I was with Empower in the call center for a little over 2 years and it was soul sucking. My mental health drained fast. At the beginning, training was probably the best experience but then once you are full time on the phones you feel the burnout quick. It’s a call center so you are looked at by your stats/ numbers. They want you to take each call within 7 minutes but in my opinion most of the time that is not do-able and they don’t get that. The reason people are calling in is because they don’t understand, so they have several questions. You should look at the customer experience rather than how quick we answered and hung up. It is back to back calls as well with only a 15 second breather in between (this they added recently and does no help). They acquired so many plans but don’t have enough reps so there is a constant queue of calls waiting to be answered in all departments. Sometimes the wait is over 20 minutes. There is constant overtime, I think at one point we went 6-9 months of overtime before it was cut back or taken away completely. Which overtime is nice but let us choose if we can/ want to do overtime, We have lives and obligations outside of work. Many many MANY people hate the overtime and complain because it is constant and you have no say in it. The managers are hit or miss, some are amazing and others are not. There is very little room for growth into areas outside of the call center in my opinion. A ton of people apply to each internal job posting outside of the call center so it’s very hard to move up, because no one wants to be in the call center. The pay is decent but not something I could live on in this economy. It also seemed like there was a disconnect with reps, there are so many mis transfers and reps saying they don’t handle/ or want to assist. Overall, i could say so much more but I would stay away. It’s a call center job. You need thick skin for the attitudes and reprimand you will get from the participants. There is very little support and you will feel the burnout.. fast! For your own mental health and sanity, just don’t do it.
