The economy is going through tough times. Many hardworking Americans blame wealthy CEOs out of touch with what's going on in their own companies. But some bosses are willing to take extreme action to make their businesses better. Each week, we follow the boss of a major corporation as they go undercover in their own company.
I'm stepping down as a CEO of GSI Commerce.
This billion-dollar e-commerce giant manages websites and fulfills orders for huge retailers. But when one of America's youngest CEOs poses as a new recruit...
And works on the front line of his own company...
So, have you ever loaded a truck?
He'll find out what's really going on in his own business.
Yeah. I have one thing to say. We open the box and it is crushed.
You're not letting me talk, so I can't help you. Elizabeth...
She's actually getting lucky that the show is being filmed, because if she wasn't, she'd be walked out of here today.
And he'll discover the unsung heroes that make his company run.
This experience really touched my heart as a manager and as a man.
How will his coworkers react when they find out he's really the boss? And how will it change their lives?
Find out next on Undercover Boss.
I'm Michael Rubin. I'm the founder and CEO of GSI Commerce, and this is my creation. GSI Commerce operates most, if not all, aspects of major retailers and brands' e-commerce businesses. So what that means is companies like the NFL, Major League Baseball, Aeropostale, other popular brands want to sell their products online and hire GSI to do it for them. We design the websites, we pick up the phones, we ship the merchandise, everything under our clients' brands. If you're an online shopper, you probably use GSI and didn't even know it.
I've loved business since I've been a little boy. It's always been in my DNA. When I was literally 8 years old, I'd sell stationery door-to-door. When I was 12 years old, I started a ski tuning shop in my parents' basement. By the time I was 14, I opened my first ski store in a retail shopping center. And by the time I was 21, I had a business doing over $100 million in revenue. I knew I was good at this, and it felt good to be a winner. And business made me a winner. That's what drives me. It's never been about money; it's always been about winning. Being the CEO of a very fast-growing company, I work nonstop.
You have senior management this afternoon from 12:00 to 2:00, and that's not going to work. Okay. And then...
So whether you're in the office or in meetings or you're at home on your BlackBerry, I'm kind of working 24/7.
Michael never stops. Constantly moving.
Can you actually get that reset backed up, cuz we really do need to make that work? Since the age of 12, business has been my first priority, and it's remained that way ever since. I put so much effort into GSI, it definitely takes away from other things.
Well, I would say Michael as a husband and Michael as a businessman are one and the same. He is definitely a workaholic. Texting at 3:00 in the morning to Europe, he treats GSI as if it is his baby.
Lip gloss. Daddy's working. Megan's always been really supportive of whatever I've been doing, and she understands me. For me, I'm trying to do a better job balancing today than I ever have, but it's still something I really struggle with. At the same time, competition is moving very quickly, so there's no time for rest. And that's really the way I look at it.
I'm headed into the boardroom to tell my executive team what I'm about to do. If I were an executive, I wouldn't want the founder CEO working in my operations. They're going to think I'm nuts. I'm sure everybody is wondering why I've called all of you to the boardroom today. I'm stepping down as CEO of GSI Commerce.
Not in total. So during the next week, I decided to go undercover as a temporary employee in our fulfillment and call centers.
So, you're going to be picking, packing, hauling, moving boxes for 8, 10 hours in a day?
That's right. Maybe even longer. For now, I'm no longer Michael Rubin. I've officially changed my name to Gary Rogers.
So, the employees aren't going to know that you're the CEO?
Employees aren't going to have any idea. We're going to do a few more things to change my look. I've gone a few...
We probably can't do that overnight. One thing that I need from all of you is to keep this completely confidential. This is a complete waste of time if anybody finds out, and that will set me up to really be able to go out and understand what happens. Thank you.
That's going to be a disaster.
Peak is the holiday season. Everything goes crazy, and we make 70% of our profits in the holiday quarter. Everything is about nailing peak. But for me, why not go undercover at peak? I'll see everything we do at the most stressful time of the year. Can our systems stand up to everything that we think they should? It's the single best time for me to evaluate it because I want to see how's my team playing during the most important moment of the game. My cover story will be that I'll be taking part in a TV show about seasonal jobs.
