Pluspunten
The pay is decent for remote work
Minpunten
Where do I start? My recruiter was dishonest. I was told I'd be doing this wonderful job helping vets and their families navigate the Tricare medical system. The vets I help are all at least 65, most in their 70's and quite a large number in their 80's. These are people who struggle just to use a smart phone, let alone navigate websites to find the information they need. They need genuine HELP which takes time and a great deal of kindness and patience, not to mention respect. It's a lie, you're not there to help anyone beyond offering the absolute minimum of information in order to keep your call times to 3 minutes or less. You're expected to be as robotic and unengaging as possible to keep people from taking too much time. I'm constantly receiving calls from old folks who had to call back because the prior agent simply didn't help them beyond the bare minimum. Agents aren't that way for fun, they're constantly pressured to meet certain metrics, they're doing the bare minimum because they have to. Can you imagine getting a call from a 90-year old widow of a vet with no family to help her who has no idea how to use the internet and telling her to find the information she so clearly needs on her own because "it's not your job" to look up a phone number for her? That's the expectation, constantly. How about treating an 80 year old Lt. Commander to only half an explanation (that will be useless to him) simply because it's taking him too much time to understand what you're explaining? Cutting short the grieving widow when she just needs someone to talk to a minute or two? If you can do that and sleep at night, this is the job for you. I was told there would be "some" mandatory overtime. That's a lie. You're required to work 10 hour days for 3 weeks at a time with a week off with regular hours before being forced back on it. This is what happens when you recruit 30 people and after only 6 weeks half of them are gone. This is what happens when you underbid a contract so severely that you overwork your employees to the point of leaving you because you won't hire enough and give them enough incentive to stay. It's frankly a grotesque business model. I was told I'd have 8 weeks of training, another lie. You get 4 weeks with information crammed down your throat that you can't study after class, notes you can't download, nothing. After the first 4 they're so desperate for workers on the phones they dump you into it with false promises that your first 3 months will have lots of leeway. There's leeway for a week. After that your supervisor will nag you constantly about your call tines and your adherence. The call volume is so high that they come in one on top of the other for 8 hours with no time to even finish notes in between, and you're nagged about getting written work done "between calls". The call room helpers you turn to with questions will all tell you something different, much of their help documents library is outdated with procedures they tell you to read and follow, then tell you that you are doing it wrong because they're all working remotely now and those rules don't apply. Don't be fooled by the big promises of so much PTO "right away" you get the standard 5 days, which you are required to take all at once, but they let you build a lot more hours over the year,, 2 hours for every 40 worked. It adds up, until you're told you can't use it for vacation, only for things like Dr appts or sick days, and if you get sick before you've accumulated any of that type of PTO, they make you use your actual vacation days.