Nightmare Call Center On West 36th Street - Appointment Setter National Merchant Services Employee Review

Cons * Ownership is oblivious to the production limits inherent in the horrific culture their policies foster, policies that ultimately hurt their own interests * Even by call center standards, the turnover rate from week to week is extremely high. Among those who remain, orders from the top cause management to threaten staff employment on a near daily basis * This is the living definition of a depressing/dead end job National Merchant Services is one of those telemarketing jobs inside sales professionals will find easy to secure when in need of 'something' for immediate income. Pay is low (minimum wage plus a $10 bonus per qualified appointment) and the office environment is remarkable for its bi-polar nature. The initial interview is a rubber stamp process to set applicants up for a training day. Every Monday and Wednesday sees an influx of new people who hit the phones. The rookies will arrive at 10 am for an introductory meeting in the conference room for a product briefing and explanation of workplace protocol. Newbies will then be assigned to Team Leads who go over the sales pitch and guide the trainees through the day. While working, the rookies will only make payroll if/when they attain two appointments across the span of a few days. Those who don't, tough luck. I'm not sure why NY Labor allows this practice as at the margins it equates to exploitation of vulnerable people who work without any form of compensation. It was not uncommon to see upwards of 20 people in a new training class, half or more leaving at the lunch break, with less than a handful ever making payroll. This is one of the reasons why the ads for employment continue on and on. Job security at all levels is always in a state of peril. There is an astounding disconnect between the 'on the ground' conditions floor managers face, and what a willfully ignorant ownership expects. Trickling down, workers will be praised one day, then terminated the next. Team leads will be scolded on the floor in front of their juniors. Termination will be threatened/hinted at in morning and late day meetings (with late meetings often running past the 6 PM period that workers are on the clock). The dialer will be filled with burnt out campaigns and low/zero probability prospects, but lack of production will be blamed on worker complacency and incompetency. Qualifying criteria for leads will change constantly, as will critiques on how to qualify. A weekly bonus that was listed on the employment expectation sheet upon being hired was eliminated without explanation, and was replaced with absolutely nothing. In classic sweatshop fashion, two daily optional fifteen minute breaks are afforded to the appointment setters, but the workers must 'clock out' so that the breaks will be deducted from their pay. In general the workers are not happy, they are looking/waiting for something else, have no faith/trust in the ownership, and perform at much less of a level than they would if there was a more supportive/stable/normal work place environment. At the same time, in the context of all of the above, there is a demand from ownership for ever greater levels of effort and production. Ownership will wax poetic during product knowledge lessons and rebuttal sessions, with dreams of more/better leads being monetized in the future. At the same time, the workers see standing before them cheap/greedy/stingy disingenuous company men who don't want to compensate their expected efforts, and who consistently demonstrate through their policies and actions that they couldn't care less if their underlings hit the unemployment line tomorrow. NMS has fostered a climate of resentment and distrust with their employees at every level that makes anything resembling a win-win bond that would elevate production beyond a token level an impossibility.