Premier Support Solutions: Micromanaging, encouraged to do things that fly in the face of the supposed company values.
Pros
This started out as a great job. $14.50 per hour for entry level call call center work ($15.50 for spanish) is great. Great inexpensive benefits (health insurance). PTO is accrued daily. Work a full shift and the very next day, you roughly have a half hour on the books. A bonus program exists. (I guess that is a "pro?" More about it in the "cons.") Voluntary Time Off (VTO) usually becomes each day... so it is possible to take time off on short notice... but... read more about it in the "cons." They have a lot of employee focus activities and special "days." Some are lame, some are cool. Pizza day... cool... free pizza is a nice perk. Veggie day... a couple of sticks of celery, carrots and tomatoes in a cup of the most generic ranch dressing ever. But hey... free is free. Free ice cream days, barbecue burgers etc. They do a lot of employe focused things. I'd rather them get rid of it and pay $17-18 bucks per hour... but whatever. They are doing things for us. They have a great break room with lots of games and activities, big screen TV with cable, a place to buy snacks, microwaves etc. Sometimes they even have free stuff in their "power up station" for people who might be broke that week. Free Ramen, cereal, coffee.... etc. Although... I have noticed that some of the stuff added to the power up station is expired goods... the company probably got a deal on... so "thanks"... I guess.
Cons
Ok... where do I start? Let me start out... this is ABSOLUTELY a performance driven company. Everything is tied to your "metrics." Actually... my metrics were always top notch. I usually excelled in my metrics. The company uses a ranking system in which I was usually within the top 50 agents at our site (actually often in the top 20) of several hundred agents. When I left, I was in no danger of being fired, but one of the biggest reasons for my departure is the change of the focus for the company. Asurion has 3 wireless companies as clients in the US for Premiere Support Solutions. Verizon, AT&T and Sprint. Basically, each carrier brands the service how they see fit. (Verizon Tech Coach, Sprint Total Tech Expert, AT&T Protech Support). This is paid tech support... which honestly can be seen as a good value because the customers who do have the service are getting support from a person in the USA and not an offshore agent with a heavy hard to understand accent. The service is bundled as an add-on to their phone insurance. One problem I notice... a good solid chunk of people don't even realize they are paying for it. They went to the cell phone store, bought a phone and said "yes I need insurance" and the sales person signed them up for the most expensive thing. Because of many customers' not know about us, what we do or the fact they pay extra just to speak to us, when they call 611 from their cell phone and ask the automated system for "tech support" the carrier system automatically routes them to us. Which sounds ok... but lots of times the customer is under the impression that they are speaking to an employee of the wireless carrier... so if their service sucks, or if they were overcharged for something on their account.... or anything else that makes them upset at the wireless carrier... they take it out on you. And then... since you only have limited access to their account, when you can't make changes to their plan or give them a bill credit on something, you have to transfer them back to the carrier anyway. Plus part of your performance goals is tied to a survey at the call, but the wording in the survey gives the impression they are rating the service and not the agent that helped them.... so if the customer thinks their carrier sucks, you are going to probably take a hit on your survey scores. It takes a lot of good surveys to make up for a bad survey. Then there is "the app." THIS is the new focus of the company. Depending on the carrier, this app will be branded differently and have different features. It usually has bad ratings in the Appstore/PlayStore because you have to be a paid subscriber of the PSS services to be able to effectively use it. Anyway... at the end of 2016 the company started a huge push to get this app installed on customer devices. So..... the expectation now is that we get the app installed 100% of the time. Of course this isn't possible. So the company completely restructured the bonus program to be completely tied to App registration percentages. And these percentages are high. The bonus amount is higher too.... but less people are hitting it. This is why I chose to leave. I actually did my job and served the customers well. I quickly would resolve customer support issues in the quickest & most efficient manner. All of my stats reflected this. I ranked up towards the top agents. I didn't need the app to do this. Yet the company says "we have to." And they will micromanage you to death to try to get your App registration numbers up. PSS Agents operation under a method called H.E.R.O. You calls get graded under a HERO score. H. Honor your commitment E. Engage with the customer R. Respect the customer's time O. Own the resolution I take the most issue with App registration under the "R" of the HERO process. Respect the customer's time. I am expected to try to get this app installed at the beginning of the call, before I start troubleshooting their issue. So if a customer calls me and says that their emails stopped arriving to their phone... even though that issued is UNRELATED to what the app can do for them... am expected to do that before anything else. How is that RESPECTING THE CUSTOMER'S TIME? They want their issue resolved and done quickly. But they are denied that because some suit sitting in an office in Nashville decided that he wanted App registration numbers to be higher. Now that I have the "Appy" rant out of the way... Attendance an this job is huge. If you miss any time that isn't taken with PTO or VTO... then it affects your absenteeism and adherence metrics. Too much absenteeism is probably the biggest reason people get fired from this company. Also... there is a shift bid system. If you perform within the top 8% of agents... you get to write your own schedule for the next year until the next bid comes up. All the rest get to bid on pre-determined schedules. Your place in the bid depends on.... you guessed it... METRICS. The last bid had a lot of crappy schedules... and not many had weekends off. But... there is a $1.50 differential for working nights and weekends.
