I think they just employ people with no prior customer experience. I've had some wonderful interactions with Customer Service. Today, however, I spoke with someone who only seemed to be able to regurgitate answers from the manual.
I don't expect a lot from the 12% fee they charge guests, but hosts are the "engine" that makes the platform work. They need to get the beginners out of that office quick.
I was just talking to Verizon, had an issue, the CS rep (also young) stayed on the phone, walked through various diagnostics with me, determined I had a bad app, but looked for outage reports while I deleted the app and reloaded. Also analyzed my account and told me there were options for upgrade (like unlimited data) but I didn't really need them. In the past month I've talked to their Customer service about using an international plan while I was in Scotland, and reporting one of my daughter's phones as stolen so the device ID would be flagged.
I want the same level of service from Airbnb. That's only going to happen if Airbnb hires more experienced people and gives their staff more power to research a problem and fix it. I can read the manual myself. If I'm calling it's because I have a different level of concern that is not addressed by the manual.
Sigh. Sigh. Sigh.