Working at Voicecurve — Reviews by Employees

If anyone in the future who has left the company has had wage an hour issues with this company, I think a class action may be in order. I personally experienced my leads making me work "on call" being told not to leave my home and wait by the phone for call spikes but to log out during the times when they were scheduling overtime. I have this recorded. I also have had many times when I was sitting at my computer working and my hours were not recorded by Echocontact but I have my skype logs and copy of reports showing I was on calls during times I was supposedly logged out. I have lost many hours in paid time due to their faulty recording systems. Has anyone else experienced this, I know I am not the only one.

Previous negative posters hit the nail on the head. I worked there a few months before I determined it was too moronic to bear and left. It's the most unbelievably mismanaged company I ever worked for. Beware any positive postings with date on or around 02/08/2010...workers were begged to leave positive posts by management. Pathetic

First, let me give some background. My spouse is actually employed with Voicecurce, not me. It seems that a few things need clarification. An upper level management employee of Voicecurve did in fact solicit employees to send positive reviews to this website, and management people also wrote some of them. Also, the owner did in fact send out an email that expressed gratitude for her intentions but admonished her for doing it, conveying his willingness to listen to the honest feedback of the workforce. You have to respect the appearance of what he did. I use the word, “appearance,” because I’m not sure about the sincerity of it. At the time, my spouse posted a good comment on this site because he/she was asked to and because the company seemed wonderful. Allow me to address things from a more current perspective, namely because I have been a student of leadership for years, and I think there are things that need to be communicated in some venue, even if it’s here.
My confusion starts with the owner’s email, for if he were sincere, then current conditions would seem hardly possible. To date, my spouse, who has high scores in every area, has been falsely accused by management and harassed simply for making comments or asking questions. He/she has been passed over for promotion because he/she lacks a 4-year degree. Now, I personally hold multiple degrees at the undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate level, and there is one thing I can state unequivocally: many young people with bachelor’s degrees still do not know how to write well or manage people well. This truth is obvious at Voicecurve. While the lack of literary prowess might be easily overlooked, the lack of good management skills is not. Many of the young women who are in management, from leads to HR, appear to suffer from self-esteem issues. Such young women are often intimidated and threatened by older women and men because of their own competence—or lack thereof. Experienced leaders know that while there are young people who garner wisdom and respect for others in their few years, many do not. Many young people lack wisdom and respect for others. Having been a leader in various contexts over the years, respect, dignity, openness, and transparency have been mandates for me. While the same may be true for the owner of Voicecurve, the same is not true for his management team—once again, from leads to HR and everything in between. This is not an emotional response; this is a point easily seen by anyone who has been a leader of any magnitude for more than a few years. This brings up another interesting point.
Research proves that people who have a voice in hiring tend to choose people most like themselves, for better or for worse. This likeness is not usually perceived based on character, but rather on personality or image. Now imagine, if you will (sounds like Rod Serling!), that an owner hired some young women and gave them authority in his company, including the hiring. They proceeded to hire with a preference for young women like themselves (because they must be alright if they are like them!). When promotions were available, they preferred hiring young women who were of the same sorority-type or social type as themselves, and they shied away from older women and men who might challenge them and threaten their authority, thereby hiring young women that they could control by nature of their position, not their competence. With no accountability, this would soon take on the appearance of a company that squelched honest feedback, belittled people, and used strong-arm tactics to intimidate people. Now, if you can imagine this, then you can imagine Voicecurve.
So why does the owner allow this to happen if he was serious about wanting honest feedback? Would he not create an environment where honest feedback was welcome and where people were treated with dignity and respect? Of course, he would, unless he was merely trying to draw out naïve people that would be fired or asked to “squeal” on their counterparts. The latter seems to be the case. I personally know of someone up for a promotion who is young, female, and holds a bachelor’s degree. This individual is not really committed to the company, but the company doesn’t see it. The people hiring only see someone like themselves. The young lady does not have the character, skill, talent, or wisdom that my spouse holds, but she will probably get promoted. How sad. The formula for good employees is not (young + female + degree + seems like me = stellar employee), but apparently the young women at Voicecurve are too inexperienced to know this truth; therefore, they are rapidly turning Voicecurve into an undesirable place. If the willingness to listen were present, then this site would be unnecessary and a 360 feedback system would be integrated by the owner so that he could actually hear the reports on these young women who have allowed power to percolate to their heads.
As for the individual (perhaps a manager?) who noted that people who make negative comments about Voicecurve have a character deficiency, should we point out that attacking people’s character because they are giving honest feedback about a company seems ridiculous and shows a serious lack of integrity.
My hope is that the owner will seek honest feedback while creating an environment where people can give it without fear of retaliation or job loss. We will see, but for now, this company does not have a leadership structure that makes employment worth seeking. If it did, I wouldn't be writing on this site.

