TeleTech review: No good to work for 50

To potential applicants of At Home CSR positions - this is what I've learned after working this type of position: You will need to come into a position such as this ready to put away all preconceived notions of what you think a Work-At-Home job is. You will have to become very open-minded, very, very willing to "wing-it" and "go with the flow" at all times, and willing to back down and keep your cool when challenged, both by Teletech and your customers. It is much like working a slot machine. When you pull the lever, the wheels start spinning, and once they stop, you get what you get. You accept it, whether you win or lose, and if something goes wrong - say the wheel freezes up just as it stops on a winning match and the machine doesn't pay. It's crappy, it's not right, but you won't get the prize money. You can either suck it up and move on to the next spin, or you can stop everything and spend all your time trying to get somebody to do the right thing and pay you what is owed. Problem: If you choose the second option, you will not be making sales or increasing your "stats", which will either get you punished or fired, and you will not be getting paid for the time you spend trying to resolve the issue. That's just the way it works.

Accept that you will get basic training. You will be shown how to do the job. Nine times out of ten, you will not be shown what to do if anything goes wrong on the job. That is what the chat rooms are for: asking questions when something goes wrong, or if you need help answering the customer's questions. The rooms are crowded, and you will feel the pressure of not being able to answer the question on your own, and also the pressure of the customer waiting on the end of your line while you try to get the answer. (there is no hold button - you must try to keep casual conversation going while both of you wait)

Average handle time allowed for a call is 10 minutes. In this time, you must answer each question the customer has while documenting the call at the same time. That alone can eat up the 10 minutes quickly. After you've answered questions, the customer may want to place an order. If 10 minutes has passed, your stats begin to take a nose dive. These stats not only affect you, they affect the whole team, bringing the team stats down. If the customer does not have an account, this must be set up. This process takes from 5 - 10 minutes, depending on how fast and accurately you type the data into the form, which has two separate sections that must be opened, filled, saved, and closed before you can proceed. (this may take at least another 10 minutes) If the system is "glitchy", you may have to enter said data three or four times, asking the customer to repeat it each time. When you place the order, you are required to offer the customer any protection plans, software, if applicable, and accessories that go with the item sold. More questions to answer. If more items are ordered, you will add them to the cart. If all goes well, you press the go button and give the customer their order number. Keep in mind that while placing the order in the order screen, you are expected to document the sale information in another screen. If you haven't already done your documentation while simultaneously making the sale and giving information to the customer, you will have to do that after the call. In addition, you will also have to document your call in a separate website, and if you made a sale, you will also have yet another website in which to document your sale. If you don't have a sale, you only have to go into one additional website to document the transaction after you've done so in the original program where you began the process. Keep in mind that you will be given 30 seconds after the customer hangs up to document the call and the sale. If you take more than that, another area of your "stats" will be negatively affected.

If you are working a really busy shift, the 30 second window in which to document your transaction is removed. You'll have to take very good notes and try to do your documentation when you can, usually after your shift if it's that busy. Remember, when they remove the 30 second down-time, as soon as the customer hangs up, another call will be waiting in your queue.

You will receive a 10 minute break in the morning - to be taken when they've scheduled you to take it, in addition to an unpaid half-hour lunch and another break in the afternoon. If you need to take a restroom break other than on your break or lunch, if it's not busy, you can pause the phone and take care of business. Do not, and I repeat, do not try to take a leisurely, unstressful BM, as the total time you're allowed for bathroom breaks during your shift is 6 minutes.

Now, I've had days a the office where I've accomplished all of the above without giving it a second thought. I'm a do-er, a work til the work gets done kind of gal. So everything I've mentioned above about the job expectations can be done, and HAS been done. You just need to know that it will be expected of you every day.

You are the only one who knows if you are the kind of person/employee who thrives in this type of environment. If you are, this is an awesome job. You will find it challenging, fun, funny, and rewarding. And now that you know what to expect, I encourage you to apply for an at-home position with Teletech (or anywhere, really) because they need people like you. And, as they say, "The sky is the limit".

Now, if you are used to a slower pace, you like to check over your work for accuracy, or you like to work on one thing at a time, then take a moment to ask questions, or get opinions before turning in that time-intensive, perfectly formatted spreadsheet or report, you will not thrive in this type of position. Period. You will feel frustrated, insulted, degraded, and sometimes even feel helpless on a daily basis. All with a very, very full bladder (or worse).