I need a room, please, for the night. I'm a little nervous. I've been my own boss my entire life. Can Michael Rubin, the founder and CEO, live up to the reputation of a founder and do each job really well? I'm here at the Richwood Fulfillment Center where we pack hundreds of thousands of orders weekly for consumers that buy online at our websites. This is actually the size of 10 football fields. We ship 75,000 packages per day during peak just out of this facility.
Gary, I'm Matt. How you doing?
I'm doing well. Come over here. We'll get you changed.
Let's do it. What am I going to be doing exactly?
You will be loading trucks.
We have 5,000 total employees at GSI Commerce. When we get into the holiday seasons, we need to go up to 10,000. And it's these seasonal employees that really help us to deliver for our clients. I've had very little exposure to our seasonal employees. So, this is a great opportunity for me to go in the company as a seasonal employee and see the jobs through their eyes.
This is Michelle. How are you? This is Gary.
Good luck. You have anything to call?
All right. Nice to meet you, Michelle.
Nice to meet you, too. So, have you ever loaded a truck?
This is going to be fun. Stack them high and tight. We want them from floor to ceiling all the way up.
And how do we do it? Do we just...
Use the same size boxes and go in a pattern so that when we're stacking, we're going to be like this all the way to the top.
Okay. Feel like we're being attacked by boxes.
I'm starting to feel like I could be very tired after an hour. Is this your first season here?
I've been doing this for 3 weeks.
Yep. My oldest boy goes to CCU now. I got this job so I can help pay for his college. I'm hoping to get on full-time.
You're certainly doing a heck of a job here. This is hard work. I'm not sure if I'm cut out to do this job all day. This is hard.
I'm feeling like my side's not going to look as good as your side.
Gary, real quick, make sure you're stacking as high as you can. When you got everything falling over, it will shift when the truck driver takes off. You got it?
Got it. They seem tough here.
I guess, you know, if I owned my own business, that's the way I'd want it done, too. But we need to start packing it really tight.
These boxes just keep coming and coming and coming.
I had no idea that this would be the most difficult workout I've ever had in my entire life. This is the first time since I founded the company 10 years ago that I wished for orders to stop coming in. I think I screwed up.
Oops. Oh, no. No, no, no, no. They're high and tight. High and tight.
I feel like we're getting... Are you okay?
Just be careful. I felt horrible when I actually hit Michelle in the head with a box. I was so tired and exhausted.
You got to get something over here.
All right, guys. You're getting towards the end of the trailer. I've noticed you got a couple boxes still falling down.
Is it one of the worst trailers you've ever seen?
It's getting close. The shipping company's not going to like it, because if we open up this door, everything's going to fall out. It's going to damage product, and it's going to have some unhappy customers. So, this may not be your schtick. So, we're going to bring Michelle and you over to the other side here. Show her how you sort the boxes.
I was embarrassed that I couldn't keep up, that the job was so hard. I actually thought when I signed up to do this that everyone would say, "Wow, Gary's so great at doing these jobs. This is easy." I was absolutely wrong.
All right, we are going to separate the boxes. Either it's going to be a local truck, a Midwest truck, an East truck, or a California truck. You might be good at this.
Wow, now the truth comes out. Normally, we would walk every single box to the gate and scan each one in. Just takes too much time. So, I put these on my arm, scan the package, scan it to where it's going, set it on a skid, and then that way when I get to the truck, I'm ready to load it.
You just started doing that?
Probably the most stunning thing about Michelle, she had all these great ideas about how to improve efficiency. How much time does it save by doing it this way versus the way it used to happen?
I believe that I am able to scan in an hour about 25% more.
For me, it was great to see her having so much passion, not only about the company, but about ways for us to improve.
We'll test your stacking ability now.
All right, I'm going to stack these well.
And it's employees like Michelle that literally hold the company on their shoulders. I wish all of our employees we hired could be like her.
And we just take the boxes and put them on.
I feel better suited to do this position.
So, I just got done my first day, and the only way to describe it is I'm exhausted. Every bone in my body hurts. I never understood what it was like to do all the different things that I did today. I'm whipped.
Coming up, Michael nearly blows his cover when he thinks an employee is rude to a customer.
