Call Centers: Teleperformance USA Is A Cancer
"Thank you for holding, your call will be answered in the order it was received by an incompetent drug-addict whose training consisted of watching funny stuff on YouTube." That's the substance of this insider confession from a former trainer at Teleperformance USA, one of those outsourced call centers that turns your customer service call into the modern-day version of The Trial. Hear about the restroom sex, drugs sold on-site, and employees getting away with writing down and running off with customer's credit card numbers, inside...
1. Drugs are sold almost openly in the Fishers call-center. The keyword is 'almost' because the management that is aware of it wants to maintain a plausible deniability.
2. There have been multiple instance where agents have had sex in the restrooms.
3. Fortunately, our call-center was by the Fishers PD. Unfortunately, the officers pretty much knew all management by name.
4. Teleperformance is a giant cesspool for credit card fraud. Especially within the Sprint project. When it is caught, we are supposed to inform Sprint and the customer. That never happens. I was involved in catching an agent who committed credit card fraud. In ended up in a chase as the agent made a run for it to her car, the we filed a report with the Police, fire the agent and that was that. Even after we got the agent to admit they had written down a ton of CCN's and stashed them in their car.
5. The Fisher center HR manager is racist. I'm white and I'm not afraid to say she is racist. She parked her car in the front visitor lobby close to the door so she could get there as soon as possible because as she stated she "didn't want these hoodrats to mug me".
6. Major conflicts of interest. There are assistant call-center managers dating each other, therefore no matter whether one of them is wrong or not, they always have each other's back. The Call-Center Director fires employees who file complaints on other agents that are valid. Yet, when someone makes an outrageous claim with no solid proof, the person who had a complaint on them would be fired within minutes.
7. Agents, Trainers and Supervisors were hardly paid their overtime and commission-based-pay. For example, trainers were going to make a $1,400 commission for training and meeting metrics (Well those who did their jobs and actually trained). Teleperformance changed their metrics the day before the checks were going to be mailed to us and considered our commission invalid. http://tpclassaction.com/ is a good example of what we had to do.
8. Like in the Convergys post, "training" consisted mainly of of web-surfing and breaks...long breaks. A few months after I became trainer, I was more or less the Assistant Training Manager, meaning that my manager took vacations every other week and managed to have important personal matters on days during important teleconferences leaving me to take all the heat and backlash. On those days, if I didn't have a new-hire class to train, I would walk around and check in on classes, where I saw trainers sitting on YouTube showing everyone stupid stuff.
9. Because Trainers and Supervisors surfed, agents would as well. Yet it was a double standard. Agents though would e-mail their friends or themselves customer information. Surfing and Texting was supposed to be a warning then termination, but it never happened, because the agents who did that stuff were personal friends with the supervisors or other management.
10. Around I believe March of this year, HR decided to spend two full days running background checks. Within those two days, the call center became barren. Agents and supervisors were fired en-masse. They also called Fishers PD to pick them up and escort them off the premises.
11. Military Leave was a battle with the HR Manager. It got to a point once where I over heard a Colonel on the phone raising hell and had to re-educate her on Federal Law. That didn't deter her though in other Military based LOA's.
12. Agents who used their paid-time-off were called and forced to come in on one of their days off to make up for "Lost Hours." That started to disappear once I called my lawyer buddy and he gave me a run-down on some laws that I could shove on them.
13. The police was there daily. I worked there for four years and just before I resigned was when the police started making daily rounds in our parking lot.
There is so many things I could say about that place, but it would take days. I was one of the few "Veterans" of that center. There were six of us that remained that were there since the center opened and somehow none of us managed to make it to upper management. We all worked very hard and honestly. I still have some friends that work there and they still ask me for help with stuff. I find it disappointing that agents can't rely on the still-employed supervisors and management staff, and have to call and e-mail former trainers who actually helped.
Teleperformance is a cancer.
PREVIOUSLY: Teleperformance USA: Call Center Of Customer Service Nightmares
Convergys Call Center Sucks Because Agents Are Stabbing Each Other And Making Out In The Halls
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Comments:
Does Teleperformance own Stream?
Hieronymus Bosch was a genius.
Wonder if they even tried to convince the OP to stay.
Yea that is what it was like in Fairborn.
Great, I live about 1 mile from this place (had no idea). I'm sure everyone who works there is from the near east side down in Marion county, no wonder crime is going up in Fishers.
I considered working for Convergys during a summer but due to my college courses could never make it to a solid round of "training" sessions. My boyfriend did work there for about 2 years with one of his buddies. They had fun, but mostly because they were goofing off.
Ok, but I do have to say that not everyone who worked there was having sex in the bathrooms and on drugs. I worked in the Idaho center for 1 1/2 years, before I left to go to school. I don't do drugs, or have sex in bathrooms....
