Pros
For a CSR position the pay decent. When I first started with the company several years back it was a pretty positive place to work. The bonuses were nice and you could basically be yourself when talking to clients as long as you were professional and took care of client needs(which unfortunately has changed during the last couple years of my time there). Most of the other employees are very nice people which generally creates a pleasant work environment and with supervisors it is hit and miss, I had a few in my time at Schwab and I can say the ran the gamete - I had probably one of the best supervisor's I've come across and the very worst.
Cons
Too many changes that did not seem to be beneficial for clients and ended up becoming a major burden for the employees working in the call centers. Far too much emphasis is placed on a "check list" of things that you will be graded (because the phone calls are monitored something like 10 each month) and if you happen to phrase something incorrectly such as thank you rather than thank you for your business and that call is "graded" well then you've just lost serious points towards any bonus money and every "graded" call counts. They also implore you to "be yourself' and I found if difficult to walk that finely drawn line between being myself and mentally running through a check list in my mind - it made me feel like drone and not an employee. Additionally, unless you would like to be a broker career (and from what I saw often times even if you are a broker) advancement is difficult at least that was my experience (honestly with my "good" supervisor this was not a problem, but even coming of a quarter where I was in the "circle of excellence" with my bad supervisor I could not find advancement even when I had a several discussions about my goals with this supervisor). I suppose what I'm saying is there is a lot of lip service in this company (and although the lip service is probably based on someone's good intentions), there is a great deal of talk about positive change and career advancement, but rarely did I see anyone put "their money where their mouth is" at this company. Don't get me wrong it isn't the worst job in the world, just not a place that you'd like probably like to stay for too long.