Hawaiian Telcom Reviews

Pros

Good pay, benefits, opportunities to grow. Company provides tools and most training. It’s a career move if you can handle the work. Union strong.

Cons

Schedule is not flexible like some may need. Mandatory overtime does come up from time to time and although I love it some may not. Lots of on the job hazards so you always need to bring your A game.

Pros

Flexible schedule, fast pace, team oriented.

Cons

Demanding work projects, limited resources.

Pros

Good work culture and people in company

Cons

Limited upward mobility unless you are experienced in management

Pros

Good management and leadership. Expectations and visions are clear and communicated well.

Cons

Can’t think of anything currently

Pros

Great management Reasonable Schedule Decent pay Comfortable work environment

Cons

Advancement within the company is difficult

Pros

I started out at an entry level as a contractor and worked my way up to the highest position in the call center. Since we are under a union contract, we have excellent pay and benefits but it all stops there. This job is a highly stressful one, compared to my previous job where we only have 1 software to use daily... In my 12 years of experience, I have learned around 24-26 softwares for sales, customer service, billing and technical support and needless to say, those softwares are mediocre at best. They are nowhere to close to my old job where all you have to do is to click. You don't just use the systems, you also troubleshoot it yourself when it acts up!!! How can you get better at your job when you are not focused on one thing and improve yourself as your experience grows? When you start off at customer services, billing and sales, the training is great and you start off fairly decent with enough training but not all of the things you've learned in training is sufficient for real world scenario, there are so many things that you will learn only on the floor. Sales expectations are really high, you get assessed daily on your work performance and have one-on-one meetings with your supervisor quarterly, if not monthly. If you fail to meet the requirements consistently, you will be placed on a disciplinary, improvement plan and if you still fail to make progress, you will be let go. The culture and work environment is toxic, you talk to customers all day with majority of those calls are complaints and irate callers. I'm a tough cookie and I don't take things personally, that's not the hard part. The difficulty that every rep on the floor struggles with is the lack of tools and resources to fully help the customer due to its antiquated system where there is a lot of manual work involved and lots of passing the buck to different departments where it takes even longer for them to come back with solutions. Our hold time is ridiculous, sometimes we have customers waiting for up to 4 hours on hold to speak to a representative because of the high turnover and the staff has decreased to 40-50% due to stress. Management does not listen to employees concern and even if they do, it takes them forever, literally years to improve on something that shouldn't take a few weeks to implement. They reward unethical sales behaviors and turn a blind eye to high achievers even if their sales are questionable, thereby lowering the employees morale. Also, they do not promote career growth therefore you are stuck at your position. I've seen numerous times where nepotisim is exercised, you only move to a different dept or get promoted when you know someone or chummy in the higher management. When I first started, there were 6 of us in training, before the 6 months probation was up, I was the only one left. The most recent batch of new hires, some of them only lasted 2-3 months after their training. This should speak to the extremely high level of stress involved. We do get paid up to $35 an hour with great benefits and 10% 401 matching but in the overall scheme of things, these are not enough for me to stay with Hawaiian Tel. I would have loved to retire here but I could not take anymore the stress involved.

Cons

Antiquated systems, poor management, low morale

Pros

Great inter-departmental teamwork at every level of the company.

Cons

While growth is possible, due to size, you may not be able to move up when you're ready.