customer service representative

insurance agent

bilingual customer service associate

healthcare customer service representative

technical support specialist

Foundever

Let me walk you through my time at Sykes. I worked there for almost 2 years, unfortunately. When I first got the job, I felt pretty positive. I went into training, liked the trainer and most of my classmates pretty well, and did very well in the class, according to everyone above me, including my trainer and the other managers. I was told multiple times that "once I was out on the floor taking calls, I would be able to advance very quickly." Things were looking pretty positive for me.

Once I got on the floor, I worked my butt off to do well at the job. I was focused on providing great customer service and things went nice for a little while. The pay was pretty pathetic, but it was better than minimum wage, which is what I was making at my old job. 

When I applied for the job, I asked plenty of questions about what it would consist of. I even asked if any sales would be required. I was told that all it consisted of was helping customers troubleshoot problems with their phones and answering billing questions for them, and that there were no sales involved. Of course, a few weeks after I get onto the floor I find out that not only are sales involved, they are required. You have a quota of sales to make per day, and if you don't make that quota two things happen. One: You get disciplinary action against you, which scales up according to how many days you miss the quota. Two: You have to write a statement on why you didn't make sales goals, as if you were a third grader being disciplined for not turning in homework.

Still, in spite of this, I worked as hard as I could to make sales quotas, with the added incentives that I would supposedly be getting extra money on my paycheck for each sale. After two years working there, I never saw a single dime from this. I'm the type of person who kept track of every single pay stub to make sure I was getting paid the right amount, and never did I see any pay for incentives. Every time I asked someone in management, I got an evasive answer. Sometimes it was "You're asking the wrong person, you need to ask X about that." Sometimes it was "The sales you're making don't qualify. You have to sell certain features." I eventually went all the way to the site manager, and was told "We know this is a problem, and we're working on it." Also, I can't confirm whether this is true, but there were rumors circulating that we were supposed to be getting Christmas bonuses one year, which management actually took, spent a portion of on door prizes for a Christmas party, and pocketed the rest. I also found out-and I can confirm this-that there were several people, myself included, who were supposed to get a fifty cent raise after six months of employment and did not. I did eventually get reimbursed, but the process to make that happen was a long and difficult one. No one told me I had been shorted, and I probably would have never gotten the money if I hadn't asked about it myself.

In spite of everything, I kept trying as hard as I could at the job, hoping for some form of recognition, and hoping desperately for a pay increase. (I later found out-and I can confirm this-that there were several people, myself included, who were supposed to get a fifty cent raise after six months of employment and did not. I did eventually get reimbursed, but the process to make that happen was a long and difficult one. No one told me I had been shorted, and I probably would have never gotten the money if I hadn't asked about it myself.) The most recognition I ever got was a balloon and a fun size candy bar every now and then. This is what counted as recognition at Sykes. Finally, after about a year of trying hard, applying for every open position, and being told constantly, even by management, that I would "surely be moving up soon", I gave up. I stopped trying so hard and soon found out this worked pretty well, since it was what everyone else was doing anyways. I found out that promotion to management or any other position was nothing more than a lottery at worst and a popularity contest at best. This job turned me into a very cynical, bitter person, because it taught me that sometimes, no matter how hard you try, no one will care.

_________________________________________________________


Let's talk a little bit about what the job actually consists of, and the environment.

Coworkers - Some coworkers were nice, and some weren't. The majority of workers tended to be young, disrespectful, and extremely unprofessional. Imagine working your self half-to-death trying to get ahead and then being grouped in with these foolish, uneducated, juvenile morons. The same goes for managers. Some managers were always willing to help in whatever way they could, and would take escalated calls if necessary. Others would avoid helping as much as possible, and would absolutely refuse to take escalated calls. There were several managers there who had never even been on the phone in the first place. The worst managers were those at the top, who made no bones about treating us low-life peons like garbage.

Job Duties - The first thing you will need to learn for this job is how to lie really well. You don't need to know what you're talking about when customers ask you a question. You just need to know how to sound like you do. Places like this are why your AT&T customer service is so bad. They have a revolving door on the building for the constant stream of terminated employees going out and new hires coming in. These new hires are thrown into training and rushed through it (When I first started training, it was six weeks long. Last I heard, it was cut down to two weeks.), then put on the floor to take calls with very little actual experience or understanding of their job. You learn pretty quickly how to sound like you are good at your job, instead of actually knowing how to do it well. Once out on the floor, you'll have a very difficult time catching up, because once you finally think you've learned something, there is a policy or procedure change, which you might not get training on for anywhere from one week to six months after it is implemented. For example; AT&T started offering shared data plans, and I had customers call in frequently about these plans. I was unaware that any such plan existed, so I would tell these people they must be mistaken. After about three weeks of this, we finally found out that AT&T really had started offering these plans, and finally got training on them about two weeks later. Other fun things we had to deal with included combined billing, which could only be handled by a certain department. Fun fact: that department was only open Monday through Friday until 7PM. Our department was open every day until 1AM. Just imagine what fun it was explaining to customers why I couldn't even so much as look at their bill, and that the only people who could just closed five minutes ago. There was also the sales quota. What a load of fun that was. There was no lack of people who wanted to meet that goal and get that incentive pay, no matter what lengths they had to go to to do so. Several times daily, I would have to remove features from accounts because other employees had added them without permission, in order to meet those goals. I saw a few employees get terminated for this, but I saw even more get away with it.

