work rant
I was going to send this to the HR dept but my legal counsel insisted i didnt on account I would probably get fired.
in its entirety...
Before I begin I want you to know that I'm not trying to be angry or attacking of faneuil or sunpass as a whole... But there seems to be a ton of negativity afoot and as an employee its really my job to report it so it can be rectified.
First and foremost, theres a constant changing of the rules and whats expected of us and policies go flying out the window daily. As you know we get 2 Quality Assesments on calls a week, deriving a % based average which our incentive pay is based upon. Our Team lead does these unless assigned to someone else in the managers absence. Last week I received my QA's on Wednesday and thursday. I got perfect 100's on both. Friday with my manager gone i was QA'd a 3rd time. the call was not recorded in its entirety and was entirely subjectively scored. For example the beginning of the call was cut off. I used the proper opening as i do on every single call and there was silence on the phone. a few seconds later the customer made soem noise so i re introduced myself and said "this is sean how may i help you?" Billy - who scored the call insisted this was how i opened the call. not so and i advised him as such but he took 5 points off anyhow. I told the customer I was going to take care of the issue she had presented and was told this WAS not giving confirmation. I think that if someone says to me I want a cheeseburger and I tell them I will give you a cheeseburger, thats acknowledging their issue. additional 5 or 10 points was removed for that. He also decided that even though i was polite in verifying all of the information he didnt think i used a enough pleases may I's and thank yous so he took all 20 points off for this. when pressed how many I should use there is never an exact # that can be given. I don't see how we can be abused so heavily on a score sheet if they cannot provide us with exact guidelines. the customer mentioned mounting the tt properly herself in the call, causing me not to mention it - as i had been told - if the customer mentions something we dont have to repeat it. another 10 points was taken off for that. now the call itself was very weird in nature. the customer had been issued a new TT as a warranty replacement for one of the bridge tolls. mysteriously the TT had been marked returned so it was charging the tolls but not giving the discount NOR was it removing the tolls from the TT, just collecting them in suspense. I informed her of what i was doing and how i was going to have to fix the things that had been done incorrectly. I did give her some bad information and soem good information, fixed the issue, made the customer happy and was polite and cordial troughout the entire call. Billy gave me a 42.5. i scored it at about a 67.5.
Now, first things first. The only time I ever get a 3rd QA in a week is if one of the first 2 was so awful it needed to be done to make the scoring average overall better. i was told rather snidely by TL Betsy that we've always done this. Now i have 14 months of 2 a week QA's at my desk so we most assuredly do NOT always do this. Furthermore I asked around the call center of about 15 people and only ONE person had a 3rd QA done and that was someone who was on probation for having bad QA scores. In her case she is supposed to be QA'd more to ensure her job is getting done correctly. So if no one else is getting 3 QA's a week - and I scored two perfect 100 % QA's already - why am I being targeted?
Now of course the rather subjective 42.5 % combined with the 2 100 % leaves me with an 81% for the week which means my thanks for going above and beyond the call of duty on a rather screwed up call is having my incentive pay stolen from me. Had even half the 20 points from the may I's pleases and thank yous been given and the opening points of 5 had been given it would have been a 57.5 giving me an 85.333 % I'm not sure I understand the idea behind rewarding soemone for working hard on a call to make the customer happy by taking their incentive pay away. I don't follow the idea that the customer called in angry and unhappy and left with the issue resolved and being quite happy with the end result, how can the way to thank that employee be to take money from him?
Furthermore, why am I the only one being QA'd 3 times in a week. Further still - the leads do not have enough hours in the day to cultivate and give us our availability and CPH stats. How can we know how we're doing if these are not given to us? Yet they have time to QA me as a group, TL helen was there as well.
My vacation started at 5 pm today. my vacation pay is averaged in based on my hourly pay and the incentives I've worked. The incentives are supposed to be so easy to attain that its like we're getting paid 11.19 an hour. now i wont be getting my full incentive pay on my vacation hours either.
I was late to work the other day for the first time in 8 months. I-4 was a parking lot. I leave at the same time everyday and usually arrive at work 5-10 minutes early. i havent missed a day in 8 months. i'm not a problematic employee. I come to work everyday I do my job, and i do it very well. I constantly change to the ever adjusting tasks that are assigned to us. Policy changes constantly and we usually find out by being marked wrong on soemthing and being told we should have known better. net hail is NOT used to communicate important things. Voice overs from management are. If you walk up to me and make eye contact and tell me something I'll get it. If i'm on a call or working on my crossword puzzle I'm not going to hear you. I get into the zone.
Furthermore theres a slew of promises being made that are not kept.
Operation 75 was initiated to give us the chance to give feedback on things to make the sunpass workplace flow more smoothly. in addition we were told that if we put our name on the ideas we submitted we would be kept in constant contact about the idea and its progress or be told why it was shot down. I submitted a couple of ideas about 4 months ago. Never once heard anything back.