Forget everything they tell you about working on your laptop in your PJs and getting to work whatever schedule you choose. You cannot work wirelessly. You must have a direct connection to your router. You cannot work with a wireless headset so you can walk around in between calls - it must be wired via USB to your computer. And finally, you must be available to work the hours and days they assign to you. After you receive your schedule, there are ways to trade shifts with other people, but it takes a few days to make that happen. And don't bank on anyone wanting to give away a Saturday or Sunday.

Working an at-home position is not for [censored]. And don't let anyone tell you how cushy you have it. You probably work ten times harder at home than they do at their job. If they still don't believe you, tell them you were just kidding...tell them it's a breeze and they'd be a fool to stay at their brick and mortar, $18 an hour, horrible, having to dress up every day job. Tell the it's time for them to go to work in their pajamas and get hundreds of dollars a day to do housework, play internet games, and eat bon-bons and watch TV between calls at their new, 10am - 2pm dream job. That'll fix 'em.

I have been w/TeleTech@home since October 2012, that is when my training began. The training was a joke, more of a social hour than a learning experience. Our trainer, as sweet and helpful as she tried to be was in charge of over 40 plus trainees and she didn't even know she had to train us till the morning of our first training class. Yes, you ARE paid for training and yes, training at least for my class was Mon-Fri for 6 hours, w/two breaks and a 30 min lunch. But our training was for 3 weeks and then we had two days, well actually it was a total of about 4 hours of "nesting" in production and if anyone was still having problems w/system issues or headset issues or any other issues, then you had less nesting time. We were also supposed to be able to listen to recorded I think or maybe live calls so we would know what we were going to be dealing with. In the end, you learn more from being in production and your first two weeks on the floor (that is what it's called once you are working in production answering calls) than you ever did in training. That being said, I enjoy my job, I'd love to get more pay, but in this economy a job IS a job, and keep in mind you aren't wearing out your car, paying for gas and lets face it, gas prices are outstanding, you aren't dealing with traffic or drive time and you aren't having to pay for a work wardrobe. There have been several people that have said that you don't get paid for booting up to the workbooth cd system and logging in, but in the "brick and mortar" world, you don't get paid for your drive time, your gas or your clothes plus if your vehicle has to go into the shop because of normal wear and tear, your employee won't pay for that either. So quit complaining about what your NOT getting paid for and be thankful for what you ARE getting paid for. I'd be happy to answer any questions anyone has, as I started out as a seasonal employee and they did their seasonal ramp down and luckily I wasn't cut. So I would be the best person to ask questions and get honest answers. I started right before Thanksgiving and now that we are nearing the end of January, I am thankful each day that I still have a job and I don't have to go out and search for a new one. Not to say that at any point from here on out, I may be cut from the team but for now, I'll just continue to be thankful for the job and the experience.

I worked for Teletech for a month and got really po'd that they didn't pay me for the first 2 weeks of training. Somewhere an error was made and I got paid for 20 hours instead of 80! It took me sending an email to HR to get paid. Also our training consisted of spending most of the trainers time fixing Hardware issues. Never went over how to enter an order, check pricing or anything. Then I had to work on Black Friday and take orders and I had no clue what to do. The order entry system didn't work for me and the price lookup didn't work either. It was very frustrating.
I ended up getting another work from home job through Kelly Services doing tech support and the training was very thorough.

Yes this is a job you are paid for... diddly squat I might add with all the crap you have to deal with on the company side and on the consumer side. Nothing ever works properly and you are left scrambling to get things done and for answers you were never trained for. Nobody I know of can believe how screwy things are run here.

I am currently working for Teletech, and I could NOT be HAPPIER! Like previously stated above, YOU CAN'T GET BETTER THAN BEING ABLE TO WORK IN PJ'S & the 2 second commute it takes me to arrive 'at work'! I get paid more than my mundane 9-5 and its sooo comforting 2 b @ home and because of that I am more productive! I would not only recommend Teletech, but, I recommend ANY1 who is sick of the hustle & bustle of traffic and all else that goes with brick & mortar places to hop on board...Make money smarter NOT harder!

