AT&T Reviews

Pros

Good people, good middle management

Cons

Senior management consistently made bad choices that influenced the way were able to take care of our customers. Customer satisfaction has dropped like a rock as a result.

Advice to Senior Management

Get back to basics. Customer satisfaction is key. Stop making decisions based on the short-term bottom line.

Pros

You will learn a lot about AT&T dsl and wireline technologies. Job consists of helping dsl customers that are getting started with their internet service, having internet connection problems and problems getting into their email. Customer Assistants (CAs) also provide limited help with computer problems, but most of those calls are transferred to a fee based department. Classic call center environment-consecutive inbound calls one after another, "wrap-up" for more than 1 minute a big negative. CA's job performance is based on average length of a call, resolving customer's problems on the first call, customer satisfaction surveys, attendance, necessary tech dispatches, taking breaks/lunches when scheduled, etc. Helping customers that aren't very computer literate is the biggest challenge. Company policies change frequently so CAs have to adapt quickly. The shifts are 8 hours/5 days a week with a 30 minute or 1 hour lunch and usually split days off, depends on your seniority and the shift you get. Better chance of getting Sat-Sun off if you work the latest shift weekdays. The center's hours are Mon-Sat 7am-11pm. There is occasional overtime if a call you're on goes past the end of your shift, usually only 5-15 minutes, but sometimes up to 1 hour. Pay depends on experience and formal education/certifications: $10.04-$15.00 an hour. Pay increases 40-50 cents after a year then every 24 months. There are quarterly performance bonuses based on meeting at least 3 of 5 scorecard categories. The dental and eye care plans are fine, but the medical/prescription plan has a $1,200 annual deductible; after deductible it covers 90% of costs. Insurance starts immediately, no waiting period or pre-existing condition exclusions. You can transfer to a different AT&T company, job in another city or get promoted after 18 months. If you want a non-management job with AT&T Wireless (Mobility)-lots of locations locally, you have to quit AT&T Internet Services and wait 6 months to apply.

Cons

Very tough attendance policy, if you are late more than 2 times in your first 3 months you get fired. After that it’s based on how often you've been late and your job performance. Most people get fired over attendance in the first 3-8 months. It doesn't matter if it’s at the start of your shift or returning from a break or lunch. This is a union represented job through the Communications Workers of America (CWA). AT&T had the CWA to organize the Las Vegas location when it opened in 2008, the employees were never given a choice in choosing a union or if they even wanted one. The CWA actually put the strict attendance policy in the union's contract with AT&T so employees would believe they need a union to protect them from the company. Unions can be great, but the CWA is only concerned with collecting lots of union dues and being the exclusive union for all call center jobs with AT&T Internet Services. When it comes to protecting employees from being fired over trivial issues the CWA does nothing except keeping records of disciplinary meetings between managers and employees. Instead of making work rules less strict and giving employees more job security, the CWA in 2011 negotiated a contract where employees can receive performance bonuses for meeting scorecard categories, but if you don't meet those performance categories you get fired. Another negative thanks to the CWA is shift bidding, a monthly week long computer based mess. CAs have to bid on over 300 different shifts, this can take up to an hour if you're trying to get a shift you want, but you only get 15 minutes scheduled to bid. If you miss shift bidding due to vacation, illness, etc, then you're assigned a random shift. You can trade your shift, but that's a job all by itself. Other AT&T companies with call centers not organized by the CWA don't have this morale draining system.
To make things wose, the CWA put in the contract with AT&T that all of an employee's unused/accrued vacation pay becomes void upon termination or quiting. NV is a right to work state so you don't have to join despite what AT&T and the CWA tell you.

Advice to Senior Management

Get rid of overly strict policies that create an uncertain future for employees constantly worrying about job security in a tough economy. Keep experienced employees with a year or more on the job instead of threatening them with termination and investigations for not meeting performance standards. Too many great employees have left because they thought they were going to be terminated. Stop rewarding bad employees that bill customers for premium services they never authorized and stop the threats towards employees that don't hard sell every customer.

Pros

Decent benefits and great Training except their evaluation process on Practical exam see explanation below. Tools and vehicle are provided.

Cons

Company training policies are extremely wasteful in that if you don't make a score of 90% you are eliminated from the program after over five thousand dollars on you and your training and you only get one chance, my score was 85%, even if you have been sobotage by a fellow trainee since a crucial step in the exam is not monitored by an instructor.

Advice to Senior Management

Revise your training evaluation process that throughs-away good people and stop passing on your wastefull habits to your customer's; including sending out a twenty page bill that cost you $1.44 to mail only to collect $0.18.

