Samson had a sensor failure that occurred right on startup today, so we had to call Dexcom to get it replaced. The support staff was clearly new, struggled through all the menus, were slightly rude about things like getting the transmitter number (which was in the other room), etc. The whole process – a very straightforward error on startup – took a long time to resolve and the person clearly was walking through all the steps as if she was reading from a manual. The general impression I always used to get on a call – that the person got that dealing with diabetes is a huge burden for many families and that Dexcom wanted to be part of the solution and didn’t want to add to that burden – was completely lost. At the end of the call I asked where the person was located and she said Cincinnati Ohio. I know it’s probably this person’s first day and hopefully she’ll get better as time goes on, but who knows – maybe no one person will last long enough to get to that level of mastery before they’re laid off.
It was a pretty depressing call in light of the fact that Dexcom had just laid off 13% of their staff, and that this was the new normal. I feel bad for the overall competent, efficient and helpful support staff I had always interacted with before. Doing a really good job apparently didn’t benefit them at all. And I suspect it’s going to get worse over the coming weeks as they roll out support staff in other countries, who are potentially even more removed from the realities of diabetes care and may potentially have a language barrier to deal with.
I wish there was a way to log our disapproval, though I know that shareholders and profit/loss sheets dominate these types of decisions.
from what I heard, the pink slips were already given out as of this morning, for at least some of the workers. At least, someone who said their whole department had been laid off posted to Reddit in advance of the announcements. And I heard the new locations were said to be in Ohio and the Philippines.
On February 20, 2019, DexCom’s Board of Directors committed DexCom to a restructuring plan that will result in the transition of certain of DexCom’s operations to the Philippines (the “Restructuring”). The Restructuring is designed to reduce operating expenses to improve cost competitiveness, enable strategic flexibility and increase the scalability of certain business functions.
DexCom expects the Restructuring to impact approximately 350 full time employees, or approximately 13% of DexCom’s total full time workforce as of December 31, 2018. The Restructuring also will impact DexCom’s employment or hiring of full time temporary employees. Most of the affected employees currently work in DexCom’s facilities in San Diego, California and Mesa, Arizona. DexCom currently estimates that it will incur pre-tax charges and costs of approximately $25 million, primarily related to severance, other one-time termination benefits, and related restructuring facilitation costs. Of these charges, DexCom expects a majority to be cash-based primarily related to severance and termination related benefits. These costs are primarily expected to be incurred throughout 2019 and DexCom expects to record the majority of the charges in the first half of 2019. DexCom expects the majority of the Restructuring activities to be completed by the end of 2019.
This other reddit thread from 5 months ago also makes reference to the outsourcing of tech support, so its possible that some of the prep work for this transition has already been done
I actually logged disapproval on a telephone call the other day – after a 48 minute wait to speak with somebody, it took the woman more than 20 minutes to never get to the point of taking my credit card to fill our order. I had to hang up because I was at my own doctors appointment, and had run out of time. Eric had already waited 30 minutes for a call back that morning and was boarding a plane so couldn’t take the call. It never occurred to me that it would take more than an hour to order sensors and transmitters.
The first woman was rude. And I was shocked because every other experience has been good. The second woman was very polite, just like I had expected Dexcom Support to be. I told her “I am positive that this call is being recorded, and I really hope that somebody at the top of the heap hears me, because it should not take me over an hour to order sensors. We are not new customers, we have been using this device for years, all of our info is on file. Also, I didn’t really appreciate the terse manner of the first representative that I spoke with, and her unwillingness to listen to what I actually needed. The second representative I’ve spoken with, you miss, managed to execute my order in 11 minutes. This seems reasonable and you were kind and I appreciate it.” This was probably a week and a half ago.
Your information would explain some of that. I had a feeling something was up but I didn’t know what. Previously the support staff were amazing. When Medicare got approval it started to slide down hill and I assumed they were just over worked. What a shame. I can’t imagine it’s going to get any better either.