Pros
Benefits are good. The firm will sponsor you for financial licenses
Cons
Working in an entry level phone role is soul sucking. You will take 40 phone calls a day. A majority of the calls are like pulling teeth. You will consistently deliver bad news to people that call in and apologize for things you cannot control. To name a few examples: the documentation the client sent in was not in good order because a previous representative provided the client the wrong instructions, the client's paperwork got lost in the mail or back office and was never received, T Rowe Price made an error and has yet to resolve the issue because the queue for resolution cases is so backed up, or clients will complain about how user unfriendly the website is, and we are expected to know how to help clients use the website without any training or visibility of what the client is looking at online. The back office will send pre-generated letters to clients saying "sorry, we are not able to process your request. Please contact a shareholder service representative", and when the client calls back in response to the letter, most likely infuriated, you will be cornered into investigating what went wrong with their request. The back office often leaves vague processing notes on clients accounts in these situations, making it challenging to solve the client's issue. The system in which client documents and processing notes are imaged and stored is incredibly slow and difficult to navigate, which is frustrating when trying to solve an issue for an escalated client. You must adhere to strict metrics (average call/ hold/after call work time, schedule adherence, quality reviews), when the department as a whole has never come close to meeting the target goals for those metrics since I've been here. You are expected to do a lot of tedious processing work off the phone, which will often get rejected because you were never trained in how to properly process it. This is incredibly stressful when trying to meet metrics and phone calls are constantly coming in. The quality control team is inconsistent in their knowledge and enforcement of compliance and policies (a quality control rep may say something that you told a client on a call is compliant, but another rep will reprimand you for it). Management pushes you to meet those metrics, but they are unrealistic to meet once you are tenured in the position because you assume more responsibility the longer you are in the role, so you constantly being transferred and queued the most difficult calls by untenured reps. You are also frequently cornered by clients asking you questions that are beyond your level of expertise (legal documents, how to certify those documents, tax advice, legal advice, financial advice) You learn how to BS and give vague answers to clients to get them off the phone because there is often not a definite answer you can give them, or nobody, including leadership, knows the answer. The longer you spend on each call, the worse you look because you are evaluated on this metric. This often forces you to act without integrity and rush people off the phone.There is huge turnover in the department due to people quitting or getting fired or inability to pass licensing. Most of the representatives taking phone calls are inexperienced and frequently providing the wrong information to clients. It is very challenging to network and meet other people due to extreme micro management by the phone scheduling team. You have to request to receive time off the phone and coordinate this allotted time with the schedule of whoever you are trying to meet/ network with. The phone scheduling group will often decline your request to receive time off the phone or give you an hour in advance notice before you can get off the phone, which is not enough notice to try to coordinate a time to meet with someone. One time I just sat off the phone for an hour without getting to meet with the person I wanted to meet with because of this, resulting in one less associate taking phone calls and T Rowe Price paying me for doing nothing for an hour. You are a puppet for the phone scheduling team and have little flexibility or freedom in your schedule. You will work 5+ hours of overtime every week, which is too much for a position that requires you to take back to back calls all day. The training for the client service role is a joke compared to the real thing. This job is draining, unrewarding, and unpleasant the entire time.