Unrealistic goals for Chat customer service reps
Pros
I worked for Inktel as a Chat Customer Service Rep for Sephora and I got to work from home which was overall the best benefit. The pay started at $16/hour and eventually was given a raise of 19/hour after a year of being there but I believe it was a company wide raise for the position (I am unsure what their starting pay is for the position now). Once or two times a year there are shift bids that determine your schedule and they normally have a really good range of shifts with different days and hours.
Cons
When I worked from home for them I was not given any equipment, so the computer, monitors and any other equipment was stuff I already had. They did give new hires like a $200 stipend to go towards purchasing any necessary equipment (stipend was added onto the first or second paycheck). Management gives unrealistic goals for chatters. Sometimes no matter how hard you try or how much you help a customer, they will still leave you a bad review at the end of a chat even if you helped them. You could get a 100% on every internal QA review, but it wouldn't matter because Inktel management only actually looks at stats from reviews that customers leave. Another con is they hire a lot before promotional seasons when it is expected to get busy and towards the end of a promotional period if they are overstaffed then they will let people go. I was hired at the company as a full time employee and had been with them for well over a year and was let go for no reason at all. People who they let go are usually the chatters who are not promoted to be leads, except the people who are chosen to be leads tend to be the ones who are shown a lot of favoritism. For shift bids -- the con for this is that everyone is required to participate even if you currently like the schedule you have. The earlier morning shifts were normally harder to get. They prioritize who gets the schedule they want based on your chat ranking, which is where your chat stats are important. If your chats stats are not good then you could end up towards the bottom of the ranking of chatters and potentially end up with a shift you do not even want.