Sadly, the main cons affect agents, not management. There is far too large of a disparity between how coaches and managers behave at work, and how agents are allowed to behave. Agents truly feel like second-class citizens at Clearlink.
So many of the leaders are in their positions because they were in the right place at the right time, and it has created a toxic "boys club" where friends promote their friends, and there is little opportunity to break in if you're not in the club. They don't look outside the company for talent because they can pay internal promotions less money. Because the number of promotions is so few, there is intense competition for those jobs, and management uses that to terrorize potential candidates. Even though there is a ping-pong table for employee's use, promotion candidates are told they shouldn't play because it "looks bad." Why even have a ping-pong table if you shame people for taking a break?
In training, the micromanagement was atrocious. The director insisted that everyone on the team replied all to every email that went out. Every email. So every time one small email went out, maybe touching on a small policy change or an event coming up, you'd get 18 emails that all say "on it" or "got it" or "what a great idea!" It felt like complete disingenuous pandering, and it felt like if you didn't respond with a vapid unnecessary response, you were falling out of the director's good graces. It also became a running joke. This same director was the perfect example of someone who was in the right place at the right time- no business acumen, no innovative ideas. Worse than this, she was an obvious gossiper, and those conversations frequently got back around.
When I was new as an agent, the opportunities for commissions were exciting and real. I could make $500 a week in commissions regularly; now that would represent the top 5% of the agents of any given team. They have spun commission structures where they try to tell you that you can make more- but you can make more only if you're hitting ridiculous and unrealistic numbers.
And the biggest con of all... the call flow. The call flow is this inflexible script where you have to read some things verbatim, and other things you have to mention or pitch on the call. So instead of a dynamic, intelligent, professional sales agent, they've created robots that have to follow the call flow and force products down peoples' throats. It's 2019 for God's sake and they would force agents to pitch home phone lines to people. Say someone has a call where the customer says "I am a conscientious objector to TV- I think it's immoral, and I'm leading a campaign to eradicate TV in the world." The agent is still required to pitch that person TV. So the agent comes off as either disinterested, disrespectful, stupid, or all of the above. Management's response to this is the weakest and most patronizing idea of all time: "we don't know that our TV pitch won't change their mind, so we have to pitch it on every call every time!"
