customer service representative

assistant buyer

e-commerce specialist

retail sales associate

processor

Everyone I talked to about working at HSN always had very positive things to say about it. In retrospect, most of those people were talking about other various departments within the company, and not the actual call center. 
For a company who lives and dies by their call center, they care very little for the employees who work in it. 
The environment is less than inviting. Lighting was always an issue. Either far too glaring, or far too dark. It isn't rocket science, there are guidelines for things like that. 
Most of the chairs were defective in one way or another, which makes 8+ hours of sitting in them rather taxing. 
Desks were not assigned. Instead, you were assigned a team, and that team had an area, and seating was first come, first serve. Some days you might get a good seat, other days you might get the one covered in sticky, crumby, sneezy, just general grossness. 
You're entire day is scheduled. Everything from when your breaks are, to lunch. Just because you work the same shift everyday doesn't mean your lunch is going to be the same time everyday. Some days you might start at 8:30 and lunch is as early as 11:30. Other days, you start at 8:30 and you don't get lunch til 1:30. Sure, you're allowed a little bit of personal time to use for restroom breaks if you need them, however, to stay within the acceptable guidelines, you had to keep that personal time down to under 6 minutes a day. Oh, did you have a phone call that ran late into your break time? All well... You should have had better call control if you wanted to take your full 15 minute break time. If you come back late from break, that'll count against you. Same with lunch. Hopefully you can wrap up that call, and run to the lunch area, scarf down your food, and run back and be ready to get back on the phone within your 30 minute time period. Is 30 minutes enough for lunch? its debatable. However, once you factor in the amount of time it takes to get from where you are seated, all the way across the huge warehouse to an area you are allowed to have food in, get a seat, use one of the three microwaves available, or even worse, stand in the line at the cafe to buy lunch, and the time it takes to get back to your desk and "plugged in" your lunch break is cut in half. Even worse if you have to use the restroom.  
Getting there in the morning is even worse. You have to go through a security gate, which usually has a line because it is one car at a time, and your shift starts with another 50 people. Then you're fighting for parking, or you give up and just part 200 yards away from the building. Once in the building, you have another 100 yards to go to get to your seating area since the first half is all offices and event rooms. Then your search for a seat begins. Hopefully you get a computer that is functioning, and is already booted on, otherwise you're turning on your machine, getting logged in, sanitizing your desk, getting your headset plugged in, and getting the half dozen programs you need opened up so you can do your job. All of this has to happen before your shift start time, otherwise it is counting against you. 
As a customer service rep, you're expected to up-sale on pretty much every call. You also have to apologize for everything, even if it is nothing to apologize for, like a quick order status update. 
QA is subjective depending on who is listening to your calls at what time. You'll usually get two calls for the entire month QA'ed, and it is by the same person. Many times the rotation is for 2-3 months at a time, so if you aren't speaking the same language at the person QA'ing your call, your job is on the line before you get a different QA person. Some of the team leads are good and will help back you up, other's tell you that it is your fault for not following the guidelines and to basically shape up, or ship out. 
You are expected to handle between 80 and 100 calls a day, and maintain a 3 minute talk time. they way they calculate your average however isn't exactly fair. It isn't take the total calls for the day, add it up and divide like you would expect, no, they keep a running "instant" average through the day. 
So if you have 5 calls, we'll say, 2, 1, 3, 4, and 2 minutes long, you would expect your average to be 2.4 minutes. 
They way they do it is:
2+1 = 3 /2 = 1.5
1.5+3 = 4.5 /2 = 2.25
2.25+4= 6.25 /2 = 3.125
3.125+2= 5.125  /2 = 2.5625
So you can see how A) it is always a little bit stacked against you and B) if you get one bad call in the beginning of the day, it becomes very very very difficult to get that talk time down. 
Not only is schedule adherence and QA something that can put your job on the line, but so is talk time. 
Good to know that the system is stacked against you from the beginning. 
Training is a bit of a joke. At the time, training was 6 full weeks, plus additional "nesting" time after that. The first 5 weeks was a lot of feel good type stuff. It really made you feel like you were prepared and knew what to do and how to handle everything. Unfortunately, over 3 weeks is devoted to a simple sales call. Someone that calls in, knows exactly what they want, with all of the information available and a straight forward call. After that, you start to learn a bit about some of the customer service functions, but again, all very basic and very easy stuff. Week 5 is spent almost entirely watching product information videos. Really basic information, just barely enough to say you have some exposure to it, far from an expert on anything. Week 6 is "mock calls"  you actually get to sit at a computer and go through the motions of taking a call and having your trainer pretend to be a customer. First time is a bit frustrating because it is so much all at once. Second time is a bit frustrating because it is such a simple call and you know you're about to start taking live calls. 
Nesting is interesting because this is where you actually learn everything you needed to in training that wasn't even talked about, or if it was, was mentioned briefly. Basically all nesting is, is lowered standards as far as talk time and QA and your trainers walking around right there to answer questions. It is cramming several weeks of training into 1-2 weeks. After that, you're on your own. 
One secrete they don't tell you though, is that your scores in nesting, count against you when it comes time for your review. They factor into your averages. This keeps a majority of people from being eligible to move up and out to other positions. They have the mentality that you need to master one skill set before moving onto a different one, even if that one you want it completely different than call center work. You can't move into the production department and work on building sets and props if you aren't a master of call center work. Yeah, makes sense to me. Another classic case of a company that doesn't care enough about the people working for it to work with them, realizing that not everyone fits perfectly into a mold, and instead forcing them to adhere to standards and guidelines that just don't work for them. The call center is the foot in the door for a majority of people that work there. The call center is also were a ton of amazing talent is lost because they don't master being on the phones so they aren't allowed to move to a different department. 

