Love what we do but things could be better
Pros
The company is always thinking of new ideas or how to implement newer strategies so they strive to have continuous improvement. I'm passionate about helping students to keep them on track, organized, and motivated. I get to make relationships with these students over the months as they progress in their program and its amazing to hear how well some do. They feel so accomplished at the end and its great to hear them be thankful for always being a phone call a way to lend some advice or help them stay focused. Another pro is that I'm making more than what I would make on a campus. The company has recognition programs in place and provides lunches for us often. We also have gotten involved with more volunteer activities.
Cons
Not all schools are willing to provide enough information to AP to allow me to fully help the students. I'm sure its for security purposes but I end up being that annoying weekly phone call to just say that I'm checking in without any answers to support their important questions. I'll escalate the student's issue or question but it has to go through so many channels to get an answer a week later. By then, the student has lost confidence in me and has moved on. Or sometimes I'll never get an answer. I enjoy helping the students and would like to resolve their issues. But if I can't do that then I just become reminder call to register or pay for classes. It can be frustrating at times. Also, the contact strategy has been changed many times and we have moved over to an automated system. It can be helpful when I need to call many students for payment reminders but the technology isn't where it needs to be yet. So we are stuck with the growing pains of the mistakes made until we fix one problem at a time very slowly. Other stresses on top can make little challenges like this worse. Like, the management has to watch you like a hawk because that is what they are measured on as well- our activity time vs inactivity time. I understand they have to show how much we are accomplishing with numbers and statistics but this in turn makes us start treating our students more as a number and not a valued customer.
