Not What You Think - Customer Success Guru - Remote Shopify Employee Review

Initial Observations: I was actually very excited to work for Shopify, I thought it would be a good opportunity for me to elevate my skills and try a new field, but it didn't really go as planned. I realized very early that, Guru's are not paid nearly as much as they deserve - considering the amount of work that we do. Your bi-weekly pay will be around 1,250 (if you are working in Ontario). I know some may be like, “thats not bad, why the complaints," it’s really hard to explain exactly what the job entails, because of how much I do - I would be writing an essay, but I know for sure it is definitely not enough. Training Experience: I was part of a training pilot which was only 4 weeks long. Usually, training for Guru's is 6 weeks, but they shorted it to 4 for my team, as a “test.” I believe this really negatively impacted me as a Guru, not only in terms of preparedness when I hit live channels, but also what was expected of me in my role. During training, it was a constant race against time. My trainer was always rushing, always cutting things short or giving us unreasonable deadlines because there wasn't enough time to truly go through all the content. I found myself skimming through the Bridge Courses (course readings) because there was simply never enough time to fully read through them. At times, this resulted in me having to spend 2-4 hours completing tasks that were suppose to be done in training, on my own time after work. Which isn't really ideal nor is it fair. Furthermore, you only have a few days to learn how to navigate 3 chats at once. This may sound like "oh a fews days, not bad" but in reality it requires a lot more time/practice, it not as easy as it seems, it is actually very stressful. The questions in chats, can be extremely complex considering how dynamic the platform is. You are also required to take notes for every ticket, reach out to live channels, and do follow-up emails, while simultaneously trying to solve the problem. Most of the questions I have received in chats, I did not learning training, it required my own research during the live chat. Furthermore, another common rumour about Shopify is that is it easy to move up. During training, you have various people from different teams that chat to you about how they moved up to different teams. One thing they all have in common is that they “started as guru’s, just like you.” I can’t even begin to explain how many times I heard that phrase. Actually, it is not that easy to move up. I witnessed members of my team (who have been there 3-4 years) mentioning they would love to move to other teams - eg. Risk or Theme Support. They would ask about steps and how they can reach their goals. Squad Leads and trainers, literally say “Master the Guru role first.” Which to some degree I understand, how can you move on to another role is you haven’t mastered your current role. The thing is though, you can never really “master the Guru role,” you can never know everything about the Guru role because of how dynamic the role is. Instead, it’s really based on who you know and how likeable you are. It really depends on your Squad Lead, they stand between you and your goal. Management Attitudes/Guidance: As the weeks began to draw closer to my time to hit live channels solo, I became extremely anxious, I knew I wasn’t ready and I felt extremely unprepared. I was struggling in my mentored chats, and also just struggling with what my role was and how to answer merchant questions. It was not only me who felt this way. I remember a peer on my training team, literally saying in a video call, “I do not feel prepared, there are a lot of Guru horror stories about this feeling, how do I navigate this, how can you guys help me?” Our lead, completely dodged the question. The answer was, “all starting guru’s feel this way,” and he later sent her a video on how to manage stress. That is the problem with Shopify. They do not take Guru concerns seriously or at all. I was feeling burnout during my training and I am still feeling it now as a regular Guru, and no one actually addresses this issue head on. Instead, they glaze over it with comments like, “everyone feels this way,” “you’re not managing your stress properly,” “maybe this isn’t the job for you,” “you’re not being resourceful enough,” THIS IS NOT OKAY. By doing this, Shopify is taking accountability off of themselves, and placing on the Guru, this is extremely dismissive, toxic, and not an appropriate way to address/solve concerns. This type of dismissive behaviour, has really had a negative impact on my mental health. I know that the employer comment to this is going to be something like, “Surprised to hear this, we take our employee’s mental health seriously, we try to provide the best training and support, blah blah blah,” I know this is what you believe in and strive for, but it is not actually how it manifests. I am constantly feeling like I am not good enough at my job, that this job isn’t for me, that my feelings aren’t valid, that my stress is my own fault. It wasn’t until recently that I realized, these are all things I heard from Shopify Leads, as a way to shift accountability and not actually address issues within the structure of the Guru role. The feelings Guru’s are having, speak more to the training/support not being as effective as it should be, it is not solely the Guru.