company.
Shopify and TaskUs did not return requests for comment for this story.
The influx of third-party contractors to Shopify has been unsettling for some employees, particularly after recent layoffs and changes to performance reviews.
“It terrifies me for my job safety,” one support employee said.
Tia Silas, the company’s chief human-resources officer, told employees in a companywide email in October that Shopify planned to revamp how it evaluated their performances. This came after Shopify laid off about 10% of its workforce in July — and after several former employees accused the company of falsely citing performance issues as the cause of several dozen employee dismissals earlier this year.
The support team was heavily affected by those mass layoffs, in part because the company had hired so many customer-service representatives to keep up with demand during the peak of pandemic lockdowns. Many businesses were launching their first online stores at that time and needed help doing so.
“It is a little concerning just after the mass layoff that they did,” another employee in support said of the hiring of third-party contractors. “It’s understandable that some of us are kind of like, ‘Are you just getting more people at a cheaper rate to get rid of some other people?'”
Shopify’s support organization is vast, with thousands of employees working to troubleshoot the problems of the company’s more than 1 million merchants over the phone or via live chats. Support staff tackle problems like technical issues with things like payments or checkout. These employees are also expected to educate merchants about Shopify’s products and encourage them to explore new ways of growing their businesses.
Shopify’s support teams are a source of pride for the Canadian e-commerce company. Shopify frequently refers to its support employees as “award-winning” and touts the work they did with merchants at the height of pandemic lockdowns.
“We’re really good about getting to the root of the problem and getting our merchants back on a path of making money and supporting them on their stores,” a support employee said.
Many employees start their Shopify careers in support and eventually transition to different areas of the company.
Support is also known for its strict performance targets, which require employees to account for every minute of their day. Workers are expected to handle three chats simultaneously, while designating time for professional development several times a week.
“Any role in support is incredibly difficult because they have very high and, honestly, sometimes unrealistic expectations of what we should be achieving in our day and in each interaction,” a support employee said.
While TaskUs vendors’ training is similar to that of Shopify employees, the third-party vendors don’t have access to all of Shopify’s internal tools, two employees told Insider. These employees were told the policy was put in place over security concerns, they said.
Shopify and TaskUs were both named as defendants in a class-action lawsuit filed in April, which alleged that the two companies were negligent in their handling of a 2020 data breach. The breach affected dozens of Shopify merchants, including Ledger, which makes cryptocurrency wallets.
In its initial report about the incident, Shopify said an internal investigation had determined that “two rogue members of our support team were engaged in a scheme to obtain customer transactional records of certain merchants.” Filings in the class-action lawsuit said those “rogue members” were TaskUs contractors. The report added that those team members had been terminated and that the incident had been reported to law enforcement.
Shopify isn’t alone in relying on outsourced labor. Gopuff also recently outsourced its customer-service operations to the Philippines as it adjusted its spending in a challenging economic climate.
And TaskUs CEO Bryce Maddock said during the company’s second-quarter earnings call in August that economic uncertainty had led some of its clients to rely more on its services. TaskUs has clients in entertainment and gaming, fintech, healthtech, commerce, social media, and travel.
“In a quest for cost savings, our clients have begun to shift work they were previously doing in-house to our offshore teams,” Maddock said during the call.
If you’re a Shopify employee or have a story to share, contact this reporter at mstone@insider.com or on the secure-messaging app Signal at (646) 889-2143 using a nonwork phone.
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