O2E Brands reviews

The turnover rate was shockingly high in the past couple of months, even by call centre standards. People were quitting en masse for several months now. Things at the company seem to have reached a boiling point recently. Some employees who have been here for many years and have consistently been considered some of the top sales agents in terms of bookings have quit, or rumoured to have been fired out of the blue, which is extremely unusual for any number of reasons including the fact that call centre turnover means that most people will quit within a few months to a year anyway – why would you actively let go somebody who’s been loyal for much longer? It’s a morale dampener in the sense that the company is sending a message that nobody is safe and you have no idea what you can do to avoid being next. The company gleefully takes advantage of their legal right to terminate without cause, to the point where they have been known to show people the door without any warning. You can be doing comparable numbers to everyone else or even kill it on the phones, but a day or two later you can come in and the same people will call you into a room to tell you that you’ve been fired, you’ve no idea why, and everyone else on the sales floor is blindsided by this. This has happened to more than one person within a short period of time and everyone can see it. The supervisors often like to use the phrase ‘not a good fit’ when describing people who have been let go – this is their Get Out of Employment Standards Tribunal Free card. And what happens after all these people quit or have been disappeared? Nothing! We keep hearing that they’re bringing in new agents to take the load off, but until that actually happens, everyone who’s left is overworked, paid the same, and the phones keep ringing (side note: if a customer needs something gone right now and doesn’t book because a truck is unavailable, you lose that sale and it counts as a hit against you – I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to conjure a truck team out of thin air). Since there’s not that many people working the phones as it is, it stresses everyone else out and it shows in your conversion. It’s not for lack of space or anything – there are rows of empty desks and chairs just begging for people to sit on them. Another problem is the lack of coaching once you’ve finished training and you hit the phones. You’re basically thrown to the wolves armed with nothing but your headset, a computer, and fake psychology sales tips pinned to the cubicle walls. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve received proper one-to-one coaching. Given the lack of warm bodies and the scheduling in which there’s only about three other people in your cubicle farm, there should be more than enough face time to go around for everyone who needs help, but supervisors seem to be more keen to sit at their computers and jump behind you in the middle of a call, throwing you off while you have a live person on the line while your supervisor directs you to say things. Even when you tell your team captain what you think you need help with, they will not really use it to coach you in a professional setting to handle it, preferring instead to just whisper to you to ‘say this!!!!’ to the customer when you’re on the phones and throwing their hands up in defeat when it doesn’t work and the customer says no anyway. Unfortunately, not everyone is going to book even with the greatest will in the world, especially during specific days and times when callers are known to be less likely to book and more likely to say no, unless you are blessed with the gift of mind control. Sales agents are the most important part of the whole enterprise and yet our value is minimal given the way we are treated, in terms of scheduling, guidance, and respect. You have no idea what your targets are because you’re told it doesn’t really matter, and yet your conversion numbers are posted everywhere: they’re company-wide knowledge and emailed to every single agent every morning. This sends a mixed message – on the one hand numbers aren’t everything, but on the other that’s all your supervisors talk about and that’s all you see. And if you’re scheduled to work certain hours (it is a 24-hour call centre after all) such as evenings or holidays when the conversion rate is going to be far worse than usual? Good luck! Nobody takes that into account when they look at your numbers. The only positive is your colleagues aren’t the type to judge you poorly for them, but it does bring about a personal sense of shame seeing your numbers placed between everyone else’s if you’ve had a bad day.

scheduling issues can arise, especially with newer employees