Pros
Stable base salary. Diversity and inclusion. Clean and accessible restrooms. On-site canteen with fridges and several microwaves. Friendly and supportive coworkers.
Cons
Unrealistic commission targets, poor work life balance, and no available parking. The office is located in an unsafe area. Both junior and senior management lack effective leadership and communication skills. Vacation time is limited and difficult to get approved, especially during peak seasons, when you need to request your days off at least seven months in advance just to have a chance. Commissions take 4 to 6 weeks to be paid out. Lastly, there’s a six month window during which your earnings can still be impacted by chargebacks from unpaid customer accounts. Although the official system login time is just 5 minutes, internal tools are extremely slow and often take 15 to 20 minutes to load. This delay is counted as unproductive time, which negatively affects your 90% productivity target and can even lead to investigatory meetings. Managers frequently forget to escalate or report technical issues, which ends up impacting you as the agent. One of the most common responses to lateness or performance issues is simply to “wake up earlier and leave home 20 minutes earlier, just in case” which reflects a lack of support and flexibility. The process for reporting issues, requesting support, or scheduling callbacks is repetitive and time consuming, draining energy and concentration. Tool failures are frequent, often leaving customers on hold for long periods. Misleading information is sometimes used during support or sales calls. For example, even if customers have been billed for months for a service they never requested, the maximum credit AT&T will provide is limited to 3 months. The standard objection handling strategy shifts the blame to the customer for not monitoring their account. Additionally, system generated “errors” are often used as pretexts to pitch additional products or services, ultimately aiming to increase company revenue at the expense of transparency and customer trust. It doesn’t matter if you have photo or video evidence of external incidents like protests, floods, or traffic accidents if these are not announced through an “official channel,” you’ll still be penalized for tardies. The company shows poor empathy when it comes to personal emergencies. Even if you present valid medical documentation (yours or a family member's), your absence will be marked as an unpaid day and counted against your attendance record even if you request to take one of your available vacation days. On average, agents commute between 1.5 to 3 hours per day, even when living within a 16-28 kilometer radius. This becomes worse when traffic, roadblocks, protests, or floods occur, which is frequent. Be prepared to deal with this daily. On the production floor, music is often played at excessively high volumes, forcing agents to turn up their headset audio, which impacts hearing and mental health. My coworkers and I reported this multiple times, but nothing was done. According to the company’s own annual hearing test, of which they keep internal records, I have lost auditory sharpness over the past four years working there.
