I can’t speak for other departments, but I have seen enough in the Customer Experience side to know that the training does not set up the ICs for success. Like many of the other reviews submitted, you will be thrown to the sharks. It’s also true that you’re like a second class citizen as non-exempt, in some instances. From the underlying tone of condescension from many of the reps in cross-functional teams to the way your every move is micromanaged via the scheduling system. It’s weird because Gusto does keep the humanity in this role more than other companies I’ve experienced but that doesn’t stop you from overall being treated like a headset at the end of the day with how demanding the workload is.
You spend 2 months in a class room-like environment to prepare and Gusto is understanding and makes this time as comfortable and interactive as they can, but it’s unfortunate because by the end, you’re still not equipped with the real tools and expertise you need to handle real life situations. This creates frustration with the customers (excluding the ones that are looking for you to give them the sun, the moon, and the stars) because we cannot fully understand their needs without the applicable context and knowledge. This creates an endless cycle of you and the customer both being lost and even with you cleaning up after other reps who haven’t gotten up to speed after being on the floor after some time.
You’ll hastily be trained on new things every once in a while and if you let your manager know you don’t believe you can adequately handle the new material yet, you’re heard but still just told you “have resources” which are their website’s knowledge base (which is actually very thorough) and AI, *but* when it’s crunch time, you need more direct answers that may not be readily available for unique situations. We don’t have much human resources anymore.
I have had multiples job across different industries but in this role, I have never encountered so many Karens in my LIFE. The people who call in make this job that much more insufferable. The world is crashing down but you need to hold it together because Susan is chewing you out about her 401k being one penny off. The customers are also the ones who determine you performance - if they don’t validate you with a approval score or worse, leave a survey review about something negative that has nothing to do with you, Gusto ranks that as “well, you must not be doing a good job”. You’re backed into a corner too because you feel like you have to help them with everything question, even when an answer is not easy to obtain, because you have the scores hanging over your head, in the back of your mind. You could be nice and super helpful to hundreds of people all month, but the 2 or 3 that choose to randomly note something negative will keep you from advancing. People are more likely to react to negativity than positivity; it’s basic human psychology. Gusto benefits from this because if they can keep your “performance” rank low through these unrealistic expectations… they don’t have to promote you or even come out of pocket for a raise. It’s a shame because the Customer Experience department is the frontline, first responders even, of the org; if all of the call center workers were to not show up for a day, our customer base would be in shambles!
There’s no autonomy whatsoever. They’ll put you on the phones the entire day which is not only exhausting but makes it hard to follow up. I’ve had to align my bathroom schedule with my 15 minute break… taking too much personal time (which is only allowed to be a few minutes anyway) means you’re slacking and your manager will be notified immediately via a public Slack channel. People (especially adults) know *exactly* what they’re doing, and when they’re doing it. An issue of being off-task should be handled personally; we don’t need a whole group chat for someone to basically tells us “get back to work!” all day.
You have to dedicate 3 months of the year to the company because you can’t take time off during the “end-of-year” season but it should be called “half-year” because it will be April and still unreasonably BUSY. It doesn’t matter that you also deserve time off like the salaried folks or shouldn’t be subjected to not being able to take off the day before or after a holiday - you need to be front and center for the customers. Always. And your brain needs to constantly be on. This is not an easy job and is an important one, but it’s nothing new that this country undermines the most crucial positions (teacher, fire fighter, social worker, etc.). No autonomy but your actions can have a large weight and can cause someone to lose money or not have health insurance altogether. Go figure.
Hiring is the biggest issue here because it appears they don’t want to have an excess of representatives when calls are slower but this is only the case 3-4 months of the year, creating unnecessary strain for teams that are nowhere near large enough to comfortably accommodate our actual 500k customer base. The wild metric standards would make you think you’re a lab rat. They want you churning through as many email, chat and phone cases as possible and have customers confirm that you’re doing a good job on top of that, rather than them evaluating your performance themselves alone. Pinging you about taking too long on an email, live chats turning colors when you haven’t responded in 60 seconds… it’s all too much. And even if you somehow manage to hit these metrics from time to time, you don’t get anything extra, unlike in a profession like sales where hitting a target equals reward. You just… get to keep your job. There’s some cool perks at the end of the year season but you’re really too tired around that time for them to feel worth it. There’s also a new small bonus but it’s *quarterly* (your metrics are a monthly requirement btw), requires perfect metrics and will mostly be eaten up by taxes by the time you get it.
Additionally, the reviews about AI taking over everything in tech also applies to Gusto. It’s being implemented at all levels. While they promised it will not, I can forsee it somewhat taking over the customer support roles, but I don’t actually see this as a bad thing. People need to be put in roles where they earn a livable wage. The annual salary for both Payroll and Benefits Advocates is only about 10k above the poverty level; that’s unacceptable, especially for a tech company. The customers fight to get past the AI prompts and when they get to a human, many of them don’t appreciate you going out of your way to help them anyway or help in general, if they’re not getting what they want.
It’s incredulous what they’ll call in about; no one bothers to read a thing on our website. As long as there are no repercussions around people being rude, nothing will change and people will continue to think it’s acceptable to treat workers this way.
I really like Gusto, but when it comes to this role, it’s sounds less dreadful to work in a smelly sewer as a maintenance man all day than this line of work because at least I know I’d be paid well and treated like an equal, both in externally and internally. Our sales team sells our customers a dream instead of the reality of what we do as their broker and the Customer Experience department is left to take any and all heat for them messes that they make. For anyone who made it this far, heed my warning and don’t take this kind of job unless you are really down on your luck, like doing math everyday, don’t mind helping grown ups manage their emotions, have the patience of a saint and are okay with experiencing burnout every couple months.