We were told by managerment that we would receive once a month reports on our PTO hours earned and used for the last 3 months this promise has been made. it has yet to be honored.
Charlene apparently quit or got fired by Faneuil. Our boss got fired. No one told us. not a soul. When someone said they needed to talk to her about something only then were we told she doesnt work here anymore. i would think that having your boss no longer working for the company would be announced.
There seems to be pre ordained people being lined up for promotions. Everyone who's been chosen for off the phone activity keeps getting promoted. There also seems to be an internal favortism going on. Caryl was absent on and off for 3 weeks. when the managers had a meeting she was put in charge. What kind of message does that send when someone who hasnt even been there is left in charge to sit off the phones. Rewarding someone who's not coming to work once she gets back. The same 2-3 people are always picked for walking around, handing out paperwork... I know that its not just 2-3 people that are doing their job so good that they alone should be rewarded constantly with time off the phones. the funny thing about this is they are given these chores because the TL's are spread too thin. And yet they still had time to give me a 3rd QA.
I dont understand why the Boca Office is not being held to the same responsibilities we are. I dont understand why Boca people are constantly taking calls and not updating any information. if information is not being updated they are supposed to notate why. for example - "verified pin updated cc info, non customer mmn and dl # n/a" but instead its just verified pin updated cc.
The website we have is not functioning. Problems constantly get reported and never being fixed. why can't the website have a field for asking for the Mothers maiden name (MMN). We;re required to ask for it. perhaps a paragraph by the fields for drivers license # and MMN that reads "while this information is not required it is used to help verify you in the event your account gets compromised. not providing it will greatly hinder our ability to help you down the road should you forget your PIN # later." then the web site could enter into patron "cust declined to answer" if they in fact chose not to answer those fields. The customers also get argumentantive when we ask for the MMN because they know it wasnt asked for on the website.
They keep updating Patron and making it worse and worse. now you have to click over and make moves that you didnt previously have to do when replenishing an account with only one tt. why should i have to choose which TT it is when theres only one on the account to begin with. and why do we get constant error messages when we try to replenish the account. it has slowed down the call times immensely constantly dismissing error messages. how come patron cant tell us that theres not enough vehicles listed. the vehicle light should blink if there are fewer vehicles listed than # of active TT's.
theres not enough information being shared with our customer base. theres not enough things being discussed with them to prevent them from calling back. the best example of this is differentiating between Epass and Sunpass. Customers call in and activate new accounts and are not told that epass will not be able to recognize them until 48-72 hours after they have been on an epass toll plaza. Anyone who lives remotely in the central florida area thats activating a pass should be told this so when they do get a red light they arent calling back to complain. if you tell them ahead of time not only are they prepped but now they wont be angry when it appears their pass didnt work. Ask the customer what they plan on using the sunpass for. if they tell you they live in metrowest and go to school at ucf then they will be using it on EPASS tolls and will need to have a higher low balance limit for replenishment or they will constantly be out of money. I tell my friends who have sunpass and dont realize its 2 different companies.... they raise their low level limits and dont have problems anymore. the same can be done in miami for mdx roads...
I eliminated all the things that werent required and i was able to become the # 2 calls per hour agent in the call center. I had to stop because i wasnt helping people. All we keep hearing about is world class customer service and all it seems we get advice on is how to make the service levels better. thats NOT world class customer service. answering the phone when your pc is frozen and telling someone that you cant help them and to call back when they could wait another minute for soemone who can help them is not good customer service. it is however a way to keep service levels up. I told that to 10 people and all 10 said they would rather hold another minute or two and get helped than get told to hang up after waiting for 5 minutes already. Cutting corners and not telling people what they need to know and getting them on and off the phone as fast as possible. this just doesnt seem right to me.
I'm sure theres things I'm forgetting... today I got so stressed out over work that i grew ill, nausous, i was sweating and chilled. it felt like i had the flu. this isnt good. Of course the biggest thing was working hard to help someone not knowing that I was being QA'd and then having my incentives taken from me. When you talk world class Customer service I even went so far as to make sure she was credited back the $16 in non sunpass toll rate charges that she was assesed.... that would have been so easy to overlook. but i didnt... i spent an extra 5 minutes on the call and got it done... thats world class customer service... having my incentive taken from me makes me not want to do anything over and above ever again.
So ends my gripe... Please reinstate my incentives for last week. I don't believe that the call was scored remotely fairly and even if half of the points i disputed being taken from me were credited back i would qualify for my incentive...
Mostly I jut want an explanation as to why the faneuil presence is 98 % gone. if we didnt get paid every 2 weeks it'd be 100 % gone. I look forward to a response as soon as possible.
Sincerely yours,
Sean H.
