Where do I begin? This is honestly the bottom of the barrel as far as office jobs go. You only work here when no other employers have any interest in you and you've run out of options. State Farm calls us "underwriters" but in all manager meetings, we are referred to as CCAs (customer care associates). State Farm is very crafty at posting out to job boards and simply calling the job title an “underwriter” in an attempt to mask the fact that you will be a call center representative. Even in the interviews, State Farm painstakingly hides anything that would lead an applicant to believe that they are applying for a high-volume call center. There are two areas, one is operations, where you take no calls and one is PLCC, where all you do is take calls. They wont even tell you which job they are offering you until your first day of work (after you’ve burned all other job prospects) but on the first day everyone is of course assigned to the call center. You take 70-90 calls per day back to back to back every four minutes until one day you get burned out and quit. Also, something to consider is this: “underwriters” only speak with State Farm agents and team members all day long. Agents and team members are compensated only on commission and that commission is based on policies in force and premium payment. So when they call you, it’s to argue with you about why you’re cancelling a household. Even if the household has had six accidents in two years, the agents will still call you to ask why you're cancelling their business. When you tell them what they don't want to hear, they always either ask to escalate to your boss or they just keep calling back over and over until they get the answer they’re looking for. An agent’s job is to write as many policies as possible even if the risk is sky high and our job is to keep the risk as low as possible. So basically you have two contrary objectives fighting it out all day every day. Underwriting wants to eliminate bad risks and agents want to keep all risks whether they’re good or bad so that they can stuff their pockets with more commissions. You deliver bad news all day long to people who view you as the enemy. The best comparison to this job is a sports referee. We don’t make any of the rules but we get to enforce all of them. Have you ever heard anyone speak highly of a referee? Exactly. That's your job in a nutshell if you decide to work here. Oh and the icing on the cake is that your calls are all timed. You're told to “always do what's best for the customer” but if you take too long on your average handle time then you will be fired. The issues and phone calls are complex and very involved in a lot of cases and you must solve them in five minutes for every phone call.