No, that's not what I said at all. You just haven't let me finish a sentence.
Michael Rubin, CEO of GSI Commerce, is undercover at his own company. He's discovering that the front-line jobs are more difficult than he ever imagined. Now he's off to Melbourne, Florida to work in a call center.
When you go to one of our websites, if you want to call and talk to somebody and place an order, you call our call center. And there's nothing more important than how we handle consumer calls. Most customers that call our call center, they're really happy. But when you handle more than 20 million calls a year, some of them are going to go wrong. So today, I'm going to go work escalations where customers who have issues with their orders call for additional help. We've all had bad orders before, and you call and you want to kill the person on the other side of the phone. That's these people that are working in escalations.
Nice to meet you, Gary. How are you? Nice to meet you.
You ready for some escalations?
I am as ready as I'll ever be.
Sounds good. Take a seat. We will start getting engaged in what I do on a day-to-day basis.
Okay. Should I prepare myself to be screamed at, or...?
Unfortunately, I do believe so. Just basically using a calm voice, and the main thing that we do here is apologize, and also the closing statement asking if they were completely satisfied. That's really going to be it. Listen to these first couple calls here and we should be good to go from there.
I'll just sit and listen and watch.
Right. And let's see what's going on. L3, this is Adam. How may I help you today? Thank you for holding, Mr. Warden. I do appreciate your patience. Hi, Greg. How you doing? This is Adam. You had placed an order for a customized Premier home jersey there. And I definitely do apologize for that first and foremost.
Why would it take until the day of shipment to notify me?
You know, I certainly do apologize for that inconvenience.
If I have to, I'll send it back.
Since it is a customized item and all sales are final on that, unfortunately, the warehouse wouldn't be able to accept that return. If I could do a 20% discount, $23 back, 30% back off on the jersey...
All right. And have you been satisfied with the service that I provided today?
Thank you. One moment, please. Do you feel like you'd be ready to take a call?
Throw me to the wolves already.
Yeah. And we actually have six calls waiting right now. So, we're going to receive a call right now.
All right. Yeah. Hi, L3. This is Gary. May I help you?
Okay. I have one thing to say. We open the box and it is crushed.
Apologize. I'm really sorry for the problems you had.
I can't get this item in the store. What do I do now? Cuz I can't return the custom shirt that's being sent. I can't get another one.
I apologize for that happening with...
It's not my fault. It was your fault.
What we can do is give him free expedited shipping for any other item that he'd be interested in.
Hey, John, if we sent you something that was already made and then would send that out immediately, and we would pay for it expedited at our cost...
You know what? Let's simplify this. Let's just go with Old Time Hockey.
Are you satisfied with the service I gave you, sir?
Great. Okay. Thank you so much. How'd I do?
Not completely up to par, but you definitely can get this done with the proper training.
Do they ever get under your skin?
Me personally, no. I mean, I look at it like if their order is their biggest problem, I'm going to do everything I can to get their issue resolved so that they definitely will be satisfied and be calm by the end of the call.
Adam's perfectly suited for this. If a customer called and flipped out on Adam, he'd be like, "I'm sorry. I understand. Let me tell you how I can fix this." It's in his DNA to deal with difficult situations and get a great outcome. He could be a hostage negotiator.
If we want to go ahead and take a break, we'll head over to the break room.
Okay. How long you been doing this for?
I started here December 4th last year. They've really shown me a lot of love since I stepped in this door.
Yep. I was actually working for another major cell phone company. It was actually the only job that I've ever been let go from. But that was only because of a very bad personal situation where I ended up losing my daughter. And the day that I lost my daughter, I was unable to go in and work that Black Friday. And just due to that, they said that my services were no longer needed.
I hate to even ask you how you lost your daughter. I mean, I have a daughter myself.
Yeah. They honestly have no idea. It was at birth, and her heart actually just stopped right when she was coming out. They have no idea what caused it. Me and my fiancée were planning to get married prior to her getting pregnant, but now since we have our daughter buried, we're really trying to save up enough money to get the two plots next to our daughter at the cemetery there. So...
I now understand why you said to me that it's only an order. I mean, I guess nothing else is. I don't know what to say other than I'm really sorry.
No, I appreciate it. I really do.