Sunpass CCR Orlando Center
in its entirety...
Before I begin I want you to know that I'm not trying to be angry or attacking of faneuil or sunpass as a whole... But there seems to be a ton of negativity afoot and as an employee its really my job to report it so it can be rectified.
First and foremost, theres a constant changing of the rules and whats expected of us and policies go flying out the window daily. As you know we get 2 Quality Assesments on calls a week, deriving a % based average which our incentive pay is based upon. Our Team lead does these unless assigned to someone else in the managers absence. Last week I received my QA's on Wednesday and thursday. I got perfect 100's on both. Friday with my manager gone i was QA'd a 3rd time. the call was not recorded in its entirety and was entirely subjectively scored. For example the beginning of the call was cut off. I used the proper opening as i do on every single call and there was silence on the phone. a few seconds later the customer made soem noise so i re introduced myself and said "this is sean how may i help you?" Billy - who scored the call insisted this was how i opened the call. not so and i advised him as such but he took 5 points off anyhow. I told the customer I was going to take care of the issue she had presented and was told this WAS not giving confirmation. I think that if someone says to me I want a cheeseburger and I tell them I will give you a cheeseburger, thats acknowledging their issue. additional 5 or 10 points was removed for that. He also decided that even though i was polite in verifying all of the information he didnt think i used a enough pleases may I's and thank yous so he took all 20 points off for this. when pressed how many I should use there is never an exact # that can be given. I don't see how we can be abused so heavily on a score sheet if they cannot provide us with exact guidelines. the customer mentioned mounting the tt properly herself in the call, causing me not to mention it - as i had been told - if the customer mentions something we dont have to repeat it. another 10 points was taken off for that. now the call itself was very weird in nature. the customer had been issued a new TT as a warranty replacement for one of the bridge tolls. mysteriously the TT had been marked returned so it was charging the tolls but not giving the discount NOR was it removing the tolls from the TT, just collecting them in suspense. I informed her of what i was doing and how i was going to have to fix the things that had been done incorrectly. I did give her some bad information and soem good information, fixed the issue, made the customer happy and was polite and cordial troughout the entire call. Billy gave me a 42.5. i scored it at about a 67.5.
Now, first things first. The only time I ever get a 3rd QA in a week is if one of the first 2 was so awful it needed to be done to make the scoring average overall better. i was told rather snidely by TL Betsy that we've always done this. Now i have 14 months of 2 a week QA's at my desk so we most assuredly do NOT always do this. Furthermore I asked around the call center of about 15 people and only ONE person had a 3rd QA done and that was someone who was on probation for having bad QA scores. In her case she is supposed to be QA'd more to ensure her job is getting done correctly. So if no one else is getting 3 QA's a week - and I scored two perfect 100 % QA's already - why am I being targeted?
Now of course the rather subjective 42.5 % combined with the 2 100 % leaves me with an 81% for the week which means my thanks for going above and beyond the call of duty on a rather screwed up call is having my incentive pay stolen from me. Had even half the 20 points from the may I's pleases and thank yous been given and the opening points of 5 had been given it would have been a 57.5 giving me an 85.333 % I'm not sure I understand the idea behind rewarding soemone for working hard on a call to make the customer happy by taking their incentive pay away. I don't follow the idea that the customer called in angry and unhappy and left with the issue resolved and being quite happy with the end result, how can the way to thank that employee be to take money from him?
Furthermore, why am I the only one being QA'd 3 times in a week. Further still - the leads do not have enough hours in the day to cultivate and give us our availability and CPH stats. How can we know how we're doing if these are not given to us? Yet they have time to QA me as a group, TL helen was there as well.
My vacation started at 5 pm today. my vacation pay is averaged in based on my hourly pay and the incentives I've worked. The incentives are supposed to be so easy to attain that its like we're getting paid 11.19 an hour. now i wont be getting my full incentive pay on my vacation hours either.
I was late to work the other day for the first time in 8 months. I-4 was a parking lot. I leave at the same time everyday and usually arrive at work 5-10 minutes early. i havent missed a day in 8 months. i'm not a problematic employee. I come to work everyday I do my job, and i do it very well. I constantly change to the ever adjusting tasks that are assigned to us. Policy changes constantly and we usually find out by being marked wrong on soemthing and being told we should have known better. net hail is NOT used to communicate important things. Voice overs from management are. If you walk up to me and make eye contact and tell me something I'll get it. If i'm on a call or working on my crossword puzzle I'm not going to hear you. I get into the zone.
Furthermore theres a slew of promises being made that are not kept.
Operation 75 was initiated to give us the chance to give feedback on things to make the sunpass workplace flow more smoothly. in addition we were told that if we put our name on the ideas we submitted we would be kept in constant contact about the idea and its progress or be told why it was shot down. I submitted a couple of ideas about 4 months ago. Never once heard anything back.
