I work for a pretty large call center corporation. Cushy remote job, no weekends. Not going to say what we do because frankly I don’t want reprisals. In short: We deal in online supply and demand and get products to customers and other businesses and deal with alllllll the inbetween.
I started here 6 months ago. I started as a basic customer service rep making $19/hr – higher than the average pay because of my five years past customer service experience in pharmaceuticals.
From day one of hiring I expressed my desire to move elsewhere laterally (our company has many departments) and you’re almost always started in support before you move elsewhere. But they say there’s a lot of movement.
They say.
One of the teams I wanted to go to – let’s call them B2B (not their real name) – was having a very stressful time and was understaffed. The then-supervisor of that team was working with me on my development plan to help me move over there. (He has been away on leave for a month now)
During a meeting with the call center manager of support, they mentioned I probably could train to assist but I was still a support rep for now. I was fine with it because they needed the help.
The B2B team convinced the support manager to let me cross train and work with them. In the two months I’ve been over here in B2B, I’m working harder than many of the people hired to the B2B department previously and have proven to be more than capable of the work. I’ve stayed on top of reports and finished them in record time.
Two weeks ago they let go their acquisitions department. Here’s where it starts to get shady. It wasn’t a sales team (though it should be), it’s just cold calling businesses and seeing if they want to work with us – except the customer thinks we already work with them due to a website error from the previous owners who left- so it’s super shady and not the best. This also only needs to happen if the customer happens to pick that business to ship to, so it’s not a true “regular” position where we are calling 24/7. It applies to maybe 15 customers a day.
B2B and Acquisitions worked very closely together.
Anyway, because they let that team go, someone still needs to make those phone calls.
I think you can see where this is going.
I’m just great with people I guess lol.
In a week I was given quick training and now am doing the acquisitions calls too. I’ve made it very clear I hate it and am just helping out, but other people just aren’t willing to do it so the team lead of B2B and I split them on the daily, and when he isn’t in I split them with another high performing employee of B2B.
None of us have any raises for the extra work. And we do this in addition to our old work.
Last week, they pulled me back into basic support during a busy time when there were a ton of inbound calls to the support team, completely changing my assignments – by this I mean even my access on the system temporarily, even though I was mid B2B and acquisitions work. They let me know that I’ll still be expected to help out support when they need me.
I was pissed but calmed down and was like cool I need to finish the work I’m doing at this minute and then I’ll jump on and help. They allowed it and I did.
It is announced today at the supervisor meeting they are moving forward with a plan to cross train ALL support reps into either the B2B department or sales.
The shit show this is going to cause is an understatement. Half of the support reps can’t even do their current job, let alone the complex work the B2B team is doing. They’ve screwed up orders for us already without having the access we have – I can’t imagine what will happen once they can touch the inner workings of the system.
Let alone many of them don’t even want to do the work of B2B or sales. We will likely have many walkouts soon and my whole team is complaining about leaving.
It’s so annoying because it’s very obvious they are trying to save money and cut corners rather than pay us more or hire more workers. We all see it.
The company has many other issues besides – including choosing not to replace two managers but dumping the work on the team leads without proper raises and, more personally, not giving me a promised one on one with any manager since I started.
Should I start job hunting now?
Anyone know a decent customer service team or B2 B outbound calls position hiring for remote positions? Lol
TBH I want to do work that actually makes a difference anyway. I am getting so tired of late stage capitalism and working for soulless corporations.