customer service representative

Alpine Access

Ok so I thought it would be great working from home, I farm so we have down time over the summer and winter months between planting and harvest.  The pay is super low, I had to buy an old fashioned corded phone with no call waiting plus a corded headset and a 32 bit computer plus my own internet connection which all cost ove $1,000.  Oh plus I had to pay for my own background check!!!  Then I'm offered the job, stating I would get full time and paid "over $12.00 an hour if you perform well".  Ok so I go through a one week training class, and find out on the last day that e are only paid minimum wage for the training.  Ok I dealt with it.  But then I get my schedule for my first week of actually doing the job, after the week of training and spending over $1,000 to work there and all the hassles and jumping through hoops, I am scheduled for one 1.5 hour shift, and two 2 hour shifts.  I was like WHAT????  

So I complain to my TL who says she's sorry but that's how it works here.  

So I figure whatever, I'll stick it out because it's off season and I'm here, so I work for this company for a year.  

During this time there are a LOT and I mean TONS of computer problems, technical issues, and one full week where I couldn't log into citrix.  The week I was down, they escalated it to their help desk who spent a week trying to figure why I can't get into Citrix.  They finally throw up their hands and say it's my computer, and bring it in to get fixed.  So I call my friend who is great at IT, he looks at it, reinstalls Citrix a different way, and has me up and running in less than 2 minutes.  So the HD guy at Alpine blamed my computer when it was a simple fix.  I didn't get paid for any of this.

Another HUGE problem, is that anytime there is a problem when you're working, they have you "LOLI" (log off log in), which you don't get paid for.  They send you tons of emails you have to read and you have to do that all on your own time.  You are expected to log in early and sit there and wait.  But you ONLY get paid for talk time on the phone.  I spend hours per week between reading the emails, printing off the new offers and promotions, and the constant downtime because of THEIR equipment failures, which I do not get paid for.  

I have never made one penny in bonus even though I do my best, but the customers control the call.  So when it's all done and said, I make less than minimum wage after taking out how much I have to pay per month on my own internet, my own phone line, not to mention everything I spent on my own equipment.  That's not even including all the downtime I don't get paid for when they have equipment failure, and I'm constantly doing a LOLI or working with tech support.  

I have done research online and have found that it is ILLEGAL for a company to do this.  If you are expected to be at work and are doing things for work, by law they HAVE to pay you.  It is also ILLEGAL to pay less than minimum wage.  

I am so tempted to report Sykes/Alpine Access to the government for scamming employees out of pay.

A typical day at Alpine Access varies from client to client. Being that I am with the Xbox program, a typical day consists of logging into all software (with my current client being Microsoft, it typically takes about 10-15 minutes to setup your work station and get prepared to start taking calls), greeting your fellow co-workers in the support chatroom, and changing your state to "available." When you train for your client, you are given anywhere from 3-4 weeks to learn all the required material, what the client expects of you (behavior), incentives (if applicable), what to do if you experience technical issues, how to post hours, how to call in, etc. The great thing about training is you are compensated for your time, you are provided breaks (to prevent being/feeling overwhelmed), you are given a lunch break, etc. I personally enjoy training due to the fact that I not only get aquatinted with my fellow co-workers (and also build friendships), but I also have granted time for clarification on things that I am uncertain about. With whatever trainer you have, majority of them are not only very knowledgable, but they are very friendly, patient, and know how to make learning enjoyable! My trainer was AMAZING; not only did she have a bubbly personality, but she was also very knowledgeable about fixing consoles! Even though training can be very time consuming, if your trainer has a great personality, they will always find ways to make learning fun! The most difficult part about working for Alpine is compensation; majority of Alpines' workers have families, a mortgage, an abundance of bills, etc. Sadly, due to the fact that commute is eliminated, the pay is not as much as other employers outside of the "work from home" environment. Other than that, at times, the call volume (depending on your client) can make you feel overwhelmed at times. Because each client is different, your Alpine email can be quite an overwhelming experience. Contrary to what people believe, due to the fact that you work from home, you could receive anywhere from 10-15 emails a day with upcoming events, training material, changes to your schedule, etc. With that being said, when you receive these emails, you are expected to not only read them, but also learn the content and utilize it everyday. Overall, if pay is not an issue, I would recommend Alpine! The staff is very friendly, prompt, helpful, educated, and helpful!

Long story short: if you want a job that is seasonal, don't mind poor training and technical support, horrible computer hardware and below average pay along with absent supervisors and no trust for employees this would be a good position for you. The only good part is that you get to stay at home. For more info read below.

