Nintendo of America reportedly outsourcing customer support, hundreds of contractors to lose jobs

According to a report from IGN, Nintendo of America is outsourcing its customer support services. This is resulting in hundreds of contractors losing their jobs.

IGN’s report is based on having been in touch with multiple sources, “who spoke to us on condition of anonymity due to fear of reprisal.” The site relays how there was “a formerly rigorous structure for training and maintaining customer support services in the U.S. that was suffering significantly due to language barriers, poor communication, and Nintendo’s overall decision-making on how to handle the transition from U.S.-based support to outsourced support from South America.”

One source said Nintendo of America contracted with primarily two U.S.-based agencies to fill roles in back office customer support, including “back office teams, fraud, financials, chargebacks, customer services, chatlogs, customer phone and email support, refunds, account bans, remote data transfers, repair support, everything customer support. Some people are staying on to oversee things, “but essentially it’s all going away.”

Despite being contractors, IGN notes that many “were highly skilled and experienced, specifically in working with Nintendo of America’s systems and procedures.” Additionally, they have been working with the company for a long time. Nintendo would contract these staffers for 11 months at a time, and when the contract was wrapping up, they’d be “let go” for a couple of months so “they could draw unemployment, before having their contract consistently renewed, often at a higher pay rate each time.”

It seems that things changed in March after “workers were told their contracts were being cut, to be phased out entirely this month.” IGN reports that around 200 workers are impacted, they will not be getting severance pay, and contractors were only told about the situation through their respective agencies with Nintendo of America staying silent. Meanwhile, contractors still on through September “now have to help train their replacements.”

Nintendo of America is now outsourcing jobs to workers in South America. Brazil is seeing the most work, but other countries such as Argentina and Nicaragua are involved. Although U.S. workers are providing assistance, workers in these outsourced countries “are more fully taking on customer support cases,” according to IGN. Standards are now apparently less rigorous for new hires, there’s a language barrier issue, and there could be an overall drop in customer support quality.

For its part, Nintendo did provide IGN with a response which mentions that some claims “include inaccurate information”. However, it’s unclear what this is referring to as the company did not elaborate.

The full statement reads:

While we have nothing to announce about our internal business activities, the claims shared with IGN include inaccurate information. At Nintendo of America, we are extremely thankful to have partnered with several companies and their talented contractors over the years to deliver high-quality customer service experiences. We continue to evolve and expand our customer service model with external partners that have deep experience in all the markets we serve across the Americas. This approach allows us to support the full scope of our customer service mission in both North America and our growing Latin American markets, and better scale to seasonal needs for consistent support. As always, our top priority is to provide excellent customer support, and we are pleased that customer satisfaction with the service provided by all our partners remains positive.