Steve
Lansdale,#2UPDATE EX-employee responds
Mon, September 16, 2002
I've decided to toss my two cents in here. It's been over a year since I've had anything to do with Voicestream at all .. I never worked directly for the company, but rather worked for another firm called "Communications & Commerce" .. which was doing a good portion of Voicestream's Activations and Customer Care for a while. Everyone always told me that CommComm (as it was called) was so horrible, and how everyone is treated perfectly within Voicestream itself. Actually, if you took any of the Voicestream reports I've seen on here and replaced it with CommComm, you'd have an accurate description of where I worked. It's weird that way. Before I get onto the Voicestream specific content of this .. As far as I know, CommComm went out of business .. I know for sure the call center I worked in is shut down now.. it shut down about 3 months after I left. From what I understand, they lost 3 clients in 6 weeks.. (Providian, AT&T and someone else..) and then shut the call center down with no warning. Management just came onto the floor and told everyone to go home, they were all fired because the call center was closing. (You think they'd have the decencey to lay them off so they could collect unemployment for a little bit while they looked for a new job.) Anyway.. back to Voicestream .. when CommComm had them as clients.. we got authentic Voicestream Trainers to train us. It was 3 weeks. You think we'd be ready to go and really knowledgable after that, right? Not at all. We had no clue what we were doing out there .. and because something was wrong with the call equipment for the first 2 months I was there, it wasn't uncommon for there to be 2-3 hours between calls. For instance .. I'd start my shift at 7am .. I'd get my first call at 9:30 .. my second call at 11:45 .. we'd break for lunch at noon .. come back at 12:30 .. I'd usually have my third call sometime between 1:30 and 2pm. It'd speed up at that point .. between 2pm and shift end at 3:30, I'd usually have about 5 calls... so, 8-10 calls per day was considered a lot. (People would actually b***h if they got more than 10 that they were "working too hard.") My point is.. there's no way we can get comfortable doing this stuff when we get 10 calls a day. (By contrast.. at my current call center job.. I took 138 calls in a 10 hour shift today. I've taken as many as 160 before.) Anyway... I seem to be the only person who actually read Voicestream's Intranet site.. with all the policies and procedures and that kinda junk .. I d**n near had the customer care part memorized.. and we were only Activations at that point. I did ti beacuse I was bored, not out of an interest to know what was going on with Customer Care. Anyway.. After I'd been there 2 months, they were phasing Customer Care into our call center. (It was previously handled by a CommComm center in Utah. Ours was in Pennsylvania.) I pretty much ignored most of training, as I knew everything I could learn from a textbook/classroom. We went back otu ont he floor, and everyone was clueless, me included. It took weeks, but some of us finally got competent. (They also immediately upped our call volume so we were constantly in Queue.) I seem to be the only one who had knowledge. I'd have the floor support coming to me to ask questions on stuff. There was really only two other people who knew anything there .. one was shipped back to Utah, the other was fired. I was basically the floor support guy who the managers got off the phones whenever they could. But, the other employees didnt' care to the point where they'd lie to the customer, rather than ask a question... so most my day was spent walking around aimlessly. In 8 hours of walking around, I'd answer maybe a dozen questions... and yes.. based on our quality scores, most reps didn't know crap. They'd let me take sup calls once in a while .. and I'd spend 10 minutes dispelling all the inaccuracies the rep prior to me told the customer. I was essentially doing the job of a supervisor.. minus the meetings .. for half what they made. I even did some call monitoring in a pinch for the Q&A person for my team. (And d**n it.. Q&A is what I wanted to be in the entire time I was there.) Anyway .. it seems Voicestream is the same everywhere .. even when you're not really working for them. (btw, Voicestream pulled calls from CommComm in violation of their contract, which is how we lost them.)
hell
Allentown,#3UPDATE Employee
Tue, August 27, 2002
Stick together as employees! This company needs to go down and the EMPLOYEES will be the one to do it. Spread the word about your hate for VoiceStream/T-Mobile! Together we can FIGHT this insanity and stop this company and get BETTER SERVICE for ourselves!! Allentown, Bellingham, Bellevue, Jacksonville, Salem, Ft Lauderdale, Wichita, Albuquerque.. STAND AS ONE!
free
bell,#4UPDATE Employee
Wed, August 14, 2002
Before I found this site I thought that Voicestream's disgusting business practices towards their employees (to say nothing of their customers) were limited to my call center. After reading several of the comments here it is obvious that this is a nation- and company wide disease. I am beginning to believe that Voicestream is another company like Enron/ Worldcom-out to make the big bucks for upper management, and leave the rest of us spinning in the wind. I cannot begin to convey the constant harassment that occurs at these places. customers wonder why reps cannot help them-its because their training is completely idiotic and useless-their learning and development dept. is an JOKE! All they do is have these icebreakers with a little (very little) info spliced between. the company constantly jumps on these fad ideas-Hey this week let's change everything and monitor how many times our employees are using the bathroom! Let's purchase useless collection training materials based on infantile psuedo-psychological mumbo-jumbo and make all our employees waste two days taking it. Over the last few weeks we have been totally slammed with calls-because we have opened the CA/NV market (more poor suckers for VSW to ripoff) which our idiot site director said we had the 'capacity' to handle! NOT! No Strategic planning, no resource planning-I mean how hard is it? A) you are bringing on two huge markets, B) you will need more people due to increased call volume, equals C) you start hiring before you open the markets! DUH! This company does everything in its power to dehumanize and denigrate its employees in all of its call centers. I think we need to unionize-but I just want out because my morals and beliefs are in such conflict with the thievery and dishonesty that this company values. It has gotten progressively worse and just keeps going. Warn everyone you know not to get their service and not to work for them.