Pros
-the pay is good -availibility to leave if business is slow (unpaid, and is rare) -company tries to provide ways to make the job better (cook outs, 5.00 gift cards, and competiton between teams which can get you some cool prizes).
Kontras
- middle management (coaches that run the teams of employees on the phones) can really make the job bearable or make it horrible. They provide csrs with the tools to handle each customer. They can make your handle time high if they are slow to respond, make you wait if they dont want to take an escalated call, and because all communication is in an open chat with other team members can humiliate and embarrass you when you ask questions. - it would take a good 3 years to obtain all the knowledge needed to handle every call correctly. There are different splits calls are routed to. For example i am considered a "loyalty" agent. I handle customers who are thinking about or want to cancel services. This specific position is required after you have been with the company after about 6 months. It does come with a raise, but the calls get more difficult. You have now been trained to answer general questions on billing, technical support,upgrades, modifying work orders, movers, programming changes and cancelling accounts. Once you are forced to become a loyalty agent you recieve all these calls and cannot transfer to another department for help. - the location of my call center is not very accessible in the winter and depending upon your coach can cause you to lose your job quickly. - dish requires you to perform your job quickly and bases each call on 3 metrics. Handle time, quality assurance and customer satisfaction (surveys). If someone is mad at the company and gives you a bad score it takes your weekly average down. If a coach isnt willing to assist in a timely manner your handle time goes up. If a coach ignores you, you are put in a position where you have to make a decision and if its the wrong one, will impcact your qa score. Dish wants you to focus on saving customers and resolve issues and provide empathy and understanding in 7 minutes or less. It doesnt work. - dish also requires you stay an extra hour after your scheduled shift is over if calls are in queue, which isnt often, however, will schedule your team mandatory overtime for months at a time. Sometimes the will schedule mandatory ot on your day off and keep you over an extra hour each day you work. The mandatory ot is normally 5 extra hours a week. - like any company there are quarterly changes to keep up with competitors and new technology. Dish often does provide limited training on these changes but it is never consistent. Youmay recieve the information weeks after some new program launches. - obviously the worst part of the job is being cussed at, talked down to and treated bad by customers, but the worst is when genuine people call in with serious issues and we cannot help them.