It is a paycheck. Just don't expect any support to succeed or anything like that. Show up early, work your time, collect your paycheck until you can get yourself somewhere else to find success.

Okay, here it is. What you make of this job will ultimately depend on your own goals, obligations, and financial situation. It works for many people, but also doesn't work for many as well.  I have been working at the Virginia warehouse for a year going on two. There are just as many pros and cons to working here, you just have to know what kind of work and hours best suit you when you apply. Positions are offered either directly through the company, or through temp agencies, temps get paid weekly, direct hires get paid bi weekly, most team members positions all average at about $11 an hour. During the hire process, you select the department and hours you would like to work, usually either picking, packing, receiving, shipping, or returns. However, your duties will change daily on an as needed basis. I am a packer, but will often get assigned to work shipping, picking, or receiving, depending on the work load for that day.It's not that bad for someone who doesn't mind or enjoy learning new things, but for someone who prefers to constantly stick to one task, be aware that you are not guaranteed to be working the same task every day. If you tend to be someone who messes things up or has mistakes often, do yourself a favor and stay CLEAR from packing. They have an audit team that writes you pink slips for mixing up orders, you have to be careful, but also have to still be fast to keep your productivity, and making a mistake means you have to dig for the box out of the chutes from the shipping department for the mixed box and it counts against your productivity.  As far as management, it is a mixed review for me, it all depends on who you are assigned to. Some supervisors are laid back, relaxed, and understanding, others can be tightly wound up and give you little room to breathe or be human. Breaks are about average, you get 15 mins after two hours and a 30 min lunch after the first four. The timeliness for breaks again, all depends on who you are working with, I've had departments that have wrote me up for being five minutes late, and others that have said "okay, no big deal". Safety is definitely enforced there. There have been very few accidents since my time here so far. Protective equipment and tools are always available, so no worries if you misplace something like a box cutter or gloves. Forklift operators are all licensed, and watch out for others, there are clear protocols and guidelines to prevent injuries and accidents, although they do tend to be a little extreme in some areas. Just recently, I witnessed a coworker get written up for taking off his mask for less than two minutes, THEN get warned for having his Gatorade beverage out while working because it was not a clear liquid (they assume anything other than water is alcohol, even if you purchased it from their vending machine). Employee culture is neat at times, they have an employee appreciation day festival with food catering, music, and novelty activities, hard working employees are recognized monthly through random drawings, and there are little fun and games sessions for birthdays. Every once in a while they have a food truck for lunches, and last Thanksgiving season they had an entire meal catered for the day shift employees. 
The largest draw back and many others would also agree, is the hours. It really isn't a bad place to work,  the jobs themselves are ALL easy and self explanatory. HOWEVER, after the busy seasons hours are reduced drastically because there are not enough orders coming through so everyone gets sent home early. Not to say that the busy seasons are any more forgiving, during the holiday seasons, you WILL be expected to work on DAYS off, and sometimes they will even switch your off days and work days around to make up for the work load if it ends up not being as high or low as predicted. You can request off if you have already made previous obligations, but you still risk losing your hours for that day. Productivity can also be tricky at times, most departments run you on productivity except for shipping, they tell you how it is calculated and have it set up to where you can make note of any delays or set backs that occur on your shift so they won't count against you, but if you don't count for every single delay EXACTLY as it occurred and ended, it WILL still count against you.
 Overall, as far as the Virginia/ Blue Ridge branch goes, it is not the worst place to work, it is a great opportunity to gain experience in warehouse work, however, I wouldn't stay there for too long, as they will tell you upon hire that the branch in Virginia is expected to close soon, and there's no guarantee as to when, as the dates keep getting pushed back every year due to complications at the new site. 


