1-800 Contacts reviews

As much as we do desperately need new employees, I could never in good conscience recommended someone work here now. 2 years ago, I would have, but this is not the same company as 2 years ago. Many reviews before me have said it all already. I can guarantee any good reviews you see, are not real. First thing you should know, is the role they pitch to you is not what you'll actually be doing. Listen to us when we tell you, they claim it isn't a sales job, but it is. People get fired everyday for not hitting the insanely high sales metrics they force. They will not help you, you will receive no chances and no warning. They do not tell you the truth. Seasoned agents are the only ones who will tell you the truth and they're too afraid to do that on teams because those conversations are monitored and people get fired for it. There is nowhere safe to talk there. They admit to reading and call me out on my private teams conversations with other agents all the time. This would be doable if all you dealt with were sales chats right? Well, unfortunately, 95% of your chats are from customers just asking random questions. People don't chat in because they want a bunch of forced sales pitches, they chat in because they have ONE question they need answered. Since you're required to handle these chats as well, and pitch a sale anyway, that makes the sale requirement even more ridiculous. If you chat in for an order to be canceled, do you really think it makes any sense for me to say "well, how about instead of canceling, we upgrade this order to a 1 year package for 1200 bucks!?" You would likely never buy from us again, along with getting angry at that agent who responded the way they're being forced to. It's an absolute joke. Trust me, we don't want to pitch that to you either. Each month they raise the requirements higher, while making the job harder and harder to do. In fact, we were just told in June, that one MAJOR source of our revenue (and something that our customers actually love using) is being taken away. So, they take away this huge piece of revenue, and do they lower the metric requirements to compensate? They absolutely do not. They continue to RAISE the bar. Then in August, it's announced the entire software we have used for decades is being changed in September, and were given no information about this and no promises that we will have time to be trained. In fact, we were told we are the "test subjects." I'm sorry, is my career a joke to you? At this point, all of us feel like we are nothing more than guinea pigs, being used by a company who wants to see just how far they can push us, how much can they take away from us, how much can they cut corners, and continue to bring in millions a day from us. Adding to that ^, they also destroy any chance we have to maintain chat metrics by all of a sudden making it REQUIRED that we work other departments whenever we are asked, because THEY are also short staffed. Why is that our problem to cover? Your inability to keep people on staff is a COMPANY problem, not mine. For reference, you cannot maintain, improve, or even work on your chat metrics, if you're somewhere else. Do they care about this? No. Do they lower our requirements to compensate? No. They instead, try to gaslight us and tell us this is part of our job description. No it is not. Show me where I agreed to that at hiring. They opened a "flex" role, where they start the pay out at 21/hr, for hiring people who want to do this exact thing they are making us do now, for 15/hr. They must not have had any takers. I wonder why. Their solution then, is to just make us do it all. So why aren't we getting that 21/hr pay? Pathetic way to treat people. Chat is the most demanding department at this company. So demanding in fact, that apparently no one else is good enough to help US when we drown. Yet, we are still expected to help other departments, leaving our own chat agents with an even more skeleton crew. Make it make sense. Your chat agents are burnt out. You are not listening to us. You're sending the message to us that you do not care about us and we are nothing but work horses to you. Every single one of us hates this job now, when we used to love it. Every single one of us resents the customers who chat in for service only questions now, because YOU have made the goals unreachable, and WE cannot afford one single chat that is coming for anything but a sale. I know for a fact your customers are feeling the attitude shift. I know for a fact your chat agents are too tired to care anymore. If a customer wants to be rude to us, then they are going to get that right back. What's the point. You never listen to us, you never change anything we ask. You never have our backs. We are miserable, but still just trying to keep a job going for as long as we can. We are not still here for any other reason. We have no will to keep showing up and be shuffled around all day long. We have no motivation to be kind to customers anymore. We have no incentive to be helpful anymore. You've completely broken us down, and it's only a matter of time until the customer feedback will start to follow ours. Maybe you'll actually listen to them.

Cons: • Departments like Email and MMS are consistently short-staffed, yet hiring seems focused elsewhere • When Chat is overloaded, there’s little cross-departmental support from teams like Email or MMS • The flex team was created to assist where needed, but some flex agents are not held to the same performance standards (e.g., handling fewer chats), despite receiving higher pay • Expectations to flex into other roles have increased, but this shift wasn’t part of the original job description for most and hasn’t come with additional compensation • Pay equity and role expectations could be more clearly communicated and fairly implemented