Pros
- Nice colleagues - Training and senior team attempt to make you feel supported - Opportunities like unexpected same day PTO and VTO (Voluntary Time Off) if you are interested in that
Cons
- Little actual support from senior team. While you always have the option to reach out to them during a difficult or confusing call, they're often hard to reach, mean, disorganized, and provide inaccurate information. In following their instructions, you'll sometimes be bounced from one person to the next attempting to do things you're neither trained for nor meant to do. Then, you'll receive what is called "feedback," a word the company seniors imbue with negative intonation. That feedback is to critique what you've done at the instruction of a senior, in my experience. - Very hard to get PTO in advance. I was able to take advantage of same-day PTO, but never able to schedule it. Each schedule attempt was denied and I was told company PTO was booked up a year in advance. - With InnoSource taking over the call center, there is a lot of internal animosity between Alliant Energy employees and InnoSource employees (the Alliant Energy call center agents). That filters through to the daily work. - As a call center agent, I felt consistently confused, even months into the role. That indicates to me that training -- which felt extensive -- was either not sufficient or the pace needed to be adjusted. - Benefits like same-day PTO or VTO are a nice surprise if you're willing and able to accept them, but they're intended to manage call volume to available agents so that the amount of calls match the number of agents on the phones. That means that if all goes to plan, you'll experience many days when you're facing a massive queue with no time in between calls and repeated reminders to go faster in QAs and meetings with your supervisor. That, partnered with the lack of support from the senior team, makes the job a stressful one. - As a utility company, calls are often billing related. I felt that internally the push was for us to be hard on customers and not as helpful as other roles. We're also not empowered to make any decisions on our own. That leads to a lot of angry customers, and resulting escalated calls. When a call escalates, you do have the option to reach out to a senior. However, the senior typically pushes back and you are forced to remain on the line with an irate customer for as long as that customer sees fit. You are not allowed to disconnect the call no matter how volatile a customer becomes, nor can you rely on a senior helping you. I received death threats to members of the company, was called numerous derogatory terms, and faced customers becoming physically violent while on the line. Despite reporting these happenings to seniors, it was difficult for me to get seniors to jump in, and I was often asked to return to calls or call back these same customers. - You're allotted 30 minutes total of break time to take during the day, and will be penalized for taking any more. In a day with back-to-back high-stress calls, it's hard to jump directly from one to another. You are advised that your screen is always being watched, and will receive frequent critique on dead time during note taking. This both implies that you are not allowed a moment to think nor breathe during the day unless its within that 30-minute break framework. 30 minutes may seem like a good amount, but spread over 8 hours, it's not nearly enough. For example, I frequently used all of my break time simply filling up my water bottle and using the restroom, leaving me no time for decompression after difficult calls. - Very little room for growth. During my time with Alliant I asked my supervisor repeatedly about the opportunity to participate in projects and expressed enthusiastic interest in growth opportunities as they came across my desk. I was instructed to first become the best in the call center -- out of 180 agents -- and then we could discuss growth opportunities. - Obscenely low pay for the level of intricacy and stress the work required.
