Play their game... or get out!
Pros
Great people, very friendly place to work. Vacation and personal time bank is well above other companies. Benefits are great and include short term disability paid at 100% for some time (depending on seniority). Some managers allow you to flex your time to take care of personal issues without using your vacation or sick time.
Cons
Working for this call center is like high school, you get promoted for knowing and being friends with managers. Tons of favortism. You can bypass this by applying for a TAP position which is a training program for those wanting to be managers. I believe its a 2 year program. Bonus/incentive is iffy. They allow managers to have disgretion if you get your bonus- even if you met all standards and were a top performer. They can take it away for petty things like a disagreement with your manager earlier in the month. Citi has an unrealistic expectation of how collectors talk to customers and has a very confusing scoring card for the call. There is no script to go by. You have to ask many many questions about what happened to them financially to get them behind, where are they now financially, and when do they think the situation will change and include dates. Since we call the same customer every 4 days, these same questions have to be asked again, even if we know and can see the answers from the last call. This just upsets customers and makes our job harder. Incentive metrics are always changing and getting harder and harder to make. Unachivable at times for many reps. Communication is horrible all around. It is very hard to know what is going on within the site. Some reps don't have emails to get communication. Changes to policies happen without notification/training (many times the communication isn't passed to reps). If a change is made and you are not there that day, you may never know of the change. Sometimes these are big changes that will prevent you from passing your calls- thus leading to your bonus being revoked. Training is minimal because there is not a active training system to prepair you for real calls. You don't know what you are doing until you have to hit the floor and have to figure it out on your own. Training for calls consists of powerpoint slide shows, not an active training system. You also get to sit and listen to reps but most will not allow you to touch the system because it will effect their stats. Thankfully, reps understand this because they have been there, and are always willing to help out the new hire once they get to the floor. Lots of FDCPA violations all around because the auto dialing system doesn't work very well. Making changes to make sure we are in compliance has taken years (3+ at this site). They are still working on fixing it!!! Changes like this take forever and as a rep I really can not understand why. HR (on site) is substandard. They refer you to a 1 800 # for everything and can not explain to you issues about benefits, pay, leave, or anything else for that matter. They are there for hiring, firing, and investigating personel issues. When you work in a call center the last thing you want to do is call another call center. LOL
