Affiliated Computer Services Reviews in Portland, OR Area

Pros

The company offers a flexible work schedule

Cons

Very disjointed and matrixed company
Not much opportunity for advancement
Poor employee compensation

Pros

I actually enjoy taking calls. It's very motivating to have a problem presented to you that you have the ability to resolve. Customer service is always challenging, because the bulk of your calls are from people with problems. Making the customer satisfied by the end of the call is very fulfilling, and that is my favorite part of the job.

Also, because supervisors lose $500 of their monthly bonus if they fire someone, they are lenient in regards to attendance. However, if our client requests to have someone removed from the project for not meeting their metric goals, the supervisor doesn't always have a choice.

Cons

The compensation for the job is not fair. We are paid on a per call basis. When call volume is very low, you either make minimum wage, or you are sent home due to lack of work. Then you make no money. The ABC system of payment also has variables, so you do not always make the same amount per call. When the call center gets more calls, you are paid less per call. Also, if a customer is surveyed and dissatisfied, you are also paid less per call.

The surveys also affect the bonus structure. Your bonuses are paid out based on your percent to goal and the number of days you worked that month. (The goal is set by our client, whom I cannot name here.) If your sales are good, you will get a good bonus rate per day (with a maximum paid out for 20 days). If you get too many negative surveys, your bonus has a cap set, where even though you made money for the client with your sales, you cannot get the maximum amount of compensation for them.

It is a hostile, stressful working environment, and the management knows it. This site tries to provide incentives for agents to do well, like barbecues and prize giveaways, and they are excellent, but overall the incentives still aren't enough to properly compensate employees for the stressful work they do. It all comes down to the unfair pay structure.

The turnover rate is very high. If you do end up working here, your odds are not good that you will be working here in a year. Out of my training class of 30 one year ago, only three remain. (Two or three out of thirty is typical.) Half the class quit during training. A few were fired for inability to meet metrics goals. And, there are a LOT of metrics you must meet, including time spent per call, transfers, sales, issue resolution (surveys), adjustments, time spent doing after call work, and attendance.

Every day when I go to work, I hear at least one person say outright, "I hate this job." And, they don't mean the job itself... They mean working at ACS. I recommend the job to friends who are desperate for employment as a temporary solution, but once they start working here, they know it's best to continue looking for employment elsewhere.

Advice to Senior Management

This would be a GREAT job if the compensation were an hourly rate and the bonuses were not capped. Surveys are very random and not at all an accurate way to gauge an employee's performance.

Pros

I can pay my bills most times and I can look my family in the eye and at least tell them that I have a job.

Cons

Where do I start? First off....the amount of pre-screening and paperwork for a $9 an hour job is ridiculus. I have worked in banks with less background checking and forms. 2nd..The training, while lenghty, is mainly useless as it is portrayed in what would happen in a perfect world that didn't involve actual customers interacting with electronic devices. 3rd. The move to ABC pay is a complete joke and the easiest way to insure underpaying the workforce. 2 instances of what a farce ABC pay is: Portions of pay are determined by customer satisfaction surveys. However, a survey only has 2 possible scores. 0% or 100% making it nearly impossible to recover from a few bad customers in order to make the most money. Overtime which is strongly encouraged by middle management and oftentimes mandatory is based on ABC pay, NOT the subsidy that we are guaranteed. So when we should be making $13.50 an hour for OT, we could literally be making $9 an hour due to the skewing of ABC. 4th. The tendency to micro-manage down to the minute reminds me of when I was in kindergarden and was told when to take a nap and when to play with Play Doh. We are all adults. You hired us to do a job, please trust us to do it. I should not have to take 3 minutes of my state mandated break in order to use the restroom.5th.. The complete lack of any upward mobility, unless you are schmoozing with the right people, make it highly unlikely that myself or anyone else has any motivation to put more effort into the job than is required.

I could go on and on...I have not been treated this poorly at a company for nearly 15 years. However, at the end of the day I have a roof over my head and I get to eat. So until the next page is turned i will suffer the quiet indignity of toiling away in ACS' sweatshop of a call center

Advice to Senior Management

When I approach you with a suggestion, problem, comment, or feedback. PLEASE do not treat me as if I am a nuisance and ESPECIALLY don't instantly dismiss my view. I obviously thought it was important enough to bring it to your attention. Your dismissal of me as an employee and a fellow human being is the worst thing you could do to me. Therefore I will NEVER hold any loyalty towards you and will stab you in the back at the first opportunity I have.

Pros

Decent support from lower management, depending on who your supervisor is and if they like you. Pretty good pay based on call statistics - the problem is it fluctuates depending on how busy it is. Not as annoying as other call centers - customers are generally more intelligent than other places I've worked. Set hours, good benefits. They seem to appreciate their employees for the most part.

Cons

Suddenly changing schedules, mandatory overtime without notice. Lack of communication from upper management. On days when it isn't busy (holidays for example) pay can go below minimum wage, because it is based on a rate of minutes on the phone for inbound calls.

Advice to Senior Management

Don't outsource HR. Keep developing the ABC pay so it isn't as impacted by factors outside the employee's control, such as call volume.