Work Environment - This was one of my least favorite parts about the job. The management thought it would "increase morale" to have music constantly playing. This sounds like a good idea right? In practice, playing a little bit of music at a low volume might help relax people, right? If only we were so lucky. In reality, what this amounted to was blaring "Today's Hip-Hop and R&B hits" at maximum volume, unedited and full of every curse word and derogative line of every song. I lost count the times when I had customers ask if I was at home or if we were having some kind of party. When bringing this up to the managers, their response was "Tell them we are having a party, celebrating great customer service!" I was so embarrassed and felt like it made us look so unprofessional. I'm sure it was even worse for those right next to the karaoke machine they use to blare the music. Fortunately, I was halfway across the floor from it, but it was still entirely too loud.

Benefits - The "benefits" of this job are hardly worth mentioning. The health plan is nothing special, and getting vacation time is like pulling teeth.

Overall, my warning to you is this: Avoid this place at all costs. Don't fall into Sykes' trap. This is how they operate; They go to small communities with a high poverty rate, so they can hire people desperate for jobs at ludicrously low pay. They will push you to do better and better, only ever noticing your failures, never your successes. They will suck any positivity you have right out of you. Keep your lower-paying job elsewhere. The slight increase in pay is not worth the hassle of working for this company. You will have to lie to people daily and try to sell them things they don't need or can't afford.

. Makeup hours required but not given if you have an emergeancy.
. Written up even if you have hard proof to the contrary.
.Force you to make sales but then scrutinize and repremand you.
.Contract to Frontier Communications Support/Sales written so Sykes employees have no rights or perks.
.5 minutes of time per shift to make it to and from all breaks or bathroom emergencies per 8 or 10 hour shift.
.Constant scrutiny, beratement, and belittling publicly for metrics.
.Daily manual editing of your time sheet based on being seconds late on a clock in that do not add up.
.Pay deduction if you have PC issues and cannot get on PC, Phone, or client calls fast enough.
.Expensive healthcare packages that employee pays the entirety of if you really want it.
.Soul sucking environment constantly fixing issues created by peer idiots.
.Every single call automatically escalated to at least angry being cursed and treated badly by clients.
.Highly scripted call flow written by Frontier Communications that also escalates every call.
.Graded on script adherence impossible (Has never been accomplished) to get 100% on a call review.
.Script deviance welcomed and we'll received by actual customers yet reprimanded by Sykes management.
.Constant full queue of inbound angry callers with no breath or rest between calls.
.Management and floor walking peers are little to no help if you have questions or need assistance.
.No real IT personnel on staff on site.  They have one guy who is in lower 20's with no degree and no certifications at a site with 100's of computers. This is a business that has 100% reliability on computers and functional Internetworking connectivity to be effective.
.Computers and Network are extremely deprecated and underpowered for the work and connectivity to Fro tier Communications servers required.
.Everytime you sign into a computer for the first time you have to reboot 4 or more times to get links required to do your job.  In the meantime management continually asks you why you aren't on the phone taking calls and you hear your name publically blasted over loud walkie talkies around your peers for being clocked in but not on the phone, telling management about it does no good because they tell you cliche' things like well noone else has this problem, when everyone else can have an assigned seats with tenure and this is the fourth time the new guy has to move.  Then you find out after sending an email to the time keeping man behind the curtain that your time and pay we're cut by 30 minutes and it counts against you on hours toward your allowed excused absence time.
.PC's often have 2 monitors which is very helpful since you have to have 2 to 4 applications and websites up to do this job but most do not work meaning only one does.  .The job requires you to login to a Frontier Communications virtual desktop off-site but the connection is blocked by the Sykes proxy because noone in the entire time of the contract...5 years has either placed the exact URL on the proxy whitelist or added the exception to the Group Policy so when you login you don't have to troubleshoot your own PC at your cubicle to login and do your work.
.The single only self proclaimed Information Technology staff member in his lower 20's with no experience takes days to fix any easy and constant common issue that you report to him.  He says yea I'll take care of it but instead of immediately he goes back to talking about personal things and flirting with girls at the site.  Has not one time ever sat down and tried to write a group policy to fix the correct first time login of links you need to work being there, tried to find a driver to push that will keep the virtual machine from crashing on dual monitors if you drag and drop between them, tried to fix the random virtual machine crashes that occur daily on the PC's, tried to fix the PC/VM time synch issues...NTP much?
.Site has 2 account managers for one account but 1 IT support for Hundreds of IT assets...computers, multiple network issues (intra/inter), and many many computer illiterate peers around you with no help in IT because of the one guy who should actually be no more than a tier one intern but is salary.  The hardest job I witnessed him do was decorate a wall to look like a giant Candy Land board but by the end of the day a great many squares taped to the wall poorly had fallen...he can't even pass kindergarten level tasks.
.Many many personnel walking around to ask you why your taking so long to help a customer that noone has actually provided a resolution for the last 6 times they called, yet noone around when a hand(question) or thumb(escalation) goes up. They remind you of the queue being very backed up and go back to showing another manager or floor walker some funny work inappropriate meme on there phone,  which YOU would be immediately given a written final if your phone even comes out of your pocket (doesn't even have to have the screen on)...you cannot even check the time to ensure what time you went into break auxillary on the phone to ensure you don't go over on break. Anyway, they come and complain to you and chastise you about the queue of calls on hold instead of getting thier useless rear-ends on the phone to help with call  backup and congestion...it would help since the majority of people want your manager before you even say hello anyway.
.They require sales to anyone and everyone who doesn't have an overdue amount past 60 days.  Even people calling to reduce thier bill which is nearly everyone at some point during the call.
.They encourage you to lie and misguide customers through lack of information as little of the negative fine print as required to sale the customer anything the do not need by making it sound better or cheaper.
.Frontier makes it very hard for the fixed income clients to actually complete and receive lifeline benefits and discounts.
.Frontier billing has sent many many sweet older folks into collections for bills that were the results of shady and mafia like gouging of products they did want and cramming and Slamming products at 5 to 10 dollars at a time on to thier accounts that the do not want do not need and are simply handicapped and old...they cannot understand the broken down line items that are vaguely named and breakdown with a description elsewhere (another page) of the bill.
.Working here and hearing the clients stories of things other support peers did or said to them and the worst practices that should be illegal done to them by Frontier policy and billing it made me ashamed that I worked for and with any of the referenced entities mentioned above.  It literally made me feel ashamed to have to answer the phone and sympathetically appologized to 30 or 40 people everyday on the phone for how they were treated and made me medically depressed and saddened that as much help as I could give it still rarely got me a thanks on the phone and not one time ever did I do a good job at all per management.  
.If you spend more than 30 minutes per week on call backs your will get reprimanded even though this should be your job and actually is one of the things that would make you as a support agent awesome in the eyes of the client and in...well...REALITY