The HSN work at home sales representative seemed like a great job for a student like me--I could save time and money without having to commute everyday, and could dive right into my studies.  The initial training was a lot of fun and I learned to bond with all of the employees and made friends.  It was nice to have the online chat system to keep in contact with other employees.  I transitioned to my team and began working all the time. I had several meetings with my supervisor, who told me all my numbers looked great and I was "one of her stars on her team."  The holiday rush came and went and shortly after the first of the year my supervisor was let go.  My team was split between many supervisors until we finally got a new supervisor at the end of February.  I met with my new supervisor sometime in the first week of March and we did introductions and he gave me the same praise, saying my numbers looked great, and I expressed concerns of lower than usual quality evaluations I had received since Christmas.  He assured me that he would help me(and everyone else because that seemed to be the trend), which was a sufficient answer.   He seemed great and really wanted to be there for the team to motivate and encourage.  About a week later, he asked me to call him again for a conference and I didn't think anything of it.  When I talked to him, he told me that several people had been flagged for shortened call times.  What? I had just been told the very week before that my number (one of which is my AHT) looked "great."  I was told my calls would be reviewed and we would talk about them soon, just like the others on my team.  The next week, I still hadn't heard anything and continued as usual and then was finally asked to join my sup in a meeting.  The conversation was not going well, and I was going to be let go, solely based on my call times being too short, and I said that maybe this was not a good fit for me, and my sup agreed.  I was totally blindsided by this and had not had any warnings or anything on my record.  I have learned that they were simply fishing for reasons to lay people off because their business needs had been drastically reduced.  The 2 weeks before that, they had reduced everyone's hours to barely above the 10 hr minimum for PT employees and we were still very slow.  HSN expects their employees to be happy all the time, but they will not stand up for them against disgruntled customers.  Poorly run company and awful management.

This company is terrible. You are forced to listen to disgusting rude customers and mgmt does nothing. No raises, no incentives and no help... terrible I would never recommend this place to anyone. Management is always changing since people are leaving. They offer no help or incentives at all. They will push you to sell sell sell and do not take anything into account that sometimes the customer just does not want to buy anything else. HSN only cares about sales. That is it! You are forced to listen to customers who talk dirty, sexually explicit things and curse you out all while you are not able to do anything about it. When you bring it up to a sup you are told to deal with it. You also get paid vacation however don't expect to use it when you want. The computer will not approve it unless it is a random non busy day which is hardly ever. During the holidays expect to work 6 days to 5 days a week for 6 hours each day. They keep you right around 30 hours so they do not have to pay out benefits if you are PT. However after the holidays you will be lucky to get 10 hours every 2 weeks since it is slow. They do not care if you can't work that or what you were told during the interview process about hours worked a week. It is a work from home job however it is miserable.  You are also scheduled breaks however if a call runs into your break that is your problem. They will not adjust your break at all... so if you do not keep your calls short or during the holidays you more than likely will not be going on break. Meaning you will have to work 5-6 hours straight without a bathroom break. If you take an 'unscheduled ' bathroom break it will be counted against you and will be held against you. HSN does not care if you are pregnant needing to use the bathroom every couple hours... they will make all unscheduled breaks against you. This job is seriously bad for anyones health.. do yourself a favor and do not apply there! It will literally suck the life out of you and break you down. If you are smart.. you would stay away !! HSN only cares about their own pocket and not about any of its employees.