Long ago, I was doing IT work and was sent to a massive call center between Dallas & Fort Worth, TX. I called and confirmed I was coming in. I was told to walk directly from my car to the entrance.
Strange.
When I got there, I understood. It was like walking past a hodlum tribunal.
Once inside, my contact told me they'd had muggings, theft, and drug use. As they had to have bodies to man the phones, they bussed people in from Dallas and Fort Worth to work for $8 an hour.
Fun fun.
@Nighthawke: Ha! They just replaced him with either a meth head or someone decent who really needs the job but will be run out of there soon enough, I assure you.
#11 There are VERY few jobs that don't do that, unfortunately. In fact the only large-scale employer that I know of that supposedly does NOT do that is Sears (found this out recently while looking into their GiftCards for Soldiers program).
The worst so far has been the public school district where I used to work. You either had anti-military principals or principals who just wanted to replace you because it was less work. Horrible. The amount of legal trouble it took to regain jobs boggles the mind (I saw it about 4 times).
Go to this website:
and enter Visionary Way as the address and see all the calls to their center from the police.
I've worked for TPUSA as well. I was a trainer for the Sprint PCS project with Communications and Commerce before they sold out to TPUSA to avoid litigation for frauding Voicestream. Life did not get better with TPUSA. I would be laid off every November and then hired back in February to avoid paying me any year end bonus. It would also take them more time than I was laid off to set me up to receive sales commissions, so I never got paid for a single sale.
Employees would write down their sales phone numbers and enter them in through a service that would credit their account $20 for each referal. Basically they would count their sales as referals I guess. Luckily the referal thing was capped at 15 per month, but $20 times 15 for however many months you could keep your job certainly adds up.
The office I worked for is in Salt Lake City and it was on the list of the employeers who would hire you right out of jail. The parole officers had 'the list' of places that would hire people right out of jail and prison and couldn't pass drug screenings or background checks. TPUSA was on the list as well as a number of other outsourced call centers. Not all projects would allow people hired through 'the list' to work for them though, so TPUSA would either not tell the client or just put them on other projects. The majority of the projects they worked on were financial ones. Providian stands out… They would work in credit application processing, which means they had access to all the information they needed to commit credit fraud.
Drug sales were out of control and totally un-enforced. I asked the director of operations if he was aware how much drug use there was in the building and if he ever planned on doing the random drug testing the company was supposed to do. He looked at me and said, "Gee, that would be a little hypocritical of me, don't you think?" He was the biggest dealer and user in the building.
The sex in the bathroom was a regular thing. We would even have instances of sex on the call floor. One team leader was caught on security cameras having one of his reps going down on him at his desk on a Saturday when it is lightly staffed. This was supposedly an upstanding married man too, so the evil of this company will corrupt even the best men. Or maybe they just attract fakers and liars. I ran screaming from that company. You do what you have to do at the beginning of your career to pay your dues, but that company just makes you feel dirty for working there. Every day I was there felt like a colossal waste of my time. I don't even list them on resumes anymore since I feel it would hinder rather than help my efforts at getting another job.
@midwestkel: FHS alum? I never worked there, but I knew a bunch of people in high school that did. They thought it was great money at the time without having to get their hands dirty. I even knew one girl that graduated early just so she could work there more and save up money.
Yay for Bosch! I painted the same exact detail from his Garden of Earthly Delights in college. Hanging in my living room now :)
@ocdetails: Wow... Just... Wow... I feel so naive now. I had no clue there were call centers operating under those conditions or "policies." Disgusting.
@theblackdog: I'm not positive, but the Stream call center that used to be in memphis (they did dell and H&R block/taxcut.) I think is owned by Solectron Global Services. I never worked for Stream, but I worked for Solectron after Stream closed and most the people at Solectron just walked on over after Stream closed and I know Solectron owned the physical building becuase that's where we kept all of our disaster recovery and spare equipment.
Note that the actual "Solectron" building didn't do calls, they just did actual hardware repairs and mfging.
If this person rose to a managerial position with language skills like that then they'll obviously hire anybody.
So it's not all bad that our call centers are headed overseas then.
I worked the night janitorial duty for a similar place when I was in college. Lasted about a week. In the amount of time I was given, 3 to 4 hours, there was no way I could clean up after the pigs that worked there.
@theblackdog: No Stream is separate. And from the sound of it, I am going to wish we had Stream instead of Teleperformance when we switch later this year. Ugh. I feel a headache starting.
Huh. So that's how call centers are in the States? Damn...
I still remember when my brother used to work in a call center. Only difference was, it was an English call center in Mexico. You had to have a really awesome level of English in order to qualify, something that not everybody has. I guess that was why, according to what my brother told me, they were like the Gods of Quality there, especially considering that, at least in my college, half of the students can hardly say "I not do know speaking English".