Over the years, Sitel has drastically evolved into a rather dreadful place of employment. Back in 2013, they started making changes in the on-site HR Department that resulted in in the loss of about 3-4 integral employees. Then, in 2014, they hired a new HR Director, who, from her start at Sitel Augusta, showed a vivid appearance of nonchalance and passiveness. The main operations of the HR Department was converted into a hotline - you have to call now to speak with foreign representatives to have issues resolved such as payroll disputes, benefits discrepancies and LOA matters.

It was also in 2013-2014 that several, I mean several Coaches (Supervisors) and Agents of Sitel Augusta resigned and began employment at other major call centers in the area - those individuals now report better treatment, appreciation and greater advancement in their new workplaces.

The Staff of Operations Managers consists of maybe 2 or 3 individuals who actually have a compassion or concern for the employees of Sitel Augusta. The Senior Operations Manager (present-day) is nonchalant, arrogant, rude, discourteous and has a callas heart. He shows no genuine concern or care for the employees of Sitel Augusta, only those who he directly works with (like the Operations Managers or Supervisors or his superiors). He will see you in passing, look at you eye-to-eye and say absolutely nothing. If you greet him, he will ignore you, even look at you and ignore you.

In 2014, after the previous Senior Operations Manager and Site Director resigned/retired, another mass-resignation of Supervisors and Agents took place. This also occurred in the Operations Support Center, a department that plays an integral role in Workforce Management. In December of that year, Sitel closed a project that employed roughly 20-30 employees, and rather than give those agents the opportunity to move over to another larger project, they told them they had no other available projects for them, even the Supervisor was denied from being transferred to the larger project because there were no spots available.

On January 9th, 2015, Sitel announced that in March of 2015 there would be a laying off of roughly 675 employees as a result of a failure to renew the contract with its largest client/project, stating that the client was prepared to implement new programs and enhancements that required new equipment costing a substantial amount of money, of which the client was only willing to reimburse Sitel a small percentage - leaving Sitel to render the service virtually for free. The Operations Managers and the Senior Operations Manager claimed no prior knowledge of this occurrence, however, I find it strange that this happened shortly after the other project closed and they told those 30 agents that there were no spots available for transfer...and the Supervisor of that project couldn't be transferred either due to no agents being available - although, still to this day we have several agents who have no Supervisor! Isn't that a bit odd?