Pros

They are pretty flexible if you need time off, and VERY lenient if you call in sick or come in late. Since the supervisors take a hit in their pay for someone getting fired from their "team" you have to do ALOT to get fired from this place

Cons

Unattainable goals that if not met ding your pay. I have worked there for 2 years and I am still usually making around Min. Wage due to the goals you must reach to earn more than that. Supervisors are hard to communicate with, no HR onsite. Pay always fluctuating, can't budget ahead. Not much room for advancement, most people get hired for supervisory postions, they don't promote from within much

Advice to Senior Management

We say that there is an open door policy here, where we can give feedback and suggestions, but anytime I have done that, I have been shot down and talked to like I am an idiot. Listen to your employees, they have a lot of good ideas, and they are the ones that are working with the customers ALL DAY EVERYDAY.

Pros

Provided me a decent sales opportunity, yet ran me to the ground with constant pressure and stress. Great for a start, good on a resume

Cons

Management was questionable, co-workers varied on the largest scale in regards to competence, respect was absent from a rookie stand point

Advice to Senior Management

Allow your employees to grow and learn from their experiences rather than shoving low-brows on more pressure down their throats. If your willing to invest, do it in a way where you get the most motivated, valuable asset out of what you signed up for

Pros

I had a good team.

Cons

Severely underpaid in comparison to market rate in Portland area. No chance of advancement or employee development encouraged by management team. The client I worked for treated me more like an employee of theirs (i.e. helping me take pride in the people I support, including me in company activities) than the people who paying me.

Advice to Senior Management

It's all about numbers and money for the people in Texas. Quit underpaying and overworking the bulk of your staff.

Pros

If you need a paycheck, and don't have a lot of skills, and don't want to work retail, this might be the job for you. If you can put up with customer abuse and incompetent management, you'll be an expert within 3 months. The standard to be great is really, really low at this company. If you show up 80% of the time and don't yell at the customers, you'll be a superstar.

Cons

The management treats employees very callously, making it clear that you are a dollar sign to them, and not a person. The bonus system seems designed to prevent actual payout, and often as not you will lose money from your paycheck due to the arbitrary requirements and ratings from the call quality people. Each supervisor will have their own, usually conflicting guidelines for how you should do your job.

Advice to Senior Management

Treat the call center employees like they are actual human beings. Have the software debugged once in a while. Make it possible to earn a bonus once in a while.

Pros

Due to the excessive attrition rate there is always new opportunities.

Cons

Virtually no respect for its professional employees.
ACS compensates for its dismal client management skills by over committing and then expects it employees to work long hours and weekends with little chance of a successful out come. -- gee, I wonder why everyone keeps quiting?
Perhaps has the worst Project Management practices in the industry -- "Hey, 1990 just called and it wants it's waterfall project plan back!"
Very slow to adapt to changes in the market place.
Has no bench for its software developers, so it keeps loosing its talent after each project only to desperately try to replace them just in time for the next project.
Terrible, TERRIBLE benefits.
No on site HR support whatsoever.
The attrition rate is out of control.
Treats all its employees as if they are call center workers recruited by a clown spinning a placard on a street corner.

Advice to Senior Management

Your brand is in peril and it will only get worse if you continue to let all your talent walk out the door.

Pros

If you are in a crunch and really need income to start coming in; then ACS is one of the easiest jobs to get in Portland. They literally hire anyone. But honestly, besides that, I can think of no other good reasons to work at ACS.

Cons

- The new hire trainers are not corporate certified, and you can really tell too. When you complete their 5 week training, you are pretty much at the same level of knowledge as when you started. You begin to learn what your job is once they throw you on the phones on live calls.

- ACS is a 3rd party vendor site; meaning when you work there, you are giving service to Sprint customers, but you work for ACS. ACS doesn't really care about the Sprint customers; Sprint IS their customer. Therefore all ACS cares about is meeting the set goals given to them by Sprint; metrics such as average handle time and transfer rates and hold times matter more than a happy customer. And you can really feel it too. The management at ACS would prefer their employee to transfer the call and meet those handle time goals than the agent actually taking the time to resolve whatever issue that customer is calling in about. This results in an unusually large number of unhappy and frustrated customers.

- ACS is the only call center I have seen that actually drops your pay at 90 days instead of give you a raise. They claim it is because it is at that point you become elegible to receive bonuses based on your performance. So the majority of their employees are so lost and have no idea what their next paycheck is going to look like. Not very good for those who like to plan and budget their finances.
- When a customer asks to speak to a supervisor; they get transferred to a regular agent who is in "escalations". The customer never knows they aren't really speaking to a supervisor and that this person has no more pull or authority than the first agent they were speaking with. Very shady.

Advice to Senior Management

- Get involved in corporate training and certifying your trainers.
- Focus more on your employees, not clients. No good business results will come out of frustrated and unhappy employees.
- Implement a system where your middle management and supervisors are all on the same page. Nothing frustrates an employee more than having the feeling that you don't know what you are supposed to be doing, and if you are doing it right because every supervisor has their way of doing things.