Sometimes it's nice to be able to hide behind your desk and do your job and not get close to these things. So to see what he went through broke my heart, and it really made me miss my family. I was definitely not prepared for anything like that.
It's time to go back to the escalations. I'm going to sit you down here with Danielle.
She's going to be able to help you out learning the systems a little bit better there, so you guys have at it.
I need all the help in the world.
I mean, you sound a little nervous. Fake the confidence.
Act like you've been here 10 years, and you're good to go.
Because they'll sense fear. Our job is to be the punching bag and take the abuse. You ready to do this?
All right, let's do it. Hit the auto in. Good. There you go. Go for it.
L3, this is Gary. Can I help you?
I have a customer on the line. She ordered a garment the day after Thanksgiving, and she paid $99.99 for it. It got cancelled due to a setup error.
The setup error means this wasn't the customer's fault at all.
Okay. Right now, the garment is $149.99. The only thing that will make her happy is if she doesn't want a credit after the fact; she wants to pay $99.99 today.
Okay. Why don't you transfer her to me, please?
Okay. She has to do an after-the-fact credit. We don't have a choice. And when it ships out, it'll be a $149.99 credit.
But then the $50 comes back in 24 to 48.
Hi, Elizabeth. How you doing? I'm sorry for the problems that you're having with us today. I just want to make sure I understand it.
I expect to be paying $99.99 and getting the garment that I ordered as promised.
Okay. So, here, I've got mostly good news for you. We can sell that to you for $99.99. The problem is just the way our systems work, we need to put it through at the price that's on the website today.
No, I'm not waiting on a credit.
What your representative said you would be doing...
She's overpowering you right now.
Understood, Elizabeth. I promise you I'm here to help you, and I want to help you, and your business is really important to us.
I'm not waiting on a credit. You can do what you said. So, you see the email that was sent to me on November 28th, 2009 at 6:26 on Saturday.
Yes, I see the email. I absolutely see the email. Can you hold on one second, please?
All right, here's the problem. Okay, you're new, so at this point, she's not going to accept an after-the-fact credit. So, you have to sound confident at this point and put her in her place. Yes, she's had a bad experience...
But don't you want to make her happy?
We can't make her happy. We have to do the after-the-fact credit, and that's what you're not understanding.
And is she ever going to come back and buy from us again if we...
I know your goal is to please her, but you have to understand sometimes we can't please them. It's impossible. Hi, Elizabeth. I understand the situation you're going through, and I apologize greatly that you're having these issues right now.
I don't think you really do understand.
I definitely do, actually.
No coupon codes were ever sent to me.
Elizabeth, you're not letting me talk. You're not letting me talk, so I can't help you. Elizabeth, I'm sorry that you're having a hard time... You said you had an issue with corporate's email. I would say contact corporate and see what they can do to remedy the situation.
It took every bit of constraint I had to let that call even go on.
So you don't even know when this credit's going to be issued?
No, that's not what I said at all. You just haven't let me finish a sentence.
There wasn't a lot that Danielle was doing right. She had an attitude with customers.
And then I said we would do an after-the-fact credit. Would you like me to repeat it?
She didn't want to make the customer happy.
I can give you corporate's number if you'd like so you can contact them.
Would you please give me corporate's number?
Not a problem. Be happy to assist you. Okay. Corporate's number is 1-800... Okay, she hung up. So there's... and that's not even a usable call, cuz we can't transfer it now.
You want to take a break? Yeah. Thanks.
We'll just hit break here.
I went from heartbroken to extreme frustration and anger. Not what I expect of my employees. I think she had a chip on her shoulder, and she wanted to prove that she was right instead of satisfying the customer's needs, and that will never be acceptable in my company. Obviously, I don't want to blow my cover. So, she's actually getting lucky that the show is being filmed, because if she wasn't, she'd be walked out of here today, because I don't accept that. A problem like Danielle was the last thing I wanted to find undercover. But now that I have, I'm glad, and I need to confront this issue head-on. And I'm going to use what I learned with Danielle to help improve our company.
Coming up, Michael fights to keep his job.
You have this down way better than I did.
We no longer need your services.
And later, he sees he's not the only GSI employee with a competitive drive.