They cover up the possibility of their prior knowledge of this change by saying things like, "Sitel just put a lot of money in the renovation of this site and they're still putting money into renovating the site. We have a new Site Director and everything, don't you think they must have a plan for a continuation of this site?" No doubt, there surely must be a plan and I wouldn't doubt it if the plan has already been reached just not disclosed, because right - after over a decade of being made to work in a disgusting and unsanitary environment of soiled carpet, bedbugs and pests, filthy cubicles, worn and faulty computers and headsets, a poorly ventilated productions floor and the most uncomfortable and filthy chairs, FINALLY, they laid new carpet, repainted the walls, upgraded the equipment, assigned new headsets to all agents, sprayed for pests, and replaced HALF of the cubicles and chairs. This site has gone years with the most abominable appearance and they had the audacity to get rid of the old sanitation crew we had and we went over a month without custodians - they were taking Customer Service Reps off the phones for hours at a time using them to clean up the restrooms, the break room and the site. Ask me if they got paid any extra? Not at all. Sitel Augusta is known for assigning work to their employees without giving proper certification or pay.

Speaking of certification issues: there are several Supervisors to this day that are operating as supervisors and have been for a while now, but the members of management have delayed their certification and many of them are still hourly and not salaried, yet they continue to give their all each day, trying to meet the demands of the client and the Operations Managers. Sitel Augusta has employed Workforce Management employees for years that were - for a while - making the same as entry-level agents if not less. The former Site Coordinator performed the duties of a Site Coordinator for years without being salaried, these jobs are so stressful and busy the Workforce Admins should be making nothing less than $15.00/hour and the Site Coordinator should be salaried making atleast $30k-$35k/year.

Several Learning Specialists have resigned and began employment elsewhere just as Supervisors and agents have, and now, Sitel Augusta is yanking the chains of over 675 agents leaving them in a place of uncertainty as to whether or not they will be employed when March comes. Many agents of Sitel have been with the company for 3 - 5 years, 5 or more years, some for almost 10 years or more. There is no appreciation given for the loyalty and labors that we have given and continue to give. Every now and then they'll fan around a trivial incentive like its a piece of bacon and we're dogs or something. From skipping us over on our paychecks to laying us off under the table and then coming out with it like it was such a surprise to them - the management members and leadership personnel of Sitel Augusta could care less about us and they'd care less for you too. The only thing they are concerned about his quality performance: we are the horses pulling the carriage and they are the diplomatic and cunning superiors riding in the carriage and the carriage is the bloodsucking client, and this will always be at Sitel Augusta because there is a lack of business management consciousness and skills that benefits not just the client and not just their own pockets, but the ones who make things happen, the ones who keep the wheels turning - the agents, quality agents, mentors, supervisors, learning specialists and workforce personnel.

I want to start with the most obvious first thing that you will experience; the onboarding process. 

This process wasn't the most organized and was split between about 5 separate emails and then you'll be sent an SMS with no idea of who it is. (Thankfully they introduce themselves but I think it'd be nice to include in the email if you will be needing to contact by SMS.) Lots of last second communication about where you will be and there will be a false promise from recruiters that you will be moved to another campaign once the current one you are on is over. Apparently only some of them decide to actually disclose that this choice is based on your stats. (Later on this won't even matter actually because if apparently you are considered contract (seasonal) then you will simply be let go after being told for months that you are permanent.)

Next, let us address training. The campaign I was on for Cash App Taxes actually had a pretty okay training module. I at least felt informed enough to make slightly confident decisions. Trainers themselves from Foundever were also okay. Simply okay. I personally found it difficult to feel comfortable with my trainer and asking questions didn't feel good as the response was always more on the side of "Why am I doing your work". There was also an obscene amount of off topic talking during the training about personal things that made it a lot harder to concentrate. (This carries into production.) 

Trainers preached that we are considered permanent with Foundever and that we will have the opportunity to move to another campaign after this, expressing confusion about the fact that the recruiters told us different. You WILL have to be on camera for training. I was told by a coach this can vary depending on campaign but I can't really trust that as the processes for this company seems to change constantly like someone can't seem to make up their mind. 

Now we can discuss production. The actual job itself isn't hard. As someone that is Autistic, I enjoyed the email and chat only position, I have severe anxiety when it comes to the sound of a phone and phone calls in general so it was nice to not have constant panic attacks. 

However, I couldn't count how many times I had to mute the google meet. While you're the one working and if no one else has a case they just start talking, very loudly at that. Now I know talk in the workplace is inevitable but it will be busy with back to back cases and they start up conversation when it's really not the time for it which is distracting. Not only that there is so much work drama it is unreal. There had to be audits of conversation between coworkers because there was so much bad talk between everyone. So many times people would go WAY off topic and lots of conversations weren't HR appropriate. 

They definitely care more about your stats then they do you and stress your stats like we should be robots pumping out information. If you wanted a robot then make one. 