A typical day consists of logging in and jumping straight into calls. You auto-in each day and can take around 100-150 calls a day on average (depends on the person.) Training was pretty fun. I had a good training class and we all really helped each other, but after training everyone gets different supervisors. You can only learn so much during training because there’s such a variety of calls that you can get. A lot you have to learn and find out as you go. Even outside of training you are watched very closely and micromanaged by your supervisors. They can go into your screen and watch you 24/7 because everything on your screen gets recorded. You get weekly quality checks and you also have to have really good compliance, AHT, but you’re basically trained to rush the customers off the phone. Management wants your calls to last no more than 2 and a half minutes which is absurd. Customers would always say to me they wish HSN was the same way it was years ago when CSRs actually cared about the customers and didn’t rush them off the phone, but you’ll get penalized if you have long calls. Customers can be really condescending and outright mean to you, but you can’t hang up on calls or reject answering calls. I made the mistake of releasing calls due to reasons that had nothing to do with the job, but were valid to me. When my supervisors caught that I released a call and spoke with me, they were not understanding what so ever and asked for an explanation, but could care less what I had to say.. even though in my short time of being there I received numerous recognitions, passed my quality evaluations, and was doing so well on the phones. One supervisor was laughing in my face on the call and the other gave snarky remarks that were totally out of line and unnecessary. I was shocked because I was shown 2 completely different sides of them in that moment and realized they do NOT care about you or your job. Morale of the story, don’t hang up on customers. Regardless, right in that moment I decided to quit because of how they handled the situation, their unprofessionalism, including the way they spoke towards me..

I have been here for almost 6 months. The training was easy to get through although I do feel they could have trained us longer before throwing us to the wolves, because when still training or fresh out of training and taking live calls we arent allowed to tell customers we're new and to just bare with us if we are slow or make a mistake. After training I got an AWESOME supervisor, I have a lot of circumstances that sometimes hurts my schedule compliance but I've been 100% honest and transparent with them about my situation and in return they respected that and work with me on it a lot more than most work places would, most places would have let me go by now but they have been very compassionate and understanding in working around everything for me. The pay could be a little better, I think we deal with way more than we get paid for, with short breaks and lunch I think pay should be higher to compensate. Easier to stay motivated and happy with that downfall if you know you're getting paid great for all you put up with. PTO is awesome, you also get unscheduled PTO for emergencies or sick days. Having both is awesome because most places only give you so many hours either way for PTO and once you're out you're out. You can plan days off for events or a vacation with planned PTO, but if you get sick and call off it docks hours from your unplanned PTO and you'll still have planned PTO hours as well as paid holidays which you get 4 of. I think the upsells are a little ridiculous, they generally irritate the customers and half the time we dont even know what they are so if they ask "I dont know what that is, what is it?" theres a small description to look at or you can pull up the item and look at the detailed description but that doesnt look so great on your behalf because it lengthens your call time or otherwise signals the customer that you "dont know your products" which isnt a good look. Generally the customers are nice, but some of them can really be awful and mean for no reason. Overall I'm happy working here but some things could be better. 

Working At HSN has been something short of UNBELIEVABLE!!!! Never in my 20 years working in call center have I ever worked a position to where when there are no calls in queue your peer mentors and mgmt will call into the queue and create customer interactions with test dummy accounts and make fake customer interactions. As a representative you are aware while in training that this type of scenario goes on to assist you and preparing you to take calls which is great but once graduated on to the floor you would think that this dosent happen. Issue is that once you are in production these calls come in when the call volume is low and instead of making reps take CV or VTO to help offset the number of reps on the phone they prank call you to keep you on your toes and to keep you believing that you are interacting with customers but of course there a tell tell signs that you are being pranked they use the same personality and background noises so you know you are speaking with the same group of people. Sometimes these calls are unfair especially if you are struggling with AHT or compliance and you have these ACTORS keeping you on the phone, trying to keep you off task, humiliating you, stressing  you out, and creating unrealistic situations and when reaching out to second level support half of them have attitudes like they dont want to assist or give you pushback for help just bad team effort all together. I dont think that these interactions are fair or designed to help you but hinder your performance and stats as these call do count against you. Not a very good place to work. Everything is based on senority and everyone is fighting to climb up. Even worse now that they are merging with QVC. Pay aint worth the headache just the convienence of being able to work from home but still being micromanged and the hours are HORRIBLE!!!!! They make you work both weekend days and rotate a weekend off every 6 weeks. NOT GOOD FOR FAMILY.

