When It Comes To Customer Service, Black History Has Been Effaced. But Today’s Black Businesses And Employees Are Overcoming CX Hurdles To Make Sure Their Names Are Known

Nearly three years ago, in the heat of COVID uncertainty, George Floyd was murdered in the streets of Minneapolis, prompting a nation-wide call for racial and restorative justice meant to radically transform the way American society values, treats, protects and invests in Black lives and communities.

In the months that followed Floyd’s death organizations big, small, corporate, grassroots and otherwise took a public stance on civil rights and anti-racism, or risked being blacklisted by customers, investors and society at large. For some groups, publicly declaring their belief system was simply a reiteration of their organization’s core mission, and yet for others it was a moment of admission that the personal is political, and silence in the face of injustice is complicity with the oppressor.

As black Instagram squares, #BLM hashtags, newly formed D&I initiatives and apology press releases poured in, the same customers who demanded businesses and institutions respond to inequity had–and continue to have–questions regarding how these public statements on diversity, equity and inclusion would manifest socially, politically and economically. How long would these moves to make-good last, and who would be the people to benefit from them if they did?

At the time, Black communities across the U.S. faced monumental risk at the hands of the public. High susceptibility to the Coronavirus, lack of resources to sustain businesses during shutdowns, and few ways to protect themselves from becoming the next target of anti-Black hate left them vulnerable to business failure and healthcare disparity at much higher rates than their white counterparts.

While it may seem that 2020 was a harkening back to the issues Civil Rights leaders tackled mere decades ago, the reality is that the injustice Black people describe today directly reflects the history of slavery that has plagued the nation since its founding. In a business world where customer service and the customer experience are everything, it would be neglectful not to acknowledge that what we may view as “customer service” today has a painful and abusive past of exploiting Black people for work, excluding them from stories of success and assuming that they lack the tact necessary to make meaningful contributions to the customer experience. While it should be clear on a social and moral level that protecting Black lives and supporting Black business is paramount for reparations, CX has not always shared that point of view.

Subconsciously, customer experience has long held two implicit biases:

• Black employees or businesses will not provide the level of customer service that non-Black employees or businesses are capable of providing
• Black customers will not engage with agents and businesses in a manner that begets receiving good customer service

These assumptions arise from preconceived notions and skewed narratives that Black Americans are perpetually angry, rude, lazy, aggressive, incapable, and lack social graces. In reality, that could not be further from the truth. Black communities thrive and are a place of safety for Black people because of the knowledge, compassion and creativity that is shared among neighbors. Moreover, criticism of Black patrons as poor customers is a microaggression that has been perpetuated long before Jim Crow, and continues to cycle unjustly in current day. With this knowledge in mind, and despite the success that Black entrepreneurs, enterprises, schools and inventions have seen over history, Black people continue to face obstacles.

Racism, the root cause of these issues, has left critical gaps in the entrepreneurial learning curve for Black businesses, making providing good customer service–or experiencing it–an unnecessary hurdle to jump. Black communities, businesses and educational efforts and chronically underfunded and under-resourced. They often have less access to credit markets necessary to invest in and improve operations. In turn, the technology needed to support that business growth is less accessible due to funding issues. Additionally, educational background in critical skills to the customer experience–like marketing, sales and networking–is less common in instances where Black individuals are not offered the same opportunities for upward mobility as their white counterparts. While white Americans may be able to accumulate and pass on professional skills, wealth or business ventures through generations, some Black Americans are more recently learning and introducing these assets and concepts to their peers, children and grandchildren.

As a result, the employee pool for executive job rolls has been overwhelmingly white as Black employees–who have lacked these resources due to racial biases–have been left behind at entry level positions where they might not always possess the tools necessary to provide customer service to the caliber they might if they had the same support as their white counterparts. And in a post-George Floyd world where pressure has mounted to dismantle discriminatory practices and break down the roadblocks towards Black success, organizations have either lost a consumer base or gained a loyal following based on their ability to uphold the promises that they made three years ago.