Pros

Opportunity to work with advanced technology
Training opportunities
Competitive Benefits
Flexible work schedule
Salary is very competitive for the industry

Cons

Process Rich environment
Incompetent management structure (Former SBC Managers)
Comp Plan changes without any warning or notice
Internally focused vs. externally on customer

Advice to Senior Management

Reduce waste and needless processes. AT&T is a process rich environment often causing significant re-work. Core Business Network Products are not customizable to suit customer needs and the delivery process is often too slow to meet customer requirements. Become more customer focused, rather than internally focused.

Pros

Benefits and Healthcare were really great. They have some of the best benefits out there and the costs is extremely affordable for families.

Cons

Several downsides. Very little if any room for growth on the legacy AT&T side. The land-line, resale/ consumer side of the business is shrinking almost to a point of non existence. This has been reflected in the way legacy T employees are treated.

Advice to Senior Management

Management needs to take proper action instead of just leaving things the way they are. Also, they should join together so that all are on the same page and Sr. Management should terminate the ones that have proved to be incompetent on repeated occasions

Pros

Pay is generally good
Opportunity to learn a lot
Good experience for when you look for another job
You get to see what a headless monster looks like

Cons

Benefits get cut hourly - the health insurance is a joke, you may as well not have it
Way too much outsourcing
The folks up top don't have a clue about what's going on and they won't listen to the ones in the field that do.
The officers blew $4 Billion on the T-Mobile deal and then paid for it by taking away our raises and benefits
The execs are so arrogant. They think because they are a large company they can do whatever they want and there are no repercussions.

Advice to Senior Management

Unhappy employees are very unproductive. You can't continually take away our benefits and expect us to be happy and to work hard for you. Also, listen to your front line people. They know what's going on far better than you do.

Pros

Pay and benefits are above average.

Cons

To much stress, more from the company then the customers and believe me that is saying a lot!!

Pros

Free Work Phone(They give you a number BUT will take it away once you quit/fired/leave company
Good Benefits
Free shirts for work, you get it every six months
Lenient Dress Code on weekends
Very good training

Cons

Pay used to be fairly decent, but has recently gotten lower. Went from decent to below average
Very hard work and work stress
Rising quotas every single month
Too easy to get fired
Upper Management is ALWAYS on your case
Very low discounts(19% FAN) on your personal/family line/s
You get a survey on EVERY SINGLE transaction with your customers. 1-10 survey, anything below a 9 you get a write up.

Advice to Senior Management

I love the service of AT&T. Great phones, great product. But I unfortunately despise working for this company now. I started less than a year ago and company has cut about $500 in commissions per month per sales rep. Not only did they cut pay, they also raised quotas and continually add new items to our sales quota.

AT&T's management have no leadership, very disappointed. As Sales reps, we are pretty much at their mercy. If one customer gives us a 8 out of a 10 survey, you can get written up, depending on your manager's mood. Very stressful job.

If you're desperate for a job, then try it. I would recommend a different sales job.

Pros

-Benefits
-Co-workers
-Understanding line managers, when you need time off.
-Depends on department if you have a good work exprience or not.

Cons

-Work life balance "Null".
-Managers cups filled to the brim and techs streched to the limit and burned out quickly.
-Target numbers unreasonable and unfair. Everything affects your numbers, ex: system outage, repair repeats due to bad equipement or network issue, etc.
-Good techs fired for things beyond their control.
-Same trend in large companies today. More work same pay.
-Customer and Techs not a priority only NUMBERS.
-Morale is low.
-Stressful wondering if you have a job the next day.

Advice to Senior Management

Upper management should ditch the Fear and Control model and replace with Happy employees and customers equals more production and revenue.

Pros

AT&T has provided more training than i have time to take, very competitive salary, fabulous benefits, love the flexibility and ability to telecommute.

Cons

Continual "downsizing" and "outsourcing" going on. Upper management has not yet realized that we are not saving money by outsourcing our technical work. Quality of tech support from off-shore is inferior to AT&T employees. It has been impossible to convey our corporate environment and importance of fixing production problems in timely manner to offshore workers. I believe this is mostly due to the fact they do not know what they are doing, rather than due to cultural differences. The cost associated with managing world-wide tech employees has not really been computed and given consideration in total cost of outsourcing.

Advice to Senior Management

Look at true cost of outsourcing to companies outside of the United States. Managing emplyees on a global scale, sending jobs overseas will prove in the long run to be very short-sighted.