I recently ventured out of my normal career field in hospitality to try my luck as a work at home call center agent. Through a family member I was introduced to Arise Virtual Solutions, a company that outsources customer service representatives for large companies that operate call centers. As an Arise partner, you are an independent contractor, which offers the flexibility of being your own boss, and not answering to the beck and call of a 9-5 job, and no commute. All the essential perks of working from home were there, and after paying for and passing 2 classes, I landed a job that paid 30 cents per minute($18/hour) and had tons of available shifts. I was very happy with my choice to quit my day job and go full time from home.
That's the end of the good, I'm afraid.
While I was paid on time every month, the amount I received was constantly inconsistent with what I logged myself working the previous invoice. With only e-mail support and very unhelpful chat support, getting and explanation for the discrepancies was almost impossible, and only about half the time did they get resolved in my favor. I got quite a few responses, but often the answer I got was that I had recorded something wrong. Even proof of my time served in their own system did not get me my money I had earned, and any attempt to take legal action against them results in termination, so I let a few hundred dollars I had earned slip away in order to continue generating a decent income from home. My proof in screen shots and telephone logs fell on empty ears and unsympathetic eyes, and was ignored. Don't get me wrong- I made way more than I was shorted, but it was still my money. No real explanation, just a "you must have miscounted."
Arise started a program to monitor quality of their workers about a month into my working there. Each company you worked for had a specific set of quality guidelines that the workers had to meet, such as call handle time, your attendance, your quality scores for your calls,(graded by the company you service for) and your call resolution rate. Some jobs required sales, and those jobs had quality scores that were also based on sales quota. Fail to meet the requirements for your company (any of them, even 1) for more than a month led to performance enhancement counseling and if no improvement was shown, termination. Termination from any client of Arise is stored on their site, and blacklists you from working for almost any other company through Arise. Their policy does not state this, but every job available required that you had never been terminated from any Arise client.
I was terminated for call handle times, which were barely over the average. My metrics were all outstanding: no callbacks, perfect quality scores, tons of customer feedback to management about how great of a representative I was. It did not matter that all my scores were perfect, since my calls took a minute longer than average, all these good scores didn't matter. I was termed for it by the computer system, and even requests by the client of Arise to let me back did not help. I was heartbroken, because I was never offered the performance enhancement counseling that would have offered me an opportunity to quit the job instead of being terminated and thus not destroying my primary source of income. Then, my last check comes and they decided to remove the bonuses because i did not work a full week, and this was not in the policy or anything I signed in my work contract. Ironic, huh?
Moral of the story: If you want a job where you are treated like a valuable part of a team, work somewhere else. DO NOT use Arise to replace your full time job, because you are nothing but a name and a number to them. I do know a few people who do earn their living through Arise that I met in my time with the company. They are earning decent money, but have the same stressful problems I did: little or no "helpful" support, being shorted on paychecks, and generally treating them as expendable. Save your money, don't waste it on your classes for Arise, there are other call centers out there that pay you to train, and will treat you better. I spent almost $400 getting in, and while I did make back my investment, I wasted 2 months training 20+ hours a week unpaid. It would have been better spent in community college or getting an insurance-sales license.
Search Google for "work at home call center jobs", and you can find the other places like Arise that do treat you like a person and pay you to train. And be sure to skip over the Arise listing, it's on the first page (because its relevant, NOT because its useful).