A wage of $8.50 per hour [part-time] is not acceptable as a rule, because of a number of reasons. First of all, the vast majority [incl. Teletech, and Mortgage Investors Corporation of St. Pete, FL] of corporations claim this is for part-time when they don't offer full-time at all unless you work in management, are a team leader, in payroll, and security, . Security isn't there to protect the workers as much as to prevent upset employees from doing anything stupid and there is no shortage of stupid people. The complaining worker may be correct regarding his/her concerns, but most of us know that taking an issue to management in this economy is essentially forbidden. Corporate may speak of an open door policy, but overwhelmingly this policy merely serves to show the legal authorities that they are in compliance with legal regulations. They don't offer full-time because they don't want to offer ANY benefits. They run corporations by the John. D Rockefeller method, namely keeping as much of their funds as possible for the key figures in the corporations "ivory tower" and they do this by spending as little as possible. They cut costs by spending as little as possible. On the surface, this sounds like smart business, but the department they spend the least on is hiring workers. Minimum or near-minimum wages with no benefits. How can a man or woman raise a child in this manner? I see a few of you complaining that this isn't the corporations concern and you are correct. However, as a contributing member of human society, they should and sadly, this only happens when hundreds of thousands of workers go on strike. The corporations have even figured out how to work around this. If everyone quits, these corps have banked enough to begin advertising for new workers and in this economy, they will get them. The corp goes through a few weeks of re-hiring other workers and the workers on strike are merely left with no job at all. This is seen by the folks in the proverbial ivory tower as a minimal expense, which it is...they still do not pay workers any better than before and they continue to deny benefits. This is why unions were formed in the 30s and 40s. Unions protect the workers. Anti-union groups [made up primarily of business entities and any gullible workers] complain that workers earn too much. Well, is it better for the workers when the corporations earn/take too much from them? Unions never get everything they ask for. It works like a lawsuit. One asks for 10 million dollars when they would normally request say, 1 million dollars. That's because they will likely not get whatever they ask for anyway, so lawyers beef it up and "settle" for considerably less. Anyway, the proverbial economic pendulum is well into the corporate zone currently. It should always be in the middle, but this is difficult to accomplish with greedy corporations. At some point, hopefully in the not-too-distant future, the pendulum should swing back towards the workers to a greater degree than it is today. Nuff' said!

Teletech does not treat their employee fairly. Employees are hired for chat at low pay and are told that they would only be performing chat and when they were hired for low pay they were forced to take voice calls for the same pay; knowing that if they would have hired them for voice that they would have had to pay more. These employees were told that it was an error in print and they have no choice but to work it or to deal with the consequences but they remind you of the distraction free background commitment that you were told to have at hire but seem to not keep their word on why they hired you and some employees have worked their whole shift on voice instead of what they were hired for with no extra pay.

After checking, they pay customer service $10.00 hour but chat is like $8 and are not paid extra for handling voice like the voice agents are paid for. So they prey on the young, single, college students and mothers who are at home and depend on the pay and flip their schedules upside down and will not work with you. This company is constantly changing the employees’ schedules, having the employees to have to disrupt their whole life constantly with no other option other than forcing them to have to get with hundreds of other employees to see if someone wants to switch and there are no partial switches for certain days, it has to be the whole schedule. Part-timers do not have sick time, personal time or another time and if you miss a day you are wrote up and can be possible terminated even if it is an die hard emergency and you have proof. Part-time have only 10 minutes for break and truthfully 8 if you are over on a call or chat and you have to post why, what time and so forth, clock out and let them know you are going on break then come back and clock in, and set in ready mode. They have the option to tell you if you can take your break or not at the designated time that had been set in the time room; depending on if they are busy.
Employees are forced to work weekends, holidays if they say so and any other day 24/7 whatever hours they give you. They say a shift bid but at the end it’s still what they give you. They have no consideration for their PART-TIME worker’s engagements, or life outside of Teletech. It’s a take it or leave it. They don’t pay their part-timers enough to go through all that they go through or request.
Teletech is not very fair and we understand that they have a business to run but they must understand that without their employees they have no business. To me I feel like their mentality to the part-timers is as if you take a homeless person off the street, they need whatever the other person/company is offering so they take advantage of them and it’s wrong. This company has not compassion for no one not even the member that call.

