Unrealistic expectations in the Tech Support call centers. 9min handle times aren't realistic. You are not told there are sales quotas in the interview, they just ask you to promote a service, then tell you there are quotas to meet. The way they determine how much you make an hour confuses me, because I had several years of customer service and call center experience, and I was making around a dollar LESS then people who had NO call center or customer service experience. Keep in mind I have several Microsoft certifications as well. So why I was paid less then other people confuses me. I know what others were making because we all had a conversation one day at lunch and discussed what we were all making. Which I'm sure Cox doesn't want people doing for this exact reason. BTW, my rate of pay was around $11.50/hr while the reps with no experience were earning $12+/hr. The call center environment itself is OK. They always have a TON of balloons everywhere and are doing little "events" around the call center floor. They do have free soda fountain machines (coke products) which are good, when they're not out of syrup and just putting out carbonated water. The actual main systems you use to do the work are called ICOMS and iNav. iNav is decent, but ICOMS literally looks as if it was made around Windows 95 or 98 and the steps to do the work are overly complicated. You have to enter task codes such as "CL", "CA", "EQ" and tons of other ones to do the work. The systems are not streamlined at all. The trainers which I had overall were great people. If you get her, Ms Terri is a excellent person to be with all day. One of the policies I never understood was part of the "truck roll" policy (if you send a tech to a customers house). If you tell a customer to do something, they say they have done it (and they really haven't), and you send a technician to the home and they discover the customer actually DIDN'T do what you asked them to do, YOU get in trouble. Cox has great benefits, but it's almost as if they give you great benefits because of all of these issues. I asked several people who had been there for a while how long new hires usually last, and several of them said the average time is about 6 months before employees get fired or quit. This by far is not a list of all of the issues, but it touches on a good bit of them. All I'll say is, if you're willing for a VERY stressful place to work, angry customers, outdated and overly complicated systems and policies, this is the place for you. Again, I have worked in call centers before and have a VERY heavy tech background, and this by far was the most stressful place I have ever worked. All sunshine and roses until you are out of training. BTW, we were in SALES training (NOT our primary job function) for a month or so.......we were in TECH training (actual job we were hired for), for 3 weeks.
