Booking.com Reviews

Cons

small office, not allow to use a car

Cons

with growth, benefits reducing, flexibility and they have stopped listening to their employees

Cons

not alot, perhaps too many employees think its a holiday camp

Cons

No values when dealing with customers, no clear command/ advice structure, bullying from management, constant stream of changes where no one clearly new what was going on, no back up from mangement

Cons

- Practically impossible to get promoted unless you are friends' with management.
- Very repetitive job
- Most of the time there is not a balance between being on ready (on the phone) and picklist (emails) which means that a lot of agents will be the majority of the time on the phone, and some others (specially smaller language lines such as Turkish or Danish) all the time on emails. Still, all the language lines have the same KPIs and same salary even though the amount of workload is not the same at all.
- A lot of owners that register their properties with us do not get proper training. This is because there are more accounts getting opened than people who provide training (aka coordinators). What matters here is to reach the 2M properties, quantity over quality... Then most of the calls you will receive are because the partners (property owners) are clueless due to lack of training or just because they are not computer literate as there is not any type of filter or criteria to join Booking.com
- Some agents do not have a good level on their second language which results in customers' frustration. We have had customers calling us because the message they received from Booking.com had a lot of grammar mistakes and misspellings.
- There are a lot of changes going on and they do not tend to be communicated properly which causes lots of confusion and misunderstandings.
- They expect you to have a 80% partner or customer satisfaction (PSAT or CSAT) even though people who call you tend to rate the company and/or the outcome rather than the service you provide. This has been raised with Team Leaders but not much has changed.
- Micromanagement. Your TL will push you to get to a certain target (sometimes even expect you to do more) because they will have their CSM (Customer Service Manager) pestering them, and so on and so forth. Very target based, not focusing on people's skills but their stats and figures.
- It feels like you are in High School again. Very controlling environment. Every call is recorded and if you are in the wrong code, you will get a call from a RTC (Real Time Coordinator) to "kindly" remind you that you are not in the right code. Similarly, if one week you don't meet one of the targets you get a slap on the wrist from your TL without even allowing yourself to give an explanation.
- Your experience in Booking.com totally depends on your TL. It could be a bliss or an absolute nightmare depending if s/he likes you or not.
- If you don't mingle with your team enough or go to the team outings (or any social event) you are seen as an outcast and are frowned upon.
- Bad communication between departments. At Customer and Accommodation Service we deal with different topics such as invoicing, reviews, content, registrations... and getting in touch with the right department can be an odyssey. When you forward messages to some of them, it may take them several days or even weeks to get any type of response.
- Some of the TLs are clueless and unaware what customer service agents deal with everyday. However, they are very unempathethic and push people over the limit.
- If you are sick/late 3 times over a period of a year, you are required to attend a formal meeting and could be a reason for dismissal. You will still have this meeting even if you have talked to your TL about it and the reasons are justified properly.
- Computers are very slow and can take you up to 10 mins to log in into one for the first time, and this will happen often as there is a hot desk policy in place.

Cons

Maybe a bit robotic. You have to be on the phone for up to 8 hours a day. I did 10 hour shift, and sometimes I would only reply to e-mails for 2 hours the rest would be answering the phone calls.

Some shifts seemed a bit unfair, as someone would only be answering e-mails yet someone else would be on the phone the whole shift

Cons

Pressure to meet targets, Shift based job

Cons

I have heard that agents on the night shift secretly bring drugs into the office or get high just before the shift start

Some team leaders under investigation for sexual harassment

Team leaders and certain senior managers getting too drunk at the freaky fridays and are basically embarrassing themselves in front of their own agents

Some senior managers are either socially awkward (totally not fit to do a people management job) or they think they are the captain of the army by terrorising their team leaders. I have overheard team leaders talk in the kitchen on how stressed and unsatisfied they are.

Unrealistic targets. I think that team leaders and senior managers should do a full week of "taking customer calls" to finally understand how ridiculous their targets are.

Sometimes team leaders are expected to help their agents by handling customer emails during busy seasons, but team leaders avoid it because they think it's beneath them.

The system that collects performance data is often down or shows wrong data. It makes no sense that the company expects agents to reach their targets if the systems are unreliable.

Walking into the office is like you're walking into a bad Latin drama show. There is so much gossip going on. Even when you mind your own business and just do your job, you're still victim of random gossip.

I could go on and on....

Cons

Every single comment saying the same think - management is very unprofessional and rude, with no knowledge about their and CS job
Ignorant - they never listen to agent as they think that they know better even about your own health or that you need to take 5 min to go to toilette.
They will comfort you sometimes, if you have a problem and then they will use it against you
Sickness policy - put in danger agents as they are scared to take time off to get well

Incredibly stressful environment because of the Team leads.

Cons

Kindergarten-like environment, strict sickness policy