Pros
Get to work from the comfort of your own home
Cons
I'm going to make some bullet points explaining my problems with the job and the employer, I'll also talk about how they operated from my perspective, I do feel as if I was lied to about the job in some pretty big ways, even during the interview they lied and dodged several of my pretty basic questions, which in retrospect should of been the red flag not the take the job. 1: Time table During the job ad and the interview they kept hyping up how this company was good to work for because it offered such a great work/life balance since you could set you own hours and it was permanent remote working, sounds good right? Well the part they barely mention, if at all, is the fact that "pick your own hours" is based on availability, so you only get to pick your hours if they want you on shift at those times, and the availability is pretty poor due to the tier system they have in place. 2: The Tier System When it comes to picking your shifts the company works on a tier system, tier 1 gets to pick their shifts first, then tier 2 and then tier 3, naturally when you first start you'll be placed into tier 3 so by the time it's your turn to pick shifts, there's nothing left but the worst hours, so you don't actually get to pick when you work. The company will tell you that "Oh don't worry, you'll quickly go up the ranks and get to pick your shifts earlier" which is theoretically possible but in practise not really, the tiers are based on your performance, typically how well you are on calls and your percentage of being "Ready" to accept a call, the problem is their standards are ridiculously high, you basically have to be perfect on every single call, any mistake, even the tiniest ones, will drag your overall score down, which means you'll be in the lower tiers. The reason they do this is because tier 3's shifts are when the phones are the busiest, so they'll say you can climb the tiers but really they want to keep you in the lowest tier and will use any excuse they can find to keep you in them. Even if there's something that's not a mistake, like you need to go the bathroom, well tough it's lowering your score. You might think "oh that's not too bad, just make sure to go to the bathroom during breaks and be good on calls" problem is on average you'll be answering 100's of calls a day, so a mistake made in just 1 call, even if it's something basic like, not verifying the spelling of the persons first name, they'll use it to put you in the lower tiers. 3:General operations The company is a call centre that operates as an answering service for other companies, they'll use lots of different words to make it sound better but that's what it is. Their operators answer the phones for over 1000's of different business all over the English speaking world, which sounds great for the company, but for the workers it means that anytime you answer the phone, you'll be answering for a completely random company, that most likely, you'll have no prior knowledge of. You will know nothing of this company or what it does, yet you'll be expected to answer the phone as if you work directly for that company, you'll be given a script for the company, a script that you'll most likely be seeing for the first time and if you get it wrong or sound unsure, they mark it down on your performance. If you take to long on the call, or direct the caller wrong, marked down, so you need to be perfect whilst also seeing most of it for the first time. They also don't really have any rules for which companies they'll work for, so there will be times when you'll be working for some pretty suspicious sounding companies or groups that deal with some very important stuff, you won't receive any training for these really important people either, just expected to wing it. 4: Abusive Customers Arguably the biggest downside is how abusive the customers can get, since they work for all kinds of companies, you'll get people who have complaints and just general with the problems, and since they believe you work directly for that company, and you have to lie and pretend you do, this means they'll expect you to be able to fix all their problems and when you can't they'll take it out on you, be ready to be shouted and screamed at for things that are completely out of your control. Of course the higher ups don't give a damn that you get abused. If you try to talk about it they will try to twist the event into somehow being your fault, which naturally means getting marked down and put in the lower tiers, and god forbid you don't remain completely cheerful whilst being shouted and screamed at, they'll fire you over it if you even say anything negative back. 5:Training When you get your job at this company they will give you some training, they will put you and a few other people who recently joined into groups and put two trainers to each group, the people who train you will actually be pretty great, I have no complaints about them but the problem is that what they're training you to do is not actually useful for the main job, they're forced to train you using tools that just do not prepare you in anyway for the role, especially how to handle abusive customers, and when something goes wrong, the company will frame it as your fault, even when you point out that you were never trained in how to deal with it. All in all, this has been the worst company I have worked for, they'll lie through their teeth to get you in as they need people to fill places and get people on the phones, after 1 month of working for them I was the only person from my training group still working for the company, the others got out a lot sooner and I wish I had too. Basically avoid working for this company at all costs.