There are many wonderful people at TeleTech that are busting their bottoms but Teletech does not make it easy. These employees are being told that they have to get the customers off the phones/chat in what started as 12 minutes, then 10 and if they are not off the phone then they are questioned as to why they are still on the phones/chat and are told to update them/ and to hurry up and wrap these calls up which means that many members are not getting the attention they deserve. However, the employees are being told don’t let the members off of the phone/chat without assisting them but the time is limited to ten 10 which isn’t enough for many of the members issues to be resolved.

They say to make the members feel the hug through your voice but how is that possible if you have 10 minutes to greet, find out their issue, repeat back to them what they call for, solve their issue, let them know what you did to solve and to close. If they have multiple issues then the employ is in trouble. Your time and calls are monitored where it is a team who sits back all day long and monitor what you speak and it you didn’t give the close they wanted or you didn’t make a sale and so on they know about it.

They are able to watch your screen while you work. When you are working are on the phone/chat there are continuous pop ups from the system to make sure you are still them while you are working, the chat coaches sending messages out to you to wrap up the chat, or why are you on so long, are telling the chat people that was hired for chat to go to voice and that happens very often causing the current screen you were working on to be switched and having to go back.
You have 20 seconds to notate what the call was app in one system and have to go into another system and notate. The first system closes out in 20 seconds and you can’t go back into it. Now if you are on voice and trying to notate and the member hang up or you still notating and another member calls in then you just have to figure it out.
There was another employee who had just started and was put out on the floor and you can tell she was nervous and other employees were able to listen in to her call without her knowing and they laughed and talked about it. All the employees are there to learn and I believe that if that employee knew that she would have been mortified and hurt. The employees there have no privacy at all. They train you but all the material learned is not learned in the time of training and so you are forced out on the floor even if you tell them you are not ready or comfortable. Fitbit never works and really don't think they are compatible because of all the issues.

I have found that one of the glaring issues with Teletech is their almost Endless tech problems with the numerous applications they expect you to navigate to accept calls...
I mean you NEED Breeze, Express Lane (both of which rarely are functioning as designed), Yantra (works mostly), Avaya (which likes to kick you out), and several other apps that ALL require a different login. The so called. "Team Lead" is rarely actually there, but you can try to get answers from ASD, who will inevitably tell you to contact your TL, which is virtually impossible to do most of the time.
You spend the vast majority of your shifts trying to get tech support from a company that does not even understand their own overly complicated system, and not actually taking calls.
Everyone is very nice while they tell you to figure it out yourself. and working at home IS a plus, but they have an EXTREMELY buggy setup, and almost ZERO support. As well, the hours are VERY limited truly.
Give it a LOT of thought before signing on!

I agree the company has some issues no doubt...
First off, the training is a piece of fiction that assumes that the systems will function correctly (very rare at Teletech), and that the customers will be contacting you to make a purchase, or for help making a purchase. Also, there is the on going myth that customer information will auto populate like it does in training(almost never does). which is as I say, a myth.
Most of your calls are people who just want to rant and rave, Almost nobody calls up looking for help with a purchase, since they can do that themselves on the website, they call you for technical answers when the website is not functioning correctly, or because they are upset about a previous order. In either case, they have to be transferred somewhere instead of run through a purchase, which was the job you probably applied for.
As well, you will often get a white trash call that wanted to curse at you throughout the conversation, you CAN'T hang up either...
RUTHLESS technical bugs and glitches in the system can force you to spend the majority of your shift trying to get non-existent technical help. After a certain amount of time you will begin to be penalized over bugs in their system, WATCH OUT!

I am actually confused by this job truly...
I completed the new hire training month, and nesting before leaving the job a couple of months ago, and then was contacted to take a minimal retraining course to come back and try again. So I came back, but contrary to what I was led to believe during my initial training month, the tech issues were NOT only in the training environment, and once you get on the floor to take calls it is cross your fingers that their apps will work, or even let you login. So after my first week on the floor, I quit again.
Unfortunately, they still owed me for the previous training time I did, and I have been unable to get a straight answer about my final paycheck as yet. I thought it would come as a paper check in the mail, but it did not come yet?
My old Team Lead is near impossible to get in contact with, either by Email, nor phone(which is almost always a voicemail), and IO am tired of being bounced around to other departments by whoever I do manage to reach.
They are WAYYYY too confusing to work for in my humble opinion, as they do not even seem to understand their own system.
Yes. working from home is nice, and convenient, but Teletech has a ridiculously flawed system that NEVER gets fixed.
BE CAREFUL!