@APFPilot: That's really interesting. I wish more local/regional papers had searchable databases like that.
5. The Fisher center HR manager is racist. She parked her car in the front visitor lobby close to the door so she could get there as soon as possible because as she stated she "didn't want these hoodrats to mug me".
Er... isn't it being racist to accuse her of being racist in this case? The term hoodrats does not refer to any particular color or nationality, and she did not necessarily mean it in that way.
Jumping to the conclusion of racism on those grounds seems wrong. In fact, the assumption made by the poster could be interpreted as racist itself.
Just sayin..
Clearly, I'm working at the wrong place.
Drugs available at work?
Sex in the bathroom?
We don't get perks like that!
@thatsnotfab:
Yeah, kind of makes you glad when you hear about companies outsourcing to India now, doesn't it? At least they aren't criminals processing your applications. They may not speak perfect english or have the same standards of customer service, but your information doesn't end up on the black market as often with those centers.
@OggJoshua: There was a Stream call center in my college town, I could tell lots of horror stories from the folks I knew who worked there. I almost got roped in but someone warned me before it was too late.
does anyone know, other than Sprint, what companies do business with that call center?
We have on off site call center my company uses when we get too busy, and we have had a lot of complaints about the people being somewhat creepy, and sounding like they just got out of prison.
I am convinced they take a van down to Home Depot every morning to load up on employees
i worked at a call center once. one day i had to call in since i had a family emergency and had to drive my dad to my hometown. my supervisor called me and said "do you HAVE to do that? you should come into work." i just didn't show back up to work after that.
@APFPilot: Don't be so sure of that. There are plenty of criminals in Fishers as well, we just don't run into them that often.
Not that I'm trying to defend them. I would guess no matter where they're from, if they weren't up to no good before they started, there were plenty of people there to teach them.
Pretty much everything here is right. I worked for them in Lewiston idaho, and It was the worst job i ever had. The stupidest thing though was that I was fired for having lost my voice due to a cold. The people that were doing drugs, having sex and visiting porn sites kept their jobs, but when I got sick I lost mine (and I never did drugs, had sex or visit porn sites at work) Idaho is a right-to-work state, so I didnt have any way to fight it, I ended up having mono, so I couldnt work for months anyway. They are a horrible horrible company, and the only reason I worked for them was that they were the only people hiring at the time.
Someone, please explain to me, how this company is still in business? I did some research on my own, and while this is an excellent letter, it is hardly new information. People have been saying the same things for a long time. How in hell have these cesspools not been shut down?
@zlionsfan: Oh I know there have always been plenty of them but it really does seem to be on the rise (along with crime in Indy) from the Car Chase/Attempted Kidnapping last week, to the armed robbery of CVS.
The HR Manager in the Fishers center..well, is racist. I'm Caucasian and she is Caucasian. It's also very well known that she is very racist and will say these things to management in private.
Many people have overheard her and have even filed complaints about it. Nothing has been done.
They've even been told to avoid her at all costs when it comes to any HR related matter and to take it to other management for mediation. Which really isn't much better.
@midwestkel:
I have a couple of friends who work there. Pne I went to school with. Not sure if he still works there or not, and another that I met off a more adult site. Hmm If I didn't have a much better and higher paying job, I'd be tempted to try and apply there. Maybe if they do part time.
I work in an office building in downtown California on Wilshire.
On the 3rd. 4th, and 5th floors are the telemarketers/CS reps.
Many of you would never believe that the people in there are the ones with your personal information in front of them. They reek of marijuana, ghetto, cursing in the elevators, sometimes scantily clad; worst part is they go downstairs during their breaks and hustle cd's and t-shirts. It's amazing.
@theblackdog: I actually am working at a stream right now, $11.64 an hour. Since I am a university student, i only work 16 hours a week, which is enough for me.
Luckily my call center is not to bad, worst part is dealing with people who talked to the teleplan call center in missisipi, and having to clean up the mess they create.
Hopefully next year, or later this year I can do a co-op and get a real job lol
@OggJoshua: Ha ha Stream that was actually one of the better ones. ACS, CyberRep and LiveBridge/Telemark were worse...
I worked as a telemarketer once, worst experience ever. You would literally have crack heads in the parking lot and smoking worst job ever but a free check every month.
@EsteAgdistis: Just Sprint in that call-center.
As Teleperformance USA in overall: Dell, Apple, Cingular, Time Warner, Sprint, AOL, Microsoft, X-Box Live, Verizon Online and some more.
I don't like the feeling of these idiots having access to my account info and the like. So much for security/background checks/hiring honest people.
It's all about making a buck, and the customer gets fucked.