Newly implemented Charleston model does not mesh with Austin culture - Customer Support Associate Blackbaud Employee Review

In the Support Department, post implemented Charleston model: - Department morale is extremely low. There used to be Fun Slams, Team Building events, and Community Service days that Support analysts could attend. Now, if you're on front line (which you are 6.5 hours a day - see below), then you can't leave your desk. This means, you can't do any fun stuff anymore. Management did away with all of the events that built camaraderie and team spirit and replaced it with potlucks where you go and grab a plate of food for 5 minutes and take it back to your desk to eat it. - Zero flexibility in schedule. You cannot have a flat tire, go to a doctor's appointment, leave early on occasion without using PTO. The schedule is created in Charleston, SC by people who are not caring or understanding of personal situations. Even if you have to go to the bathroom, you have to inform the schedulers of time missed on front line. They will deny any request not submitted in their time zone (ET), even if you specify your local time zone. - 6.5 hours of front line a day (prior to the change to the model, it was only 4 hours of front line a day). The times that you are required to take incoming chats or phones, you must be in the correct status on your computer. If not, you have to contact the schedulers to validate why you weren't in the correct status, and good luck getting them to approve the reason and adjust your schedule accordingly. Analysts no longer have the time needed to properly research client issues. If the problem is too difficult or time consuming, it must be passed along to a more senior analyst, thus resulting in Customer Support, Associates to never be able to grow or learn how to resolve more difficult cases. - Adherence is set at 100%. Nothing like setting up an employee for failure as it's impossible to be in the correct phone status 100% of the time. Customer calls bleed over into your 15 minute break time ALL the time. If I take a chat or call at 2:45pm and my break time is at 3:00pm, I cannot merely hang up or disconnect the chat. After the call/chat is ended, then I would spend 5 minutes filling out the template to contact the schedulers to try to get my schedule adjusted to meet what's happening in reality and hope that they approve, or adjust my schedule correctly. It's so much red tape and time wasted, to try to meet an expectation that can never be attainable in the first place. - Micromanagement of metrics. Team Leads are trained to only focus on employees' numbers. It's very much a call center now (whereas prior to the newly implemented Charleston model, it was not.) Average Handle Time, Contact Two Days, Average Hold Time, Customer Satisfaction, First Contact Resolution, etc are just some of the metrics to which an employee has to meet expectations. There are many of these statistics, and you must meet your goals despite the fact that much of these metrics are out of your control. What are you supposed to do? Hang up on a customer who is really detail oriented and takes over 20 minutes to explain the situation and resolve the problem? They really don't have the customer's best interest in mind or their employees', but are only concerned about numbers and making money. - Only negative situations are discussed by management in one on one meetings. It doesn't matter if your CSAT (Customer Satisfaction) is 100%; that will be glossed over in your review. But if your AHT (Average Handle Time) is over 20 minutes, you better believe you will be told to focus on that and get that number lowered. - Management blatantly lies to the entire department. For example, the Austin Support Team started getting routed front desk calls for people needing to be transferred to Accounting, Sales, Services, etc. Support was informed that it would only be temporary, for about a month. A month came and long went and front desk calls were never routed elsewhere, so some calls taken are not even about Product Support. Analysts were not trained on how to direct what kind of calls to where. We were provided a spreadsheet with phone number extensions and basically, I always just said a Hail Mary that a particular customer got routed to the right extension to help with their non product related questions. I'm sure I was wrong on more than one occasion, which would result in the customer getting bounced around from person to person. - Lack of training all around. Support used to be masters of one product. When a customer called in with a Luminate Online problem, for example, they would speak with a Luminate Online analyst who could log into their instance of the product and see exactly what the customer sees and dive into fixing the situation. This visibility and specialization to one product, produced very knowledgeable agents and happy customers. With the new Charleston model rolled out to Austin, analysts are no longer allowed access to the customer's instance of the product (unless you were grandfathered into having that ability) and expected to know 3 plus products. Essentially the new model wants analysts to be a jack of all trades instead of a master of one. It takes months for anyone to learn one product, but Support gets 2 weeks of self-paced recorded video training to try and learn really complex products. Afterwards, you are put on front line and expected to resolve customers' questions without having really any idea of the situation at hand, let alone how to help or find a solution. - Inability to work remotely. Management removed the option to work remotely, so if your life changes and you have to relocate, you have to quit Blackbaud. - Extremely difficult to get promoted. I worked as a Customer Support, Associate for 2 years with no opportunity to become a Customer Support, Staff, let alone anything higher than that. - Unlikely to move into a different department. There are not that many internal positions posted for other departments. Even when there is, there is no time allotted to ever cross train with a different department, let alone get time off of front line to interview for them.