AnswerFirst reviews

Every year we get an email from the owner gas lighting us and trying to convince us what a great place this is to work. It is not. Things have gone way way down hill over the last year. Its offensive to receive emails telling us that we are fully staffed when its so clear we are not. The call volume is horrific. Its obscene. If you work here expect to never get a breathe between calls from login to log out. Its absolutely miserable. It never used to be this way. Its a complete burn out. As a cherry on top occasionally the shift lead will see that we have a second between calls and start cutting co workers shifts. Inevitably this causes a huge spike in callers. Why torture us just to save a few bucks? There are no paid breaks but they love to remind us we have an option to step away. If you're like me, often times you use those tiny mini breaks to cry from your last caller. The way that we are required to say or do things is abusive to the employees. We are required to phonetically repeat an email address if its 70 characters long. If the caller interrupts or you get a letter wrong you have to start from the beginning. Even if the caller is yelling at you, mean, crying, or in pain. Its excruciating and humiliating. Most things we are required to say make us sound so unintelligent or like a robot. We are encouraged to use NO critical thinking skills whatsoever. You can never be intuitive. You must stick to the terribly worded scripts to a tee. If a caller asks direct questions about if we are an answering service, we are told to lie which feels completely unethical. It feels like they want us to manipulate every caller to stay on the phone as long as possible even if it is uncomfortable for the employee and confusing for the caller. There is at least one embarrassing sales account. It is so extremely cringe to repeat their sleazy sales pitch I melt inside every time I read it. I never signed up for sales and never would. There are multiple moving accounts that are so shady its strange we would work with them. We have land buying accounts that prey on elderly people. There are also outbound calls we make which is not disclosed when hired. In fact I was told this was inbound only. In addition we are constantly being forced to try to speak Spanish. Instead of paying more to hire Spanish speakers they try to force us to learn it. Its truly embarrassing. The benefits are comedic and confusing. The pay is so incredibly low for this kind of work its actually mind blowing. That goes back to the emails we receive trying to convince us that its not bad pay but its all the economy. laughable. From what I can see the company took on too many clients too quick and they would love to think that we have enough employees but we simply do not. If we did, staffing wouldn't be begging people to work Mondays. Lastly most of the current shift leads are simply not good at their job. It appears most have very little knowledge when asked general questions. Its clear when they really don't know something because when asked a question they send a link to a training page before providing the waiting employee an answer. This should obviously be done reverse order. They should almost all be re evaluated. It can be like the blind leading the blind at times. This is no longer a great place to work. It has become the opposite. I shouldn't have to hear my co workers calling out for the remainder of their shift crying because it has become unbearable. Do better.