This Applies Only to the Directv Work at Home Program - Directv Work At Home Customer Care Representative Asurion Employee Review

1. You are grossly underpaid. Do not sign up for this job unless you think that making 9-10 dollars an hour is worth being constantly stressed out. They will tell you, that you can make extra money through achieving your stat goals but this does not come easy unless you are super-human, and if you are, why do you want a job that makes 9 dollars an hour anyway? There is overtime but frankly you could not pay me enough to have to do this for any longer than I absolutely have to. 2. Non-stop stress. The stats you have to make are humanly impossible unless you think that remembering to say 20 things in a 10 minute phone call is easy, and unless you don't mind rushing sweet little old ladies in walkers across the room to troubleshoot, since the elderly are the bulk of your callers. This I believe is actually Directv's fault, they are always threatening to end Asurion's contract with them. Apparently they believe that humans can be programmed to never forget things and behave like robots. They actually nit-pick about things as trivial as using the customer's name three times per call. Most quality monitors seem like they are searching for even the smallest reason to grade your call poorly. Then they send your stats out to the whole team so everybody can see how terrible you are doing. It seems like the worse your stats the more the customers like you and vice versa, because you have to sacrifice customer happiness to make these numbers. Nobody wants to talk to a robot or feel rushed. So the one consolation is that if you do terrible on your regular stats, at least you probably excel on your customer surveys. 3. No peace of mind about job security. Even when the entire call center is doing terrible they will not grade on a curve, they will just keep threatening to fire you instead. I actually think that the stats are impossible on purpose, as some think a culture where the workers are constantly stressed and told they are on the verge of being fired will drive results. I think that if we could just be happy we'd do a lot better as we wouldn't have non-stop feelings of anxiety that interfere with our productivity. 4. You have to be willing to be mindless and annoying. Again this is Directv's fault for allowing little deviation from those robotic scripts. Forget about using your intellect or discretion. You are mandated to read from generalized scripts that sometimes make you appear stupid to your customer or like you are not listening. For example, Ms. Jones calls and tells you that she's had a snowy screen ever since her dog sat on her remote. You must ignore the apparent root cause, "button pressed on remote" and start with asking Ms. Jones to make sure that the cables running from the receiver to the television are not loose. Ms. Jones will get annoyed because she feels that you did not listen to her since you want her to check the cables first, rather than start with the remote. And even if you feel that a customer needs to do a specific thing to resolve their issue, if it is not on the robotic script you are required to read, you are forbidden from mentioning it. The customer must remain frustrated or you might get a warning. So while Directv cares about keeping their customers, they don't care enough to release us from having to be robots and give them more human-like, customized service that might actually make the customer happy instead of annoyed. And this is why the customers start screaming in frustration. First of all I just want to say that my issues are more with the Work at Home Directv program than with Asurion as a company. They are not a bad company. Neither is Directv but their customer service guidelines have got to be changed. Then not only would the employees be happier but the customers too. They also need to admit to themselves that 11 minutes on a technical trouble shooting calls where many customers are elderly (i.e. more apt to have issues moving quickly) is just not enough time. And finally, get rid of all of those "musts" that we get graded down for if we don't do. Ms. Jones is not going to think Directv is great if I've said her name 3 times but have aggravated her by appearing to have ignored the root cause of her issue and had her take unnecessary steps to not resolve it. Bottom Line: Do not be lured into the "work at home" temptation unless you have emotions of steel and don't mind annoying customers or pushing them off the phone in a jiffy, and are a person that hardly ever feels annoyed or stressed. Even though you are safe in your house physically, emotionally you are on the front lines of a hopeless battle.