Lyft Moves Customer Support Team to Nashville to Combat High-Priced SF Market

&gt; The Lyft customer support team was informed that the move includes a lower pay in salary after one year in Nashville, according to sources.<p>Sort of a big ask, no?<p>Move to another state, take less salary or be fired.<p>Not saying it&#x27;s not the right move for the company, but it&#x27;s sort of a raw deal for the reps.

Siting call centers in cheaper locations has been a norm in the US for years. If it couldn&#x27;t be done that way, it would all have moved to India or the Philippines.<p>Most call center staff (non-technical) are easily and quickly trained on the job. There is also very high turnover in the industry, so quickly ramping up trained staff is part of basic operations. The recruits don&#x27;t have to have any specialized skills other than being literate.<p>The CRM systems in place are also designed with a lot of call scripting in place to guide the conversations based on target companies and customers. Generally a single call center handles the customer service operations of multiple companies and teams of CSRS can be reconfigured to support different companies at different times.

Nashville has some of the nicest people in customer-facing roles, in my experience, and coupled with its low cost of living and the area&#x27;s desire for a more diversified economy, this sounds like a multiple win.

This is an incredibly common move for startups that reach a certain size. Once you have about 50+ customer service reps the math makes sense. In some companies the customer service department is 50% of total headcount.<p>One thing to keep in mind, turn over in customer service is pretty high. You could open another office and with natural attrition make the move without layoffs in ~18 months.

I think this is going to become more and more common. There are not a ton of great reasons IMO to locate anything but your core engineering team in tech hot spots like San Francisco, Boston and New York.

Having just moved form Nashville to the Bay Area, I can say that you actually get a lot of the wonderful cosmopolitan bits in the city without the overcrowded mayhem. Also, Nashville is an upcoming GFiber city. I&#x27;ve heard it described as the next big Austin in terms of being another tech hub of the region.

Seems a bit rushed. I&#x27;d be curious why Lyft wouldn&#x27;t open up the new office in Nashville and let attrition take care of the SF roles that they wish to eliminate, or even offer increased responsibility, and therefore career advancement, for those that move to Nashville.<p>If it really is rent costs, as techcrunch seems to suggest, then they could allow their more senior members in the SF office just work remotely.<p>Finally, if I were working for Lyft at this point, despite what department I may be in, I would be looking for a new job immediately as they have shown a complete lack of respect for the lives that their employees have and are building. This move has definitely tarnished their brand in my eyes and would make me question having them as a potential employer.

Good to see a startup (unicorn?) taking costs and expenses seriously.<p>The biggest let down to employees is running the company into the ground burning your money all the way. Good job Lyft!

If you are going to live in the South, Nashville is the place.

(I am not living in the US and never heard Nashville.) When I read this title, I thought Lyft is moving customer support team to India. OK, now I know Nashville is the state capital of Tennessee. :-)

It&#x27;s not mentioned elsewhere, so I&#x27;ll do a top-level comment. Think hard about moving from SF to Nashville, as the social and political differences might be quite a surprise. While the tech work might be similar, the people you&#x27;ll see day to day will be rather different...<p>It might not matter, but don&#x27;t go into the South unless you understand that it&#x27;s different in the Red State areas vs. the Blue.

You don&#x27;t suppose this has anything to do with Uber&#x27;s announcement that they are doubling down (or more!) on the Bay area with the Sears building in Oakland?<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sfchronicle.com&#x2F;entertainment&#x2F;article&#x2F;Uber-is-coming-for-Oakland-s-soul-all-right-6528037.php" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sfchronicle.com&#x2F;entertainment&#x2F;article&#x2F;Uber-is-com...</a><p>No, probably totally unrelated.

Didn&#x27;t Garmin do this to their Spot watch team. I believe basically everyone working in that product left rather than move to Utah.

Asking employees settled in a place to move to a different state, and then take a pay cut, seems like a big deal.

Eventbrite and Warby Parker have opened offices in Nashville in the last year for customer support, so it seems like a trend.

google fiber and nashville has been lyft friendly

Wow there are going to be...culture problems both ways.