There was a LOT of last second changes from both the campaign and from foundever. The coaches knew close to nothing the entire time even though they are supposed to be the ones helping us and answering questions. There was never a solid decision made and it's frustrating that none of the higher-ups can seem to come to a conclusion. There is always talks about meetings had and yet no information comes from any of it. 

It should be noted that I was told we would have the opportunity to speak with recruiters in a 1-on-1 call about where we would be moving and if there is possibility to maybe move up. This did not happen. Instead we were all shoved into group meetings of about 20 - 40+ people with WFM (which seems to only be a single person) and the HR manager. They proceeded to tell us that this whole time we are contract and are going to be let go. Mind you the tone sounded pretty condescending as they mentioned they had no more openings for us to move to but they seem to be hiring for more positions on indeed which doesn't seem to add up. This was also apparently based on statistics but they stats they gather have a LOT of depending factors and not all of them were taken into consideration and apparently having good stats doesn't even matter as even though you could be moved they will simply just let you go no matter how hard you try to improve. 

You have to basically gamble for your schedule and lots of them are late nights which really ruins the work/life balance. (there was none to begin with.)

Overall my experience with this company is not good and I can't entirely put it out there because there is so much to type but from what I have I think it is efficient enough to help you make a decision regardless of the stage you are at with Foundever. 



I started at Sitel as a way to build skills for myself, and to offset some of my time in retirement.  They seemed to have a great mission statement and customer oriented goals which intrigued me.  Unfortunately, the management I've encountered to this point doesn't even remotely resemble the heart of their creed. They want you to care, but taking a bite out of that apple can be deceiving.  

I've been in training for approximately five weeks.  The rules for the class were to 

*be positive, specifically - no negative personal feelings because that energy is contagious.  
*no outside noises such as kids and animals in the background
*no question is a stupid question - or -the only stupid question is the one you didn't ask.

So, just starting with these let me explain a day working at home with Sitel.  
You clock in and the trainer spends the entire first 30 minutes of class telling you how tired they are because they didn't get enough sleep the night before.  You clock in from lunch and the trainer spends the next 30 minutes telling you what they ate for lunch and how tired they are from eating too much at lunch.  The lack of professionalism is palpable. The trainer isn't feeling what they're teaching, yet simply reading mindlessly through the materials which makes it harder to follow along which results in questions....and, instead of a more targeted answer to the question, you get the eye roll, ridiculed, and singled out as to make sure that nobody else has the audacity to ask another question. But, if there was somebody in the room monitoring the class, that same trainer would answer questions graciously.  As far as the background noises go, the trainer had more interruptions than any single trainee in the class.  This includes animals, kids, phone calls from kids, people knocking on the door, etc…  This has to be expected since the trainer has much more face time than any single trainee, but it's a bad example nonetheless.  

So, after three weeks of that initial training you move on to step two of training to a different trainer.  You get the same rules as before, which is telling me that the company does believe in positivity, being professional, and the basic rules of business which makes a company thrive.   

Unfortunately, you get more of the same in the next step of training. The first four days I spent in that training class were absolute misery.  The first four hours of each of those four days was filled with more negativity than I even realized a single person could even possess.  It was 100% nagging, complaining, threatening, and absolute tyranny.  The threats related to I'm watching you constantly.  I can see everything you're doing so don't even try anything.  This information was not given in an informing manner, but definitely a threatening one.  The attitude was abhorrent, disrespectful, demeaning, toxic, and has NO place in a professional environment. The same policy was applied for asking questions as the first three weeks of training.   You were lucky if you got an answer rather than attitude.  Mostly attitude, and publicly shamed for daring to ask. 

In addition to dealing with the subpar training, was the schedule you receive after training.  I was lead to believe I could get a decent schedule based on my personal lifestyle, and that I could work part-time after training.  After I had invested four weeks into their training, I was told that they weren't hiring part-time and basically, I would work the schedule they gave me.  I am a morning person and I am generally in bed by 8:00pm and up at 4:00am every morning.  They gave me the schedule of 2:00 to 10:00pm.  I was able to negotiate that to 12:00 - 8:00pm.  That still doesn't work for me on any level.  They didn't care in the least. 

Out of four "leaders" since I've been there only one stood out as professional, respectful, and knowledgeable.  I heard he's getting a promotion so that's good. 

And, then there was their audacity to tell me by which derivation of my name that I would be addressed by.  By that i mean, I've been addressed by a shortened version of my name since birth, yet they feel entitled to tell me how I will introduce myself and the version of my name that I will use while with their company.  I chose to work for the company in exchange for a fair wage…that wage is nowhere near the level that you get to steal my identity in exchange for the compensation.  

So, I've decided not to invest any more of my energy into this company.  It's unfortunate because  I was really looking forward to participating in a program like this.  I really do think the owners have the right idea, but they need to put the people in place who can implement those ideas.  

A typical day at work includes punching in and taking phone calls or chats depending on the program you are assigned. I personally was taking phone calls. While my first 6 years were on a great campaign I ended my time at Foundever on a campaign that appeared to be incredibly understaffed as it was  back to back calls at all times. 

