ChaCha Cofounder Describes How the Company Is Making Money

ChaCha Pay

Just to be clear on pay. Esther Friend clearly stated that it averages two minutes per search. At ten cents per search, guides will average three dollars an hour. In order to make nine dollars, this average would have to be 2/3rds of a minute. This is impossibe due to system lags and work requirments.

They lie

Improve quality?? Right. How about investing in the Quality Control team if that was the case. They are running out of money. No company should want to invest in a company who craps on their workers. They reeled Coca Cola in before they made the pay cut. If they wanted to reward the Top Guides they would give them more than the original .20. It's about money not quality, bottom line.

Can somebody please address the following issue? The ability to 'increase' one's wages to 20¢ per search is based on the Quality Score from a previous week. We have asked for the documentation which defines this Quality Process, but have not received it. And this 'Quality Rating' is underway at this moment, being used to calculate next week's wages.

In order for the quality process to serve it's purpose, don't you think we should have ACCESS to the quality methods being employed? Don't you think we should know exactly what factors are being assessed, and how the total score is calculated?

How can they base our pay on a closeted system? And all that we receive is a notification that we did or didn't make the cut. I believe we have a right to also receive the report showing just where and how we succeeded, or failed.

Desperate!

After years, Brad has finally noticed a source of income is needed to keep a business running. Way to go!

Guides are still very upset with the so called "Performance based pay." The biggest problem is ChaCha has grown so fast, they don't have a quality assurance system that works, so ChaCha has no accurate or fair way to base pay on performance, at least not now.

The other issue caused by ChaCha's fantastic growth is guides can't make decent money because of daily ChaCha system glitches.

Guide from TN

Please try to get them to say more. They are telling the press more than they are telling us, the people (guides) that answer the queries from incoming texts! We need more information to be able to continue to forward with Brad/ChaCha! We need more clarification on this subject. How do you plan to QC every text? How will we see ALL of our QC'd answers? How will we see our score? What exactly qualifies a Top Guide? There has to be more that what is listed because I am not seeing my name on the list of Top Guides yet I didn't get any QC notes telling me that I did something wrong.....

Is ChaCha in a financial crisis? Are we doomed? Brad, please speak up or I will have to follow the directions from the PM that I received. I will post it below.

Private Message - "Not that I'm suggesting anything of course...but the 14th seems to be a great day to step outside and enjoy the Mid-August sunshine. Since we'll be outside, it seems like a good day to ask LOTS of questions to ChaCha too......just so we're well-informed of course. If you have the ability to get out and enjoy the sunshine and really utilize the service to the fullest extent on Thursday, I suggest you do so. All Guides must stick together. Let all Guides you know how great it will be to enjoy the sun that day."

I think you understand what that means don't you? We need communication. Being paid "the used to be $.20 per answer" wasn't enough, do you expect anyone to act any differently when the pay is cut in half? There aren't enough hours in the day to make enough answers to qualify for your 300 texts a week when the texts are so slow at this current time. Unless of course you somehow expect me to blow off the rest of my life, to completely devote myself to ChaCha until I happen to reach that figure!

View of a long-term guide

The question here is the ability to a company to determine how it will pay it independant contractors. No guide is an employee of ChaCha. In the past ChaCha has paid .20 for answers that were wrong and designed to "game" the payment process.

The concept of 'pay for performance' addresses that issue, not perfectly but it's an effort in the proper direction. The concerns of long-term guides are not a reduction in payment, because we feel the quality standard is reasonable and very attainable. Our concerns are the ability of the QC process to make timely determination of accuracy ratings.

If there are "many thousands of other guides" will leave the service, they will be the same ones who were gaming the system for fast cash and don't have desire to provide accurate, concise answers.

All the respondents have chosen not to use their ChaCha IDs, for whatever reason. I question how many of those respondents have been guides long enough to have insight into the company.

I invite you to talk to some long-term guides and get our view of the issue.

Timeline

We were told late on the 4th about the new performance based pay system, but the week we are being judged on started on the 3rd! This hurried and ill-considered decision shows the financial problems ChaCha must be having or their total lack of respect for their guides. Either way, it doesn't bode well for the future of ChaCha.

Robertsd: ill-placed anger

I'd like to reiterate some of what ITAnalyst has said, and also elaborate on what it means to be an independent contractor. The immaturity and negativity with which many ChaCha guides have handled this situation boggles the mind in some cases. I have been a guide for 12 days now, & I've seen people post private phone numbers of ChaCha employees on our forums. I've seen guides swear relentlessly in the forum, insulting ChaCha and their fellow guides alike. I've seen guides compare this to violations of civil rights.

I've also seen, in my 12 short days, some of the most irresponsible work ethic I've ever experienced, and I worked in the Oregon State court system for 8 years (hard to top!). I've seen blatantly false answers, lazy answers, insulting answers, and inappropriate answers. Though ChaCha, I don't think, has the apparatus in place to properly judge all guide quality well enough to base our pay on it, I think that this is at least a small step in the right direction to retaining quality guides & deactivating terrible guides.

Bottom line: we are all independent contractors. We all know this. We *should* have all read the terms of service, which clearly state that ChaCha has no legal obligation to keep a standard salary. We are not ChaCha employees, hence there is no reciprocal obligation involved: we may leave whenever we please for whatever reason.

I will continue to guide and recommend guiding to my diligent & hard working friends, and I hope that ChaCha reforms their quality system in order to handle the volume of answers that they will need to evaluate. This policy will simply make me work harder to maintain my top guide position. I just earned my first one this week, my first completed week with ChaCha, which means I must be doing something right, and that, even after 12 days, top guide status is obtainable.

Total Agreement

I totally agree with the posts by Itanalyst and DaniOfOr. Totally agree. This has been so hard for me to watch all the chaos that is being created because a company changed things.

Companies change things all the time. When something doesn't work they try something else and the system before was NOT working. There were a lot of bad answers being sent out.

I just cannot believe how much has been allowed to be said on the forums about a company these people work for. This has just been mind boggling to me. All I can say is ChaCha has much more compassion and understanding in this situation than I do.

I am not leaving. I love ChaCha and I can see how this new pay change will effect me for the better, it will make me do more and be better at it.

Please report the truth

First I would like to say that yes, Chacha does have a right to pay whatever they choose, and as Independant contractors we have the right to choose to work or not. Now to address the issue at hand, please stop saying guides make 9,10, and lord forbid 12 dollars an hour. 6, 7 tops on good days. It upsets me that the public thinks that the company is this fair, so news should be accurate.

Another thing I would like to address is the fact that all of these people think everyone can be a top guide, simple math states otherwise, 300 queries for every active guide is not possible, and no one has to explain how your accuracy was determined at all. I've been a top guide, and even I will admit the truth.

And even now, while guides are trying to meet that quota by the end of tonight, Chacha is crashing, server error, and it will be their pay that gets cut, even if they answered 299 queries with 100% accuracy. Explain how this is a fair wage on any level, and get the word out that Chacha is reducing themselves to the sweat shops that America is supposed to be so firmly against. I wonder if potential sponsors are aware of any of this?