I started in the COX work at home program with sutherland. Hiring process was fairly easy except for some reason, sutherland requires a drug test unlike any other work from home job. So be prepared to pass that. Training was a joke, lasted about a month and was 4 hours classroom, 4 hours self paced per day. After training nobody still had any idea what we were doing. Started at $8.50 per hour in training and based on attendance you MIGHT get up to 10.50 once in production, otherwise just $10.00 per hour. This is horribly low pay compared to any other call center job. To get anything above $10.00 you must rank in top 10% of all CSAs and have lots of sales. Trainers were great, everyone was super nice. Customers were absolutely ridiculous. I have been in customer service for years and these people are a different breed. As soon as they get on the line they start screaming. If you wanna get screamed at for minimum wage, this is the job for you. COX uses a system old as dirt called ICOMS to do everything with. This is a program that was considered outdated 18 years ago so the process is similar to medical coding/billing. You have to remember a bunch of codes to enter to "build" services. All services and/or equipment have their own codes. So you have to look these up for whatever you are trying to do on the account and add them to the system. Also, the benefits you do get, don't start until roughly 2-3 months after you start working. With Sutherland/cox you have multiple logins that you have to keep track of, it is very disorganized. They do send a computer mini tower called a thin client but this is only used to access a virtual computer desktop you will actually be working with. So the experience is extremely laggy because you are essentially using a desktop on a server somewhere, not actually on the computer. The system is so locked down that you literally cant open a text file or use notepad on windows. The entire experience was horrible and just blah. You are also expected to attempt to sell at least 2 items per call. Keep in mind you are tech support, so when the customer calls they are already having problems with their services. Wy would they want to buy more that don't work? Also, you are not allowed to use the hold button at any time for ANY reason. This makes it super difficult to get your job done when you have someone screaming at you, and you are trying to research how to fix their issue with the messed up knowledgeable they use. Im so glad I found something else paying 4$ more per hour. This is a workhorse position, you may as well be in a sweatshop. The CEO and founder of Sutherland is from and started the company in India and this reflects in the way the company is run. Super low wages, ridiculous expectations. The trainer i had said only 13 out of 30 people from the previous class actually stayed to work past the first day of phone calls. That should tell you something. It isn't the people you hired, its your program.
