Amazon’s new FC Ambassador program shows company reputation worries

Amazon’s fulfillment centers have been a focus of
scrutiny in recent months.
AP/Scott
Sady

• Amazon
  has launched a new program
  that encourages some of its fulfillment-center employees to go
  on Twitter and talk about their experiences working
  there. 
• These employees are called “FC Ambassadors,” and
  spreading the word about working at Amazon is their full-time
  job, a company spokesperson said. 
• Everything the employees say on Twitter is positive,
  sticking to a few talking points like bathroom breaks and
  compensation.
• The program is a sign that the company is taking steps
  to protect its reputation as it gets tarnished by media reports
  and tweets from high-profile figures like Sen.
  Bernie Sanders.

Amazon
is trying harder than ever to combat its growing negative image.

The company
now has a small army of “FC Ambassadors” saying nice things
about the company online and engaging in dialogue with average
Twitter users. The ambassadors are full-time employees, according
to an Amazon spokesperson, and it is their job to share their
experiences working at a fulfillment center. 

A quick search on Twitter reveals about 13 such employee
accounts, and they seem to be uniform in both their online
presence and talking points. 

They routinely engage with tweets from low-profile users
discussing a few subjects that portray Amazon in a negative
light: pay for warehouse jobs, employee bathroom breaks (#IgowhenIneedto,
as Twitter user @AmazonFCCarol tweets), and the temperature of
warehouses.

The ambassadors also seem to back each other up when they face
criticism or pushback from users who call them bots. 

In a statement to Business Insider, Amazon said that the FC
Ambassadors are all Amazon employees who have worked in
warehouses.

“The most important thing is that they’ve been here long
enough to honestly share the facts based on personal experience,”
an Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider. “It’s important
that we do a good job of educating people about the actual
environment inside our fulfillment centers, and the FC Ambassador
program is a big part of that along with the fulfilment center
tours we provide.”

They all seem to be one- to two-year veterans of the
company’s warehouses, though their daily role has changed since
becoming a part of this new program. They continue to get paid as
if they were regular warehouse workers, the spokesperson
said. 

This kind of coordinated pushback, targeting specific criticisms,
shows that Amazon is taking steps to improve its
reputation. 

The company has been a frequent target of those on the left,
including high-profile figures such as Sen. Bernie Sanders, who
see Amazon’s growth as abuses of capitalism.

Sanders’ tweets frequently portray Amazon as the biggest villain
of capitalism, and they often refer to the company’s founder and
CEO, Jeff Bezos, who as the richest man in the world has been
criticized for giving relatively little
away in the name of philanthropy. A frequent theme is
Bezos’ extreme wealth compared to the relatively little that
Amazon’s lowest-paid workers make.

“While Jeff Bezos’ wealth has increased $260 million every
single day this year, he continues to pay many Amazon employees
wages so low that they’re forced to depend on taxpayer-funded
programs such as food stamps, Medicaid and public housing to
survive,” Sanders
tweeted on Friday.

Amazon’s new Twitter ambassadors often end up engaging with
users in Sanders’ Twitter threads, most of whom agree with the
senator’s sentiment.

Many on Twitter said they would
boycott shopping on Amazon’s Prime Day in July due to
reports about poor working conditions inside Amazon’s warehouses
and a concurrent strike from workers in Spain.

Amazon has defended its working conditions.

“Amazon is proud to have created over 130,000 new jobs in
the last year alone. These are good jobs with highly competitive
pay and full benefits. One of the reasons we’ve been able to
attract so many people to join us is that our number one priority
is to ensure a positive and safe working environment,” Amazon
said in a
statement to Business Insider in July.

Amazon has also been criticized, fairly or not, for
seeking tax breaks for its second headquarters project, HQ2,
and for making business conditions difficult for small retailers.