We were told by managerment that we would receive once a month reports on our PTO hours earned and used for the last 3 months this promise has been made. it has yet to be honored.
Charlene apparently quit or got fired by Faneuil. Our boss got fired. No one told us. not a soul. When someone said they needed to talk to her about something only then were we told she doesnt work here anymore. i would think that having your boss no longer working for the company would be announced.
There seems to be pre ordained people being lined up for promotions. Everyone who's been chosen for off the phone activity keeps getting promoted. There also seems to be an internal favortism going on. Caryl was absent on and off for 3 weeks. when the managers had a meeting she was put in charge. What kind of message does that send when someone who hasnt even been there is left in charge to sit off the phones. Rewarding someone who's not coming to work once she gets back. The same 2-3 people are always picked for walking around, handing out paperwork... I know that its not just 2-3 people that are doing their job so good that they alone should be rewarded constantly with time off the phones. the funny thing about this is they are given these chores because the TL's are spread too thin. And yet they still had time to give me a 3rd QA.
I dont understand why the Boca Office is not being held to the same responsibilities we are. I dont understand why Boca people are constantly taking calls and not updating any information. if information is not being updated they are supposed to notate why. for example - "verified pin updated cc info, non customer mmn and dl # n/a" but instead its just verified pin updated cc.
The website we have is not functioning. Problems constantly get reported and never being fixed. why can't the website have a field for asking for the Mothers maiden name (MMN). We;re required to ask for it. perhaps a paragraph by the fields for drivers license # and MMN that reads "while this information is not required it is used to help verify you in the event your account gets compromised. not providing it will greatly hinder our ability to help you down the road should you forget your PIN # later." then the web site could enter into patron "cust declined to answer" if they in fact chose not to answer those fields. The customers also get argumentantive when we ask for the MMN because they know it wasnt asked for on the website.
They keep updating Patron and making it worse and worse. now you have to click over and make moves that you didnt previously have to do when replenishing an account with only one tt. why should i have to choose which TT it is when theres only one on the account to begin with. and why do we get constant error messages when we try to replenish the account. it has slowed down the call times immensely constantly dismissing error messages. how come patron cant tell us that theres not enough vehicles listed. the vehicle light should blink if there are fewer vehicles listed than # of active TT's.
theres not enough information being shared with our customer base. theres not enough things being discussed with them to prevent them from calling back. the best example of this is differentiating between Epass and Sunpass. Customers call in and activate new accounts and are not told that epass will not be able to recognize them until 48-72 hours after they have been on an epass toll plaza. Anyone who lives remotely in the central florida area thats activating a pass should be told this so when they do get a red light they arent calling back to complain. if you tell them ahead of time not only are they prepped but now they wont be angry when it appears their pass didnt work. Ask the customer what they plan on using the sunpass for. if they tell you they live in metrowest and go to school at ucf then they will be using it on EPASS tolls and will need to have a higher low balance limit for replenishment or they will constantly be out of money. I tell my friends who have sunpass and dont realize its 2 different companies.... they raise their low level limits and dont have problems anymore. the same can be done in miami for mdx roads...
I eliminated all the things that werent required and i was able to become the # 2 calls per hour agent in the call center. I had to stop because i wasnt helping people. All we keep hearing about is world class customer service and all it seems we get advice on is how to make the service levels better. thats NOT world class customer service. answering the phone when your pc is frozen and telling someone that you cant help them and to call back when they could wait another minute for soemone who can help them is not good customer service. it is however a way to keep service levels up. I told that to 10 people and all 10 said they would rather hold another minute or two and get helped than get told to hang up after waiting for 5 minutes already. Cutting corners and not telling people what they need to know and getting them on and off the phone as fast as possible. this just doesnt seem right to me.
I'm sure theres things I'm forgetting... today I got so stressed out over work that i grew ill, nausous, i was sweating and chilled. it felt like i had the flu. this isnt good. Of course the biggest thing was working hard to help someone not knowing that I was being QA'd and then having my incentives taken from me. When you talk world class Customer service I even went so far as to make sure she was credited back the $16 in non sunpass toll rate charges that she was assesed.... that would have been so easy to overlook. but i didnt... i spent an extra 5 minutes on the call and got it done... thats world class customer service... having my incentive taken from me makes me not want to do anything over and above ever again.
So ends my gripe... Please reinstate my incentives for last week. I don't believe that the call was scored remotely fairly and even if half of the points i disputed being taken from me were credited back i would qualify for my incentive...
Mostly I jut want an explanation as to why the faneuil presence is 98 % gone. if we didnt get paid every 2 weeks it'd be 100 % gone. I look forward to a response as soon as possible.
Sincerely yours,
Sean H.
Sunpass CCR Orlando Center