The job consists of a traditional schedule (5 days-40 hrs a week).  Don't be fooled by the fact that HSN is on television; it is simply just another call center that has a high turnover rate because the workload does not match the pitiful pay you will receive.  The pay sucks and even though the company offers 120 hours of time off (sick days are included and are not seperate); you go on a waitlist to have days off that 90% of the time don't become available. Long story short they give you the days and then make it impossible for you to take them.  Getting ahead has nothing to do with your job performance, but actually who you know.  There are people promoted to positions they are not qualified for while employees that would be better suited are passed over.  I've seen it happen repeatedly over the years I worked there.  The company only cares about making money and allows employees to be verbally abused by the customers that call in.  No matter what happens the customer is always right.  They will often even overlook their own policies to appease whiny, bratty customers that have learned to abuse the system over the years and you will be expected to do the same.  HSN is a horrible corporation.  It looks appealing from afar, but don't be fooled you'll basically be a low paid call center rep; just in a prettier building than you're probably used to.  The best thing about it were the friends I made while there, but I would never, ever recommend anyone with options to apply here.

I want to make this clear, you will not be working as a cashier or jewelry associate. After being with them for many years, they changed the job position so much that no one knows what they are doing anymore. You do about 30% of the work as a cashier/jewelry associate with high expectations, but then you are basically a receiving associate after that. 70% of the work you will be doing is grunt work receiving associates should be doing and you get paid almost 2-3 dollars less than them. You won't be working as a cashier or in the jewelry department. They let me go after 4 years because they weren't going to let me work unless I spent a lot of money (a lot) on a Doctors note to say I couldn't do receiving work, and even after spending that much money they could still decide to not let me work. There was a lot of drama and this job is not for people with health problems or anyone that wants to do a lot of heavy lifting. You're are a receiving associate at a lesser pay. A lot of people also call in sick a lot and never show up for their shifts. You also have to revolve your availability and schedule around other people's commitments and 2nd jobs.

The employees you work with are amazing and a few of the managers are great to work with. The majority of the customers are really nice as well and they know more about HSN products than you ever will, so always listen to them and have fun!

I have worked with them for a few years now and you can rest assured from top to bottom or bottom to top, not a family centered company. No consistent schedules if your hourly in a warehouse and very demanding at salary levels (if you want to survive). Work overtime in the start of week (10+hrs) and then lose it by the end (hourly ebb-flow to company benefit). Customer ship rate standard held higher than employee respect rate and pay rate. Employees can often cannibalize each other due to lack of leadership. 90% Managers and Supervisors cannot and would not do the job of those they attempt to lead. Hourly inspired by your bills and need for a paycheck. As management team your driven by not to lose your job or keeping the heat and grief off your soul. Best part some few very caring employees and no greater than 6 work days straight. Worst part 1)micro-management (manager to sup level up) and 2)leads who know the job better than the Sup but have no personal skills and gossip. Job is a job is what HSN is counting on for hourly hires.... and for Management its PC everything...cover your rear and keep the numbers up keep the employees quite...happy is a bonus Not required. If your single or have no kids and don't care what people think and your better at numbers than with people....apply now you can be a hourly up to Manager! great benefits! (The ones who admires Jesus and His Teachings of loving and carrying for all others, will find a ministry here and a paycheck).

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Customer service representative 3 salaries reported	$15.67 per hour
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E-commerce specialist 3 salaries reported	$67,000 per year
Retail sales associate 2 salaries reported	$14.00 per hour
Processor 4 salaries reported	$15.13 per hour

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