Pros
Calls are extremely varied so you are always kept on your toes. Calls come in from all around the world. Shift swaps are very lenient and easy to arrange. As a Change Booking agent is is possible to earn small amounts of commission - £50 for meeting monthly flight target, £100 for meeting monthly wrap target (time spent in between calls should average 140 seconds or less), 1% commission on all package holidays booked, 5 % commission on paid seat assignments sold once your seat target has been met. A decent month for seat sales will give you an extra £40-50 or so. There are small shift premiums for working early/late or over the weekend. Overtime readily available at 1.5x, or occasionally 2x over sales/festive periods. Salary is reviewed on a year to year basis and goes up after the first year - currently from £15888 to £16678 or there abouts I believe. The top management in office are excellent and friendly. The team leaders and duty managers are for the most part excellent and many are very knowledgeable too as they also take calls. There is a good support network if you need help with a call or with your own development as an agent. The six week training course was demanding yet fun. Training is ongoing. There is often the opportunity to move to other departments internally; e.g. sales, customer relations, social media, recruiting, package holidays.
Cons
Stressful dealing with the occasional rude caller. Often it is necessary to give difficult information to a customer. It is important to have empathy but the role also requires you to stand your ground at times to ensure fairness and consistency. Working with departments that have been outsourced to other companies can make certain aspects of the job testing at times and it is not always easy to be the voice of BA for the customer at these times. It is not a 9-5 job - it is a 37.5 hour week, 5 days out of 7 typically and days off can be weekdays, weekends or a mixture of the two. The earliest shift starts at 6am and the latest finishes at 10pm which includes Sundays.