1. There is no flexibility in this job.
You are tied to your computer all day with two breaks and lunch. There are no part time options, and after shift bid, your shift is your shift. You must clock in and out exactly on the minute for every task that you perform. They force you to turn on your computer in advance of the workday to be logged in at exactly the start of your shift, which is apparently legal because they give you paid breaks.
2. Every single thing you do is tracked.
They use a system to track your activities and metrics, and measure your adherence but it doesn't work, and they still tell you that you have to be 95% compliant (with the faulty software). They won't correct it either, even when it's wrong. They send your adherence report with the errors with that same note that you should be at 95%. All of your calls are recorded. You are evaluated on your calls on a monthly basis. All day long the team lead hounds you to tell you if your "after call work" is too many seconds, and the software will pop up with annoying messages that you have placed a member on hold many times while you are trying to resolve a difficult problem. This is supposed to be helpful, but it isn't. It's like having a mosquito buzzing you and biting you all day long. Some problems are very difficult, involve many phone calls, and require the member to be placed on hold. Everyone knows this.
3. Toxic positivity rules.
There is a culture of "pretending" in which you must pretend everything is great, even when you are not given the information and resources to do your job. If you question anything you will be considered a troublemaker. Top down organization. If you want to be promoted, grin , pretend, and do the work. Often times a change will be implemented, and there are errors with the change. Instead of fixing the errors, leadership will suggest workarounds that simply lead to other problems.
4. The environment is extremely negative.
You are threatened with being fired for being just one minute late, but you are expected to take calls and work late if you have to. So if you get a call at 4:59 you have to take it or you could get fired. In meetings corrective action plans will be discussed, and how to not get fired is a frequent topic. Also your metrics will be displayed in public so everyone knows if you are meeting the required metrics.
5. The metrics are faulty and the small bonuses are hard to get.
You are evaluated on metrics that are highly questionable and subject to chance. Some of these metrics clearly lack face-validity, are not appropriately targeted to gather relevant data, and have negative unintended consequences with respect to their implementation. If one person gives you a bad survey in a month because they are mad about their late enrollment penalty that you cannot fix you won't get your tiny little bonus even if you worked your tail off all month and you are a well respected and appreciated advocate. Management doesn't care if you got 20 surveys and 17 of them were all tens. The two angry people will mean that you don't meet the threshhold for a bonus and you won't get it.
6. You can't schedule or take PTO with ease.
It is Impossible to take PTO because they seem to always be understaffed. As soon as you think maybe you have enough staff, they'll start moving people around until you have call after call and there won't be any PTO. If you quit, they won't pay unused PTO (depending on state law) because they say it is a "grant." So they won't let you take it when you work or when you quit. While the company makes billions, they want all the call center workers to use their PTO when it is slow, and won't let employees secure dates for family vacations far in advance or even promise that they can take them months (or even a year) in advance. They open a vacation window in May or June for the last six months of the year, and then everyone jumps in there to try to get the days off they need. But only a couple of people can take a single day off, and often there are no days you can take off at all in the next three months. Of course, opening up the window so late means you can't buy plane tickets far in advance or even count on being able to take that vacation at all. If you can't get the days, they won't help you and you'll have to take "occurrences" which could result in you being fired. There is not even any way to go to the doctor without a strike against you.
The low level customer service managers are just trying to get promoted to the next level, so they won't address the systemic issues and general lack of respect provided to these essential call center workers who are the heart of the business. They want their metrics to be the best so they can get the next promotion. They just tell you to "be positive."