The training for this campaign was the 3 week standard training, trainer was wonderful and did their best but  for this particular client you are serving customers for up to 4 different services that all have their own smaller services within them, to say the training time was inadequate would be an understatement as everyone in my class went in feeling underprepared. And rep support once you hit the phones after the theory portion of training is very unhelpful for the most part, not at all friendly or empathetic, long wait times to reach them all the while your call handle time is going up because you are waiting for help yourself. 

The pay rate over my 7 years there remained at minimum wage plus the extra dollar they afford you if you are on a bilingual campaign, you will never get a raise, they will tell you that they are staying competitive with others in the market but a quick glance at any job site shows that is a blatant lie as every other option out there is paying dollars more an hour to start.

There is no job security, if your campaign ends you will be shipped to whatever new campaign they choose whether you are able to do it or not. If they are hiring on multiple campaigns you will not be issued a transfer if you request it, even if your metrics are excellent.

Metrics are understandably very important, campaign depending expect to have sales goals, weekly quality listening, your time on call will be monitored as there is a limit to the time you can spend with each client , you are alotted 30 seconds after each call to finish your work before the next one comes in. Your transfer rate is tracked and taken into account with no regard to the fact there are multiple wrong transfers you have no control over coming to you. 

Multiple systems are utilized which is fine and expected however dont expect them to work properly and be prepared to learn the work around for when they dont.

Schedules are over the place. You may be working until 9PM today and then need to be up at 8AM the next day for a day shift, expect a mix of a couple days and a few evenings per week with no rhyme  or reason to them. Expect your shift to change with less than 24 hours notice at any time so keep a very close eye on the schedule. Expect to be told out of nowhere you have to end your shift  if they have what they deem to be too many agents on the phone on any given day. There are no accommodations in scheduling made  for child care as they have told multiple agents that child care is a personal preference and doesn’t require accommodation (I know of two that have in writing from HR that they were being refused any type of accommodations due to it being a personal preference, yes those exact words were used for both people with differing reasons and situations). Vacation time is hard to come by, even if you live in a province where the law stipulates you must take it. Being paid out for that vacation time is a literal nightmare, if you are lucky enough to get that vacation time dont expect to have the allotted money for it until you are home and have a few weeks to argue back and forth with them about it, THROUGH EMAIL because there is basically no way to reach out to a real person higher than your team lead who has no access to your vacation or pay. 

Team Leads and Managers were the highlight of my time there and probably what kept me there for so long as well. Every single one I encountered were empathetic, friendly and just all around good people. Just without any real power when it mattered, however their hearts were in the right place.

Benefits are on par with everywhere else covering about 80% for both medical and dental up to 1000$ a year. 

Ill end this saying if you are just starting out this is an okay entry level position where you will gain some experience and meet some great people but For the love of your sanity dont stay longer than you have too, the company will use and abuse you until there is nothing left, you are merely a number to them that they are all to happy to replace. The only raise you will ever get is when your province raises its minimum wage , there are such better options out there.


I worked for Sykes for over 3 years. When we were first hired, we were told that it is no commission and that you only have to sell phones if the customer wants it. Now we are required to sell UVerse and if you do not then they tell you that by doing so you are resigning and try to get you to sign a resignation statement, which they CAN NOT MAKE you sign or resign. No one can get a raise right now and if you are not someone's favorite pet, you will not advance, EVER!!!!!!!!!! They have forced overtime that will even make you work 6-7 days straight. 

Their Medical is a joke. If you just get the free one they give you then it is a $500 MAXIMUM which even the co-pay counts against. It restarts in January, does not cover chiropractors, vision, or dental. You can BUY more but you will not have much of a pay check left, God forbid you have children or a spouse covered. You have to buy vision and dental and dental is so high that it would cost you less to pay for the office visits yourself then have it count against your deductible.  You can only get glasses frames once every two years unless you can see without them for 2 weeks while your frames are sent off to have the new lenses put in them once a year. Or you can alternate getting glasses one year and contacts the next. Be prepared to pay for them unless you like Granny/Grandpa frames. I just want them to fit and look decent, I don't want or need designer frames.

I have been dealing with major stress, health issues that have come on since taking this job, being cursed out by not only the customers, but also my manager, flipped off by my manager, listening to other agents curse like a sailor while on the phones constantly, and I have to apologize to my customers since they can hear it, bullied, guilty tripped, belittled, insulted (my intelligence and physically), not allowed to use the restroom unless on breaks or lunches without being written up or told you will be fired for it even with documentation from the doctor (primary care) and a specialist as well as filling out the correct paper work with HR. You can puke all over your self and they will not let you go home without it counting against your points. You only have 12 points that reset every January and July, you loose points from being late to clock in to work or back from break by even a second, late clocking in from lunch, calling out and leaving early even if it is a emergency or you were told that it was ok to go home, like when we went through UVerse training and they let us leave 5 minutes early every day because that days lesson was finished. If the school calls and you need to pick up your child for ANY reason, you are told NO you CAN NOT LEAVE and if you do it is Job abandonment. 

