Direct Alliance Reviews in Phoenix, AZ Area

Pros

Good location. Casual work environment. Most managers are competent and professional. HR easily accessible. Opportunities to advance and transfer. Employee store which sells coffee, movie tickets, stamps etc.. and mail room. Covered parking. Detailed employee intranet. Most employees over all are treated decent. Several on-site conveniences offered for a fee (massage, oil change, etc). Some programs are well ran while others are a sweat shop micromanaging mess. Usually hiring even in state of bad economy. Pay is decent, good in the business side, lower in consumer programs (Charter Communications, health care,consumer electronics,etc). AOM trips given to top performers. Back in the old days, fun on-site parties were held even with liquor (legally outsourced of course) but all that is now gone since Teletech acquired DAC.

Cons

Pay at DAC has slowly declined and DAC has had a fair amount of layoffs the past year. Your job pay,security and satisfaction is heavily dependent on the contract you support. One program can be ran smoothly while new start ups are usually a disaster. DAC has turned into a consumer call center, signing up programs that really do not pay very well. Insurance benefits are average and could be better, and they are not cheap. Once your contract ends, it is usually with little or no notice and you could be out of a job. Pay varies widely depending on if you are in a consumer program or business to business. Pay fluctuates and commission rates constantly change, usually worse each time. No Christmas party in 2008. Several programs closed in 2009 leaving many employees jobless with little notice. In DAC's defense though, reasonable efforts were made to give jobs to displaced employees. When DAC was owned by Insight, it was a completely different company. All the contests, spiffs, and fun employees had gradually went away.

Advice to Senior Management

Feedback to the executives does not matter as most sugar coat everything and are not honest with anyone. Judi overall though is friendly and very approachable. Her weekly blogs are generally truthful but she tends to leave out the painful repercussions of the job losses recently at DAC for 2009. In one weekly blog, she stated a contract was successfully re-negotiated resulting in a longer contract with DAC, but failed to mention that 35 people were laid off as a result. DAC really needs to bring back employee morale as it has taken a serious beating in 2009. Time to make DAC more than just a place to bring home a paycheck.

Pros

Simple corporate environment with moderate politics. Great place to gain experience. Good people in a friendly environment for peers. Good benefits and flexibility with respect to work schedule.

Cons

Poor promotion decisions, often based on personal relationships instead of ability. This has lead to high employee turnover as well as complete overhaul of senior management. However, incompetent middle managers tend to remain safe causing execution of core vision to be cumbersome.

Advice to Senior Management

Regularly review your management chain and allow 360 feedback from subordinates or areas of positive change. Don't allow entrenchment to be the norm with ineffective directors and managers. Poor leaders will lead to poor results.

Pros

The relatively unstructured environment creates opportunities for assertive workers. There are opportunities to try out new marketing techniques and analysis.

Cons

Lack of real vision, poor communications with employees, minimal employee investment. Proper incentives are not in place for marketing and other support organizations. Recent layoffs and loss of business has negatively impacted company morale.

Advice to Senior Management

Create a more agile and responsive environment. Create and stick to a sound strategy. Include key employees in that vision. Avoid rash decision making and think longer term.

Pros

Secure in the current economic climate. Lots of growth and potential for income.

Cons

A lot of promotions, etc are based on inter-office politics.

Advice to Senior Management

Working for a strong female leader like Judi Hand is actually pretty great. I respect her judgement and feel absolutely secure in her leadership. Some mid-level members of management do like to play favs which is to be expected in most office environments though.

Pros

The best reasons are to gain experience in the sales environment, it allows you to grow in a capacity to take on other career opportunities with bigger companies. In my specific department they going into a direction to fail and not put its employees in a postition to succeed.

Cons

Teletech Inc. is implementing programs and constraints that limit the sales environment we were in. The direction they are taking Direct alliance in is a critical mistake in stripping its identity and abilities to sell successfully.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop managing up for your career and so blatantly show your dissatisfaction for people who you don't like but do work hard. Get off your hi horse, your abilities and lack of class and articulation make you appear elemental in your professionalism. All thought I did learn from Sr. management the most valuable lesson was how NOT to treat people.

Pros

Close to home, covered parking

Cons

Bad managment, poor pay, childlike behavior

Advice to Senior Management

stop promoting your friends to positions of power