They never train you as long as they say they will. They tell you six weeks of training at first and then they shorten it to five. Then they tell you 2 of those weeks are on the job. Which would be fine except the training ends and you are just "on the job". There is no difference between OTJ and production and the training they provide could be given by anyone who can operate power-point. All of the facilitators that we had to give us training were pulled from another account and had no training in the account themselves. We had no access to our tools until the day before we began production and the computers that they send you rarely work. When I asked for help from tech support they were almost always angry and trying to make out like it was something you did. They put you in a chat room full of supervisors who are supposed to help you but when you ask for their help they tell you to use a knowledge base system, when you explain that you have used it they want to know which ones and how many. By the time you are through explaining the situation to them the customer has probably hung up, which is kind of what they are hoping for. The point I am making is they need to trust their employees more. We are already handling sensitive customer information and to say that they don't trust us enough to decide for ourselves when we need help is counter-intuitive and counterproductive. Either trust us or don't hire us. It may make up for the low pay and poor supervisors along with the horrible tech support and completely inexcusable computer hardware we are provided. I did an exceptional job when I was there through two accounts and they laid me off twice. The first time one of my friends was offered a position to stay on full time and this was a person who was asking me questions until I was laid off. So they seem to offer positions at random. If you get a position with them don't let them bully you. To their credit they only messed up my pay once. They gave me too much and they took it out on the next paycheck. Stay on top of your on paperwork and stay vigilant. Good luck.

So this was my first adventure into a call center atmosphere. The job itself was very much something I think I could enjoy but that is where the complaints actually set in with this company. 

Training, was absolutely wonderful. The trainer that I was assigned to was very motivating, helpful and just made coming to work a complete pleasure. She was very knowledgeable and would go out of her way to help anyone who felt as if they were being left behind. 

On-the-job-training was a step down mainly because the trainer changed due to my original one being taken off and pulled into another training environment for a different group of people. The lady that my class was assigned to had absolutely the worst personality I have ever had to endure. She treated grown adults as small children who needed their hand held and talked down to as if we were on a lower intelligent bracket than she was. One of her co-trainer's was even worse. We were supposed to receive coaching after she had listened to a few days of our beginning live calls. It was the most de-motivational speech I have ever heard. Nobody done not even one thing right according to her, and all she could spread was negativity towards the entire class of 50 people.

Do not get any form of coaching through a 2 week process of taking live calls. Get switched to production and it's like a completely new environment. We've never heard of some of their policies over the 6 weeks. I've been threatened with corrective action even after I told my supervisor I have a medical condition that is in a flare up state that does not allow me to sit until my designated break time. If I have to use the restroom I cannot wait and you would think I was asking for someone to give me the holy grail for a restroom break IF necessary. 

Threatened with correction action when their phone system locked up and I could not take calls, said it was frowned upon as they saw it as stealing money from the company. Seriously? Is the place going to go broke over 8 minutes? Especially when it wasn't even my fault. 

This job is actually a very fun job but the people that you have to deal with are terrible. Absolutely terrible. How long will I stay here? Until something better comes along and I check daily for other job opportunities.

i was hired for a new program launch. Many promises were made and right up front we were told to expect frequent policy changes until management found a system that worked. Many problems were immediately blamed on the calls originally being routed overseas, however that wasn't an issue. Constantly being logged out(clocked out), being told to take many unpaid breaks, and having to sit your ENTIRE shift to see if you would be allowed to log in to work. Coaches were rude, and pretty much tell you to solve problems yourself because you have the exact same tools as they do. Honestly, if the rules and policies hadn't changed pretty much hourly, things would be greatly improved. Not being able to work the hours you are scheduled was a complete joke. Supposed to have a weekly 1:1 with your teamlead, yet in the 7 months I worked there, I didnt receive 1 until my last week. I hate that I had to leave because I do know other programs were much better. Pay raises were non existent as you have to work 3000 hours to be eligible, yet with the constant jump offs it would take YEARS to bank that many hours for a .25 raise. The companies that they are contracted to take calls for are paying a decent wage to Sykes at Home, yet they are just pocketing it. Makes it feel like you work for a staffing agency, where they get say, $15 an hour yet pay you $9 to do the job the client feels is worth $15. Also, if you ever try to use the open door policy to express your concerns over the labor law violations of them logging you out from the phone system(being logged in is how you show you are *on the clock*), you in essence paint a target on your back. Honestly, for the investment you have to put in, the commute to work may be worth it!

The training was great with the program I was on. However, I admit that it was not for me. Working from home is a good thing and the steady salary was helpful during a very tight time with us. However, even though I hold a Masters Degree, I have a disability which prevents me from reading and processing information at a very quick pace As a result, I had a very hard time with all the metrics ect and I was chewed out for it (this is a disability that I was born with and I cannot help).  They also do not want someone who will spend time with the customer to make sure that their problems are solved. They just want you to listen solve it and get off the line. It’s all about time because your job depend metrics and how many calls you receive in a day. It is very high stress work. You will also be chewed out for having tech issues that are beyond your control, for getting ill, and you will get fired for any background noise including the sound of emergency vehicles, crying babies or barking dogs next door. They also want you to have a traditional landline phone which can be expensive as well as a corded phone, headsets that can be expensive as well as having to pay money that you do not have for a background check. I also just discovered that I had to pay about $80 dollars for a drug test they ordered at the very beginning that they said that they would cover. This is $80 that I DO NOT have.

