| Category | Rating |
|---|
| Pay | 1 |
| Respect | 3 |
| Benefits | -4 |
| Job Security | -1 |
| Work/Life Balance | 0 |
| Career Potential/Growth | -3 |
| Location | 3 |
| Co-worker Competence | 1 |
| Work Environment | 2 |
Pay: Alright, start out on a good note. I've been at this center for over three years. The yearly cost of living pay increase has brought me up to about $13.00/hr. Not horrible... However, when you factor in that after 3 years of working here, they decided to cap out the increase at $13.00 a few weeks before my next raise... Sad. Whatever, I live within my means and deal with it.
Respect: Contrary to most of the reviewers on this site, I haven't had any really off-the-wall experiences in my time here. Granted, I keep myself out of most of the social scene and completely disconnected from any drama. The level of respect I was shown by my immediate floor supervisors (3 total) was pretty high, they were fairly up-front, didn't play games, and became more straight-forward the longer I knew them. For almost my entire time, however, upper management above direct supervisors were utterly invisible. I still don't know who the CCM was in Boise during the first year I worked there and I couldn't name the ACCMs that have worked there up 'till about a year ago.
Benefits: Ok, let's have a pop quiz. How about we take a generic $900.00 pay check. Now take out 25% because you claimed zero on your tax forms, now knock off another $200.00/check for your (sub-par) health, dental, and vision benefits. 900(.75) - 200 = $475. That's $950/month. I'll just be REALLY careful when I drive to work, never get sick, and avoid any possibility of being injured. Or I'll just claim bankruptcy... It's cheaper.
Job Security: Being steadily employed by TP USA for over three years, I can attest to the fact that if you can avoid calling in... EVER... then you can stick around for quite a while. Albeit this also involves keeping your head down, but that's all part and parcel. No attention is good attention and all that. Basically I gave this one a 50/50 if you got no kids, you'll do ok.
Work/Life Balance: Depends on your hours. If you got the evening shifts, I hope you're a night owl. If you get the mornings, I hope you aren't like me... I can't wake up before the sun comes up to save my soul... I can't say that having an 8 hour/day work schedule kills my off-time, because that's basically the goal, right? You get eight hours to sleep, eight hours to live, eight hours to work, repeat... (Love your weekends, they don't come soon enough.)
Career Potential/Growth: Alright. A lot of times companies like TP promote from within. I've personally seen this happen many, many times. I have to admit, however, that if you don't have some higher ups at your back, the interview process is a fucking sham. Here's the scenario. "We've got two XX positions opening. We want ZZ and YY to get them. Good, now let's set up the job postings, get some resumes, then hire ZZ and YY." They even post the positions on the HR Website... Advancement to supervisor level can take anywhere from two weeks (probably hired for the position) to a year or two (mostly stats/QA/attendance based) and they don't crop up all that often... People tend to fill the positions quickly and keep them with real gusto... As for ACCM positions, I've only ever seen people who were already technically "upper management" promoted to the position. I've never seen a CCM promoted from within Boise's call center.
Location: I live like 3 miles from work. It was a job of convenience, and I like it that way. The center itself is on a pretty clean little lot, no real issues with parking, no issues with trash, it's not bad.
Co-worker Competence: I really had to go through a list of characters I've dealt with in order to answer this one... I came up with two answers for two reasons. First off, if we get a call, then there's something wrong and the customer believes someone is responsible. Chances are, if there is a problem, it was created by another representative's incompetence. By that token, there are some truly outrageous agents out there that do some pretty ridiculous things for no apparent reason. On the plus side, I know that roughly 50% of the representatives I work with, I would personally trust not to fuck up my account should I happen to get Boise if I call about my AT&T service. End result: we only see the negatives for other call centers, so no judgement there - around 50% for Boise representatives.
Work Environment: I think this depends entirely on a prospective representative's capabilities as a REALLY patient mother fucker. I don't care how long you have been doing this job, chances are you have gotten that customer that just tells you to "GO DIE." You know the one... Ear drums ringing, the phone line dead in the earpiece, you go back to ready and wait for the beep, wondering what sort of person you're going to get next. Wondering if they'll have a BlackBerry email troubleshooting request, an issue with their international roaming charges, a problem with a refund, maybe they have a $36,000+ bill due to iPhone international data charges without a package to cover it... And you've got a roughly 1 in 25 chance of getting a customer who just won't accept any of the resolutions you can provide... I didn't like the first-come first-served seating while on the floor, I used my own headset so I didn't deal with anyone else's stuff, and I really didn't care much about anything else. The cleaning people (Specifically LUPE!!!) seem to be in those bathrooms more often than I am! They keep them stocked and clean eternally. They painted the place, set up new tile, fixed carpeting, security center in the front looks ok. All together, it's set up a lot better than it was.
Summarized: Decent place to work, wouldn't recommend for anyone sensitive to a HIGHLY stressful work environment, pay is alright, get your health care package elsewhere if at all, be prepared to face a constantly changing set of policies and procedures, be as self sufficient as possible, and above all KEEP YOUR ATTENDANCE STRAIGHT!!! DON'T MISS WORK IF YOU CAN AVOID IT!!!