When it comes to the customer service industry, these efforts have seemingly fallen short. In the U.S 11% of call center employees identify as Black, making them the second largest demographic of agents following Hispanics. Like every other call center agent in America, they have their fair share of customer service horror stories. While those horror stories are good water cooler fodder for some, for Black call center employees it can be cause for termination. Just last year, a number of U.S. based call center employees went on strike to demand more time between calls, meaningful protection from abusive callers and a minimum wage of $25 an hour. Where these issues may be true for customer service agents of any race, Black employees are disproportionately affected in the call center. 

In an interview with Essence Magazine, one Black call center employee shared what motivated her to strike:

“Just minutes after she was verbally abused by a caller who dialed in to enroll in a healthcare plan, she had to be ready to take the next caller.

She said she had no time to collect her thoughts or her notes after being cursed at and called a racial slur. ‘We hardly have any time in between calls to place our notes and it just can be really frustrating as we get a lot of abusive callers… I get a lot of abusive callers, especially within the supervisor level.’”

Struggles in customer service are nothing new for Black employees, and in the move towards racial equity in the workplace, creating a protection plan is paramount. 

In an effort to debunk such stereotypes and protect Black employees in customer service, in 2020 Synchrony Bank had elevated diversity and inclusion to one of the company’s eight corporate strategic imperatives and launched a senior-level diversity and inclusion task force focused on the following three areas:

• Workforce Development and Inclusion: Increasing diverse employee talent at all levels of the workforce and strengthening a culture of inclusion.
• Financial Growth and Wellness: Advancing financial opportunities, growth and wellness among diverse communities and businesses.
• Racial Equality and Social Reform: Increasing commitment to addressing deeply rooted gender and racial inequality and disparities within the communities they serve and the company itself.

The following year, the company partnered with OneTen, a coalition of leading and former CEOs and companies that will train, hire and advance one million Black Individuals into family-sustaining American jobs over the next decade. In this way, employees who were relegated to manning the phone lines now have an opportunity to build skills that at times may have been absent in their customer service efforts. “Creating a culture that allows everyone to thrive is key. We have shifted our mindset about the people we hire, focusing on skills vs. degree,” Michael Matthews, Chief Diversity, Inclusion and Corporate Responsibility Officer at Synchrony, tells CCW Digital. “We have committed to hire, upskill, advance and improve retention for Black talent without four-year degrees into middle skill and family-sustaining wage jobs.” 

Synchrony also supports employees through Education as an Equalizer, a five-year initiative that increases access to higher education, skills training in high-growth fields, and financial empowerment for underserved communities and the organization’s own workforce. Through the initiative, Synchrony offers customer service associates a six-month program that will teach them core competencies and professional skills through coursework, group projects, job shadowing, rotation assignments, mentoring, cross-functional activities and networking. Those who successfully complete the program can be promoted from call center roles to titles like Senior Specialist, Analyst, Frontline Manager or even other entry-level exempt roles. To date, over 100 employees have benefitted from this initiative.

While Synchrony is just one example of how a large-scale corporation can support Black employees in learning customer service skills, Black owned businesses themselves can also be a shining example of CX success. Part of the push to “buy Black” that we have seen in recent years can be attributed to social justice, but the purchasing power Black enterprises hold speaks to the familiarity, consistency and community building that comes along with providing service to a dedicated consumer base. Black customers trust the product, interactions and experience they are receiving, knowing that the person on the other side of the sales counter shares in the challenges they face as a Black person in the U.S. Local businesses grow to scale due to the dedication of these customers to a brand, especially when the brand itself represents a history of triumph and success in a socioeconomic system designed to ostracize the Black American.

The ideal of customer experience centers around meeting the needs of the people at the other end of the transaction, and when it comes to Black employees and businesses, their needs must also be met–whether it’s at the bank, in the boardroom or in the chatbot. CX is and deserves to be a concept that allows all individuals to showcase their skills, foster connection and build business. And so long as work to remove those barriers to entry continues, we will continue to see more Black business leaders, CX success stories and customer contact community building happen.

Photo by Daniel Thomas on Unsplash