My spouse may not know this is being written, but I have no doubt that he/she would agree with the content.

Scam. I recommend taking a lot of notes and keeping the file for a very long time. A large number of their clients are scumbags, pretending to be government agencies(Fraud)
with fees to collect, ambulance chasers, and phony debt relief companies that take the money and run (Fraud ).Except in the last case, its not just another company, but a conglomeration of different company names, in a similar location and/or companies that change their names frequently. I received calls from two people who drove to these supposedly active business addresses and found an empty shopping malls and another kind of business. (Fraud) A high school kid answering these calls could figure this out, and Voicecurve has to be somehow complicit for taking these people on as clients, or perhaps pretending to be them . Don't count on the Oregon Dept of Justice who just sends a copy of your signed letter complaining about this practice to Voicecurve. Great practice they have there at the Oregon Department of Justice. I also filed a complaint with the US government. haha as if they would care.

Sokolove Law runs this company now. Sokolove decides that things must change constantly and to do this they hire new people and train them differently. Of course, these people do better, because they have all the new methods fresh in their minds and the old people get fired or laid off. Sokolove makes more drastic changes and the next set of people get hired and more get fired or laid off.

Callers to Sokolove Law have seen an ad on television that seems to apply to them. But, more than likely the criteria for even being considered for litigation will be very serious injury or loss well beyond what is advertised. If you work for this company you will learn to avoid making real comments to people in response to their tragic circumstances and instead you will rush them through a script and say "I am sorry to hear that" when someone tells you a horrible detail. You will say that so often it will make the caller feel sorry for you.

Any attempt to personalize the call will land you in a bad QA report and your job in jeopardy.

Call centers and scripts are fine for paying bills but for discussing cancer and diseases, injuries and loss, the likes of Sokolove reeks of mass marketing. Sokolove castes a wide net to catch the biggest fish with the slogan that they bring legal help to people who would not otherwise be able to get it. Most of the callers should not be calling a lawyer to begin with because they do not have a case.

Who calls a lawyer at 10pm at night?

These people hired me in January of this year. Since I had an "offer letter" from them indicating the January date that I would start my job, i TURNED DOWN two other incredible offers. Long story short - they kept putting off my start date (for training). January came and went. February came and went. Starting/training dates were made and canceled or rescheduled - I contacted them numerous times, but was told that they would contact me when training was scheduled This was CRAZY!!! Finally, I found another crappy job (which I jumped on because we all know the economic situation - especially in Oregon). I have a friend who has worked for them since December of 2009. She was laid off today because they say they are "downsizing". Funny, just a few short months ago, they were "upsizing" to handle their client load. My friend thinks they are laying off the people who were brought in at a higher salary ($13-$15/hr) and they're keeping the $10 people. Figures. Anyway, don't waste your time with these assholes!!! They are awful!!!

The only two good things about this place were the work from home and make your own schedule. Without those 2 things I would have left a long time ago. I was there almost a year and did not receive any kind of pay increase. When I asked about it less than a week later I was told i did not hang up the calls fast enough therefor I was "stealing" from the company. No one knew anything and it seemed like any question I would ask my supervisor they would be afraid to ask, as not to offend anyone. There was no training, we had one day of half ass simulation before they thew us on live calls. My QA scores were sub par in the beginning and the only criticism i got was, "say please and thank you". I was also asked about my 20 absence in the last 4 months (guidelines say you should get fired after 6), my second month on the job. They could not figure out what had happened, but they were certain I missed 10 days in January, and another 10 in February, even thought I started in March. VC is the epicenter of disorganization, and yes men. If you have another option I would say go for it, if this is your only option, take it but start looking for another job right away.

