London Office: Good and Bad sides
Pros
- Free daily meals cooked by a chef. You are entitled once a day to one hot meal, soup, access to an unlimited salad buffet, bread and one dessert. - Free teas, coffees, hot chocolates, and fruits always available. - Opportunity to learn several useful skills or improving them (ex: problems solving, complaint handling, communication, coaching, data analysis, leading a team meeting etc..) - Great flexibility: You can book holiday last minute and have it approved up to 2 days before the date you need it without filling a written form or speaking to someone / it is all on a system that you can access even from home. You can also swap easily your shifts with other colleagues of the same hired language as you which is very practical to save up on your yearly holiday quota. - Workplace is well located (2 min away from South Quay Station) and near shops like Pret à manger, Tesco etc.. - London Office is in good condition and well decorated. - Company offers paid downtime hours during your shift to work towards your personal development on a monthly basis except during their peak seasons. - Company gives quarterly a budget of 35 pounds per agent towards doing a team outing which team members can organize themselves. - Desks can be lifted up which allows agents to work sitting as well as standing. Also walls in the office are mainly made of huge transparent windows which is helpful if you are claustrophobic. - Big Summer and Christmas parties. - Helpful and friendly office reception team. - Working with people from various cultural backgrounds and nationalities. - 121 with your team leader on a monthly basis. - Variety of shift patterns to match your lifestyle: Early / Late / Night and more recently the 4x10h which allows you to get weekly the same 3 consecutive days off in exchange of working weekly 4 shifts of 10h instead of 5 shifts of 8h but the downside of this one is that you will have to work every weekend. - Company used to organize an amazing yearly business event called BAM. It was a trip with flight, food and hotel all paid for to Amsterdam where about 25% of the staff worldwide gathered for a great time of learning, entertainment, fun and party. Unfortunately they replaced last year this great asset they had as a company to a pale version of what it used to be. - Christmas gift every January (but I think this benefit is stopping from this year as it was alongside with the BAM). - Quaterly bonus and possibility to do overtime quite frequently.
Cons
- For most people the role of customer service guest or partner specialist gets unbearably repetitive and boring after 1 year max. It is definitely '' a must '' to try moving to a different role within the company as soon as possible to remain engaged and stimulated. - Although it should not be like this, your whole experience in the company will depend on which team leader you get. The way the company is structured gives a lots of power to team leaders over their agents. The danger of this is if you get a nice team leader who is friendly and supportive it is a big plus for your journey in the company but if you get the contrary, you will probably have a hard time there. - Targets and KPI's are unrealistic, it is almost impossible to reach them all consistently on a monthly basis. Although officially the company used to say '' the customer is at the center of everything we do '' in reality they prioritize quantity (even if job is badly done) above quality. The most frustrating target is CSAT which is judged on surveys customers will receive after their interaction with agents, half of the time if not more, the guest doesn't make any difference between you as an agent, the accommodation and the company so even if you was great with him or her, it is most likely you will still get a bad survey which will affect you to the point of being put on what they called ''performance plan'' this can lead to a formal meeting and warning depending your team leader. - The system they are using to measure if agents are on target has changed 3 times during my time there. The latest one is some kind of artificial intelligence that no one fully understand including those who made it. So basically if you think the system is wrongly registering your points which is very common, you can't prove it to your team leader. - There is a very negative atmosphere of complaining in the London office. Lots of agents are there just for the money and hate their jobs. The few people who are genuinely passionate about their jobs and great at it have to be very strong mentally to remain positive. - The main system agents are using to work changes almost every week and many times without agents being notified in advance which can be stressful. Also bugs are very frequent on this same system. - Company uses a Facebook at work system called Workplace to create a social life in the office and promote company events or sharing information. It is helpful however this same system gives you sometimes a feeling that you are in a virtual world, it does not really make you feel you are building real relationships with your colleagues and also all those notifications after a while can really distracts you from your core duties. - For your salary to be interesting, you are forced to work unsociable hours (nights, lates and weekends). - Progression in the London office is very hard because variety of roles to grow is very limited, unless you are willing to relocate to Amsterdam office where you will get more opportunities. Another issue with progression is that the competition is high because the number of internal vacancies in the London office is very small compared to the number of agents. - Most of the seniors (older staff trained to help agents on cases) are friendly and supportive but some of them are lacking active listening skills, those one seems not interested at all to help, they rush you on the phone by robotic answers without trying to understand your questions. - HR is great for simple queries and requests but inefficient and very frustrating when it comes to big issues. - A/C system is dysfunctional all year long and it has been the case for a long time. The office gets often freezing or boiling inside despite the temperature outside. Lots of people are getting sick because of it but company will not take this into consideration when it comes to apply their sickness policy which used to be getting a warning after 3 instances of absence. Last summer you could see in the office very often agents having to work with blankets over their shoulders and coats during their shifts while it was 30 degrees outside.
