The following will apply predominantly to the Product Specialist role and should be helpful for recent college graduates. This review will be long, but I promise it will be worth your time if you are considering this position. The TL:DR here is if you are qualified to be hired as a Product Specialist I can guarantee you are qualified for far superior opportunities elsewhere. I highly, highly recommend you do not choose to become a Product Specialist at Qualtrics. Let's get into it.
First off, it should be made abundantly clear here (since managers will tell you the opposite during the hiring process) that the Product Specialist role is Technical Support. Your primary and exclusive obligation will be sitting at your computer with a headset on waiting for customers to call in and ask for help. With few exceptions, the ONLY activity besides answering the phone you will engage in is responding to customer email requests. You should not expect that you will spend any time doing anything else besides supporting customers over the phone and via email. You will likely be told during the hiring process that there are opportunities to develop other professional interests and talents as a part of being a Product Specialist, but this is simply 100% false for all but maybe 5-10% of Product Specialists at a time who are asked to complete occasional special projects.
This is where the previous assertion of your qualification comes into play. The hiring process at Qualtrics for the Product Specialist is quite competitive and is becoming increasingly so. Qualtrics is looking for students from top-tier schools in the top 10% of their class to be Product Specialists. I can promise you, as someone who has been a Product Specialist, if you meet their hiring bar you have the ability to be so much more than a tech support representative for $40,000 per year.
There is more that should dissuade you from this position if you are still unsure. Every single aspect of the Product Specialist position is "gameified" to the point where all autonomy and creativity is lost. Your goal as a Product Specialist is to complete at least 22 tickets (one resolved phone call or email support interaction is one ticket) every day. Note this number may have grown as it was 20 tickets per day just before I started. At the end of each quarter your performance and bonus will be rated against every other Product Specialist based purely on volume of tickets completed. So, while the 22 tickets per day is a general guideline, all your incentives and your manager will encourage you to complete "as many tickets as possible."
The above means you are in constant, direct competition with all other Product Specialists. Keep in mind this isn't healthy competition that pushes everyone to do their best; this is the kind of toxic competition that encourages cheating and resentment towards other Product Specialists. During my time at Qualtrics there were MULTIPLE instances in which the entire department of Product Specialists was caught cheating how tickets were handled and recorded to inflate personal productivity numbers. You will be implicitly pressured to engage in cheating like everyone else since at the end of the quarter your performance will be graded against others, regardless of any absolute metrics such as "if you hit X number of tickets you did a good job" that may get thrown around. The entire system is a "game" with special rules as to how different points are calculated and different incentives are earned, and no matter how many times Qualtrics iterates on the "game" there will be opportunities for the rules to be exploited. Qualtrics assumes if you are left to your own devices as a Product Specialist you will choose to sit and do nothing. Qualtrics should instead feel obligated to provide such smart and talented employees with a meaningful job they are motivated to do without some grand "game" to win at the expense of your colleagues.
If you have gotten this far and still think you, as a likely top-tier student that has proven they are capable of great things, would enjoy being paid a below-market salary to exclusively answer phone calls and emails as a technical support representative in a toxic environment in a role that never progresses anywhere but only grinds the same basic password-reset email requests each and every day, I wish you all the best. I warn you, however. You will not be intellectually challenged as a Qualtrics Product Specialist. You will not develop a significant number of new skills that will benefit you either at Qualtrics or elsewhere. Your relationship with Qualtrics will be entirely one-sided: Qualtrics will receive a talented support representative that elevates their customer support above their peers but it will come at the expense of your professional development and personal satisfaction.
Please - if you have the option of accepting a Product Specialist role at Qualtrics there are so many other places your talents could take you that are superior. Cheers, and I hope this helped.