This company's real name is CurveBall. Never had I worked for such an unorganized, mess of a miscommunication and mixed messaged company. D listers. The IT department is in Chennai, India, so computer server problems were always a nightmare, especially for the remote agents, we "lucky" ones that worked from home. That was the only perk, believe me. The scripts instructed to follow were constantly changing and 98% wrong, you're trained for new ad campaigns that you never see, there are leads with severe anger management issues and a management team hack with split ends that would never know how to take a complete call if her life depended on it, but tests other agents & expects them to like the taste of her wrath . I would never recommend this company to anybody, unless you thrive on disorganization and chaos and no gratitude other than your paycheck. In 5 months I only received one monitored quality assurance call. One. Your supposed QA score is based on those calls, so how could they possibly know how well I was doing when I only received one grade? All my attendance and time management scores were way above the minimum requirement, 100% and 98% respectively. I just step on somebodys toes, or laughed in the wrong places, no questions only orders, and for gods sake DON"T tell the truth, because you will get canned, just like me. They lied to my agency about the reasons too. When I offered to email my real QA scores and all my outstanding status reports, I was told, "If CurveBall doesn't want you, they let you go." So don't rest on your laurels kiddies if you think you're doing awesome, it's all a matter of who likes you, and who doesn't.

While working there, I was told that my spelling was not right, and I did indeed check my spelling, making sure that I was not going crazy, and it was still correct, and better than most of the other messages I was having to see when taking a follow up call someone else had sent messages for that client. So, Management there can't spell.

Next, I went through their crazy wiki and found my metrics were in the top scale, yet they still claimed that I was to be speaking with them regarding my QA's, and having come from a company that actually did work with you on QA's, they kept telling me I needed to improve, even though I was applying myself to do the best I could.

The atmosphere there, before the home work station things took off, was noticeably not the way they first presented itself, and that relaxed feeling was all false. I then noticed that it was oppressive, and that I was having to watch my back more and more. I did however want so much to improve my QA'a that I would dare to ask and then got told I "No longer was a good fit." and they fired me for daring to improve.

Basically, HR and the managers seem to be worried so much that they run the place like a gulag that they have the newbies posting all lovey-dovey positive reviews here. I saw so many of the clients that were sham jobs, fly by nights or ambulance chasers, even the used car salesmen were getting us to lie for them with false reporting of the being "The receptionists" for said client.

In all, I would say that the Management there reminded of Barbie-dolls/Stepford Wife types that wanted only married men or "passive" men, and "Yes-women" working for them, they would hammer down any nails that dared come up out of the wood,,,i.e. ask a question and they got upset for having to answer.

Wow, reading through some of these reviews are insane. They sound like advertisements for the comany. As my roommate, who also worked for the company commented, I need to get out rubber boots and nose plugs to deal with all the manure that is posted here.

I worked for Answerconnect/ACTI/Voicecurve before they went home based and a little while after. Originally they were not a bad company to work for. Not great, but not bad either. I stayed with them for a year and a half. By the time I left I wanted any job. The environment turned extremely caustic.

Things started turning dark when I noticed a few of the men who I was friends with suddenly leave. When I spoke with them later they said they were fired for not being a "right fit" for the company. Mind you this never happened to any of the women or "passive" men. You draw your own conclusions. This may have changed since they don't have to deal in person with their employees now, but I doubt it.

I was outright lied to by management on many occassions and even bullied by them right up until they let me go. Management and HR tried to bully me into quitting instead of allowing me to leave on a good note as I wanted to. Training was the worst and I had to learn most of it as I went along and when someone decided to tell me about the available tools. If they were doing something they didn't let us know until we were trying to figure why our systems were not working. Yet we still had to fake taking calls.

Answering calls and taking messages seemed really appealing when I started with them. It sounds like a good idea and would have been a great job if this was the case. Most of the calls ended up being for fly-by-night companies that scammed people out of money or by ambulance chasing lawyers who were preying off of the sick and elderly.

I was fortunate and left just before the musical schedules they were starting implement. When I left, I wanted any other job than working for this company.