I am working for this company for 5 years, I have been with 13 different managers, or teams so we call it. I have switched in those five years 3 different programs, which I have enjoyed working on in the past until I got to this last program, the manager or team leader is what they are, is a real character, he is rude, inconsiderate and he has a terrible attitude. He will call you with no how are you, he will ask out of the blue questions like why didn't you finish training in the middle of your shift, and if you not on your A game and you just got off the phone with a screaming customer and your team leader comes at you like this and you are liable to cuss him out on the spot. I remember him telling me one day that "he has plenty of top performers but he will never let them get that titile because of their attitude" (with top performer you get better pay), what is his definition of a bad attifude cause his is the worst! 

Overall the company and the atmosphere working from home is great, just this one manager is a jerk which after 5 years, no raise, and ive been making $9.80 for the past 4 of those years. So yeah getting switched from one program to the next, training all the time for different companies all the time, and the ever changing managers that you get placed with by the time you get comfortable with a procedure that this manager wants, here you go placed with the next to learn their procedure all over again. Then to come across a manager that has a big attitude problem then expects you to provide excellent customer service no way jose ill pass, too many years and not enough pay.

I worked for Alpine Access for 3 years. All training and job related activities are done from home. There are definite perks to working from home, and depending on the program you are assigned to work under there are also perks and incentives. I worked for a major gaming company as billing and technical support. At the time it was one of the newest programs at Alpine. In the beginning the good out weighed the not so good. But as management changed and Alpine was purchased by Sykes, the lines of communication from the Top to the Bottom were muffled. Rules changed but were presented as if thats the way things had always been. If you were to ask one supervisor for policy clarity and then ask another you would likely get entirely different interpretations. We worked in teams, meaning a Team Leader (supervisor) would be in charge of keeping 20 or so employees in compliance. That Supervisor also had a TL that was in charge of around 5 Team Leads making sure that they  and their teams stayed in compliance. And then that boss had a boss and so on. In the 3 years I was employed I had about 5 different team leads.     Of those 5 only 1 truly, bridge the gap between feeling like we were isolated and made us look forward to coming to work and working as a team. I score Alpine with an OverAll 4 stars because it is really really hard to find a legit WFH job these days. But honestly the work culture had slip down to my dreading to login in the mornings.

My friend recommended this job to me and I was very skeptical. I got in on CCP for xbox.. I paid for my background, 2 headsets, keypad, added phone service.. alot of headache just to work from home. But when I started it was pretty fun..then training just sort of flew by and I realized it wasn't as easy as I thought. After finally gettin in production. The calls seemed so fake. The Team Leads were very rude. And if u made negative remarks you would get criticized by your so called callers. Half way through they say they need to get rid of billing and move some people to universal. They told ALOT of lies. Policies, rules, statements kept changing. It began to be a mess and very unorganized. Everything seemed so superficial. My Team Lead well pretty much all if them were jerks..purposely ignored me. The job I started off loving began to be a nughtmare! During a meeting I was told to stay on and was accused of accessing an account.. while in training so I had yo be let go. It was ridiculous. The story they made up was BS obviously and I was never even contacted by HR about my termination. Ive never been fired in my life. Its probably going to affect my ability to work some where else. I would just stay away from this company, they seem fishy and only about getting their money. My Team Lead was a liar. I hate him now. The pay was eh, benefits are horrible, long hours on some days, back to back calls, or jump offs. I was missing alot of hours.

I absolutely loved working with Alpine Access. There are great opportunities for growth with this company and it is great for those who would like to get some additional experience working from home in a virtual call center. A day at Alpine Access was essentially no different than any call center job. There are some notable differences though, the amount of trust this companies has in it's employees is unparalleled. I took a lot from my time with Alpine Access most importantly being self discipline. There is no one there to make sure you report to work or hound you when you don't come in, for the most part you have to be responsible for doing the job you were hired for and taking that position seriously. That being said the hardest part of working with this company was creating a work/life balance. Since you are always at home working it can be increasingly difficult to find that happy place to decompress after a stressful shift, but you have to actively carve out time to do just that. I loved this job, I was able to work autonomously from home with little to no actual supervision. The team leads typically do not use a system of micro managing the subordinate employees, and that can not be said too commonly about positions like this in brick and mortar locations.

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