Even with the systems completely down we are still required to take calls and basically make customers REALLY mad by having them call back either in 30 minutes, 1-2 hours (also called the emergency script), depending on the manager. Some times we are told to answer general questions, but do NOT say the emergency script no matter what.

They HAVE to sit down with you one on one once a week and talk to you about your performance, but that does not always happen and they change the days on you all the time so that even if you are there and calls are slow enough, they still will not do so. They will go talk and joke with their friends and other managers and FORGET IT if you need help or a customer escalates!!!!! Floor support and managers Flee instead of doing their jobs and helping. I once had a customer who waited with me for 45 minutes before anyone would take the call, I was checking back with the customer often and then had to go hunt down someone to take it and almost drag them back to my desk. 

At this place you can be on the floor passed out or hurt and they will not allow even a wife/husband or an RN to help/touch you. You could die before the EMT's arrive and CPR could have saved you, but if someone touches you they WILL BE FIRED Period!

There is SO MUCH more then just this LITTLE bit I have shared.

If you want to stay healthy, happy, sane, and whole DO NOT WORK FOR ANY SYKES ENTERPRISE LOCATION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

On the surface, Sitel Group appears to be a forward-thinking, well-organized, and technologically advanced company. Less than three weeks into training I discovered that the recruiters are trained to "sell" the company. In the first three months I had no less than 5 different managers. Styling themselves as a "bring your own computer" company what they mean is that they are attempting to use employees in a way that should really be reserved for contracted employees that would receive a 1099 at the end of the year. They offer no compensation for work from home positions for internet access and electricity. Normally, electricity wouldn't even be a consideration for me - but, Sitel wanted me to keep the provided computer on 24/7 and never disconnected from my home network / wifi. Aside from the obvious personal privacy and security concerns this causes - they, additionally, required several apps be installed for use on my personal cell phone and management used this as a regular means of communication (also no compensation for the use of my personal equipment or concern for privacy and being "off the clock" when off the clock. Scheduling normally isn't a concern for me (I consider myself pretty flexible here for availability) - however, waiting 7 hours before I could eat a next meal was an issue. When I approached management about this I was told I would need to apply for ADA accommodation. It was policy not to eat or drink at your desk but was told by leadership that I could eat between calls. There is no "between calls". I was also told that it was the client's security policy not to have any personal electronic devices in my work area but that I should keep my cell phone on me so that management could reach me. The recruiter told me (and others) that I would receive a 90 day review for consideration on increase in wage based on experience and performance - only to be told by leadership this isn't true. There was literally no orientation and Sitel Group leadership uses several web-based tools for reviews and performance metrics that none in training were told how to use or how they benefit our career. Any mention of the tools was quickly glossed over and subject of discussion changed by leadership when asked. Literally, NO orientation whatsoever. My second manager (two weeks into training) apologized to our team for "being rushed into academy training" and then "rushed" to the production floor to satisfy client demands. This manager literally disappeared a week later and our team was broken up amongst coaches. It was obvious this company has deep issues when leadership bragged during a one-on-one that they moved from call center agent like us to mentor, and then to coach in less than 8 months. This was obviously a result of turnover and not that the company was growing or expanding. I never interacted with anyone in management that had been there for more than a year. When I mentioned to leadership that I was losing sleep because the computer stays on 24/7 and the only isolated room in my home (which satisfies policy) is my bedroom - I was completely ignored. I was only asking if it is possible to put the monitor to sleep or power saving when I wasn't on the clock. This company was quite laughably the most disorganized work environment I've ever been in - and that is really saying something. Compared to all the other issues, benefits seemed a small irritation - essentially, they're unaffordable if you have any debt like a mortgage, car payment, and student loans. I voluntarily left in order to keep my sanity and self-worth when it was glaringly apparent that management was unconcerned about any of my concerns.

So lets start this off nicely. Sykes on the outside looks like an awesome company. They have a game room, drink coolers, some pretty cool coworkers, and a pretty decent social atmosphere. About once a week, they'll come around with a candy, slushies, and the occasional pancakes! Also in the game room once a month there's a super smash bros tournament after work. All cool stuff right? So here's where they destroy ya.

