Pros
You are able to set your own schedule most the time. They promote from within, most people seem friendly. Paid training. You work at home.
Cons
I went into this job thinking it would be super easy because I am very tech savvy and know alot about computer troubleshooting, little did I know that skill would not be used at all and I would be learning all new stuff in a short time and then expected to apply it immediately to their expectations. I have found it very hard to not want to troubleshoot things that are not within my "scope of support" because that is what I have done for the past 10+ yrs with family, friends and their friends, no those issues are referred to their overpriced support team for computer repair stuff, honestly something I would be far better suited for. They expect your calls to be done in 10 minutes and alot of the troubleshooting you do takes longer than that. I am convinced that people that are averaging below the 600 second requirement average time for phone calls are not even really doing much troubleshooting at all, they are just straight putting in a ticket for a tech to go out. The expectations I am finding are seriously unrealistic and unfair. While paid training is great, they only give you 2 weeks of training, the 1st week is spent watching videos and taking a couple tests which you must pass to continue on in training and keep your job, the 2nd week is when you start taking calls and that is all the training you get, after that you are on your own buddy, you do not take many calls during training either and while you take these calls you have to document every last thing you do with them, so your typing and telling them what to do and reading from their pages of troubleshooting help, when you start the call the info you are required to get takes you about 3 minutes if the customer only has a little to say, otherwise it could go on for 5 or 6 minutes and you have not even started troubleshooting yet! You get a ton of older people too who because of their age are completely clueless and your expected to get them off the phone in 10 minutes! Ya, that'll happen, NOT! These people are totally and utterly completely computer illiterate, you literally have to break things down to them like they are 5 and ya that can take a very long time! You are not allowed to have a scheduled break or lunch, nope you are to put yourself in some queue at the beginning of your shift because there are a ton of others working too and so this queue goes through the list of people so you better watch that so you do not miss your lunch. They have a point system where if your late, absent or what have you points are taken away, you start off with 100, if you get to 40 or below, say buh bye to your job, it's easy to do to because from my experience pretty sure they are not even following their own policies on the amount of points they take away for various reasons. If you are on a call for longer than 10 minutes you are expected to get help immediately by a higher up, if you don't you can expect to be harassed by them for your notes which then takes away from time you are supposed to be helping your customer. If you want to put in a ticket for a tech to go to the customers house, you must get the approval of a higher up, you must submit to them your notes to get this approval so make sure you have documented everything because if you don't you'll be hounded about it and expect to wait for them alot which then lengthens your call time. One of the companies they work with provides a horrible internet service, horrible seriously and it annoys me to no end that we are supposed to deal with their continually irate customers because their service hardly ever works, they guarantee this company this fast customer service as if they even deserve it, they do not, I can assure you of that. As a stay at home agent I have to have a completely quiet environment and 99% of the time it is, there are a few times where my dogs will get up and bark and they flip at me because the customers hear it, I get maybe it is not professional but come on people, I have not ever had one customer flip out on me, when I explain to them I am working at home, 10 times out of 10 they say how cool and nice that is and sorry but I am not caging my dogs or putting them outside all day for a job, I have morals thanks!! They could care less honestly, they just want their internet working. You cannot even get a bathroom break without putting yourself in a queue! There are some higher ups that talk down to you when you do not meet their requirements. It is extremely high stress and no one cares about that, they expect you to put on a smile and do your job and do it in 10 minutes or less. I was not told how detrimental this was to the job during my interview, I was just told they would like the calls to be like 12 minutes but to average 4 an hour, that is 15 minutes each people, do the math already! They need to extend training to at least a month for real or at least give you that time to get the hang of things and not hound you when your calls go on forever in a day! They need to be far more understanding and they simply are not. It is hard to think the job will even work out once you get on your own. Oh those lunches and breaks and restrooms I mentioned, people can swap places with you on that queue too so you get knocked down, you have some token thing that is based on your work, there are not many but you can use them if its an emergency. You also are expected to have a low what is called dnd time, in other words do not disturb time, what is that you ask, that means your lunches and breaks and restrooms count against you! Yep, if you have more than 10% downtime they have a cow, they can easily happen if you take the hour lunch and only 1 15 minute break so watch yourself. You are not compensated in any way for your own expenses i.e. your internet connection, a headset with microphone or anything else you need, oh and you are allowed to give remote support but are only allowed to use like 3 different ones, two of which are crazy expensive and no they will not pay for it for you, the free one is horrible, this is ideal for the older people, but therein lies the problem doesn't it, you have to then get these people to download it, so you have to instruct them on how to do it, then pray it works and oh p.s. this is only available if they even have a working internet connection which is p.s.s. 1% of the time, fun times people!