Number one is the commission structure. The commission structure is purely a joke. You will be graded on how customers feel about a corporate entity caring of them as a customer. Another problem; you will be graded based on 3 departments that you will be trained for with no way of opting out of doing so. This company will force-feed things down your throat with no explanation as to why, and without proper training. Don't expect to feel heard. You never will be. Any time you bring up anything that disgruntles you, prepare to be shut down and sometimes even threatened with repercussive action. Another issue: Expect inconsistency. You will get swapped around teams with little to no regard for your opinion or learning style. Agents will be swapped to teams for less than a month before Sykes decide they need coaches elsewhere and just take them away from your department. You will be given expectations from intuit corporate and then given contradicting expectations by Sykes and be expected to follow both sets of rules. For example things like average call times, branded introductions, among many other call metrics. Expect nothing more than your hourly pay. If you have at any point worked at a call center job where the metrics for surveys are attainable kiss that goodbye at this job and do not expect corporate to hear you when you complain about it because they know it is broken and refuse to do anything about it despite mass exoduses of people quitting at once. To follow-up on inconsistency, in March we were given a 2 hour notice that the following day that all phone agents were going to be chat trained and were expected to begin working on chat until further notice. 2 HOURS. By Friday of the following week, less than 6 days later, we were given no such warnings and were told that we needed to finish the chats we were working on and sign back into our phones by the end of the day. As well, we were given 3 days notice that all agents supporting desktop were going to be cross trained with another harder department with no increase in pay and customers that gave even worse survey returns. On the same note, less than a month later, Intuit decided to get rid of their "Retention" department, which now meant customers who are already p*ssed off and wanting to yell at someone and cancel their subscriptions were now also being directed to fill out our surveys that we already struggled to collect good scores on for the already scarcely attainable monthly bonuses. Expectation to support 3 departments, zero pay raises, and impossible metrics. I genuinely would give the job a zero star rating if I absolutely could, but the coworker environment was pretty awesome. Even the team leads understand that they are losing their entire teams because we are all being treated like cockroaches but there is nothing they can actually do to help. I will be finding something new very soon and I absolutely pray it is not as bad as this place.

To Sykes; Genuine suggestion - Increase pay, take away the commission structure, and at least have the courtesy to tell your employees that you're scr*wing them instead of acting like you're doing us a favor.

The AARP program is pretty good out of all the Sykes programs. Sometimes it can be laid back and sometimes it can be fast paced depending on the season. The people who work there are pretty great and the program has a family like feel to it 😊. Also this program is off on Sundays. 

Now with that being said, this program has been through many changes. After “training” for 2 weeks which consist of looking at video modules, you will be going straight to calls. They are constantly wanting higher conversion rates without raising the pay. There are people there who have been in the program for years and still are not meeting the metrics. The pay is $10.00 an hour and it doesn’t go up. You can be a web, care giving, chat or fraud watch network agent for AARP and you will be paid the same thing. 

Most of the team leads were cool except for this one lady who always had mood swings, especially when it was “her” Saturday to work. Saturday’s are so slow, that they shouldn’t even have anyone working on the 📞 s. They are always loosing call volume and hours due to other Work at home competitors that the client choose to hire. 

They raised the conversion rates up and they expect you to get all of these renewals and join payments for memberships, just to reward your hard work with a Sykes T-shirt and a water bottle. (No bonuses since they over hired too many people in the program) they always want you to offer the gold star ⭐️ mandatory question on every call, but they don’t count towards your conversion rate although they use to. This is a bigggg waste of time, work and energy. 🤔

It seems like all they cared about was conversions. Plus there was favoritism with certain agents who was able to play around and not meet the metrics. They were able stay and continue to just be on the team.  The account manager wasn’t too nice. A few of the team leads were fake. They would try to pull you aside and laugh with you about something in general and then try to pull you in the corner to catch you in a lie. Some of them are sneaky and deceitful. It seems like all they are doing is trying to kiss up at those meetings with the real client and doing anything to keep their job.

They are good for trying to do investigations on certain people, but won’t do any investigation on the agents who have gotten away with doing just almost nothing on their teams for years. They accommodate who they want to accommodate. They are not running that program right. They are now just doing all of these extra trainings and workshops to try to get the  agents who have been there for years up to speed so they can pull in more conversations with no change of pay💰 

All those different new added on tasks that came with being a universal agent, just meant more labor with less pay. The gift cards went up to $75 to $35 Amazon gift cards as a “prize” for the agents who received the most conversions. 

 The AIBs they gave us was sooo outdated but now they have windows 10 AIBs so I guess it’s an upgrade. Anywho the AARP program is not really a bad place to work. It just needs new improvements and changes. The coaches are good, but some of the management themselves need to be replaced. They are always talking about how agents are going to get written up or “corrective action” for this and that, but truth is some of them need to go. 

Don’t limit yourself on your opportunities, use this as a stepping stone to get something better. 💯💯💯

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Customer service representative 124 salaries reported	$15.69 per hour
Insurance agent 4 salaries reported	$16.75 per hour
Bilingual customer service associate 10 salaries reported	$15.00 per hour
Healthcare customer service representative 1 salary reported	$15.00 per hour
Technical support specialist 2 salaries reported	$19.00 per hour

Working at Foundever: Company Overview and Reviews

Foundever

Foundever Ratings

Popular jobs at Foundever

Salary Satisfaction

Job Seeker Tools

Employer Tools

Browse

Stay Connected