First of all you need to be logged into their systems 30mins before your shift starts (which is unpaid).
Before you even start with them you need to fit their description of a suitable working room, which is either a completely separate office if you have a family/partner, or a sit in your bedroom all day if you live alone, because living rooms aren't allowed at all.
You will have your PC monitored during ANY Sensee working hours, including your time off, even though we have secure remote worker applications for when we are on shift.
You need to buy a lot of equipment and pay for DBS etc before you can actually start. The pay is also not worth the back to back calls, rude customers and stress.
Training was good however the woman conducting this was very slow at times and would not stop saying 'umm' and 'err' constantly which was highly irritating to listen to (it was every other word).
Sensée HEAVILY micro manages every millisecond you are at work and its like working in a prison with someone breathing down your neck. This is in addition to the strict and frankly rude quality assessors who mark your calls.
There were instances of Teams video call meetings, with multiple managers listening where you had to share your screen and audio & have the session recorded, while you were taking live calls for around a hour to watch and listen to everything we were doing and see how quickly we are doing it. This was apparently to see how they can get us to all improve our call times. It was beyond uncomfortable and completely unnecessary.
As mentioned, they monitor absolutely every millisecond you are working in each status (available, busy, complaint etc), as we are not trusted to just do our jobs.
Several team members stats were shared to the whole account without their permission on multiple occasions by managers, to shame the ones who had been using the busy status for too long (even though this is used for any customer work you cannot fit in to the call wrap time), and was a completely unacceptable bully tactic.
There is an expectation that we have to work over our breaks and even completely miss these if a call goes over - which is not legal once we have worked a certain amount of hours. You also have to take any calls that come up even 10 seconds before the end of your shift. Sensee does not care about this because you get paid for any time you are logged into genesys and see it as overtime.
Hours booking is a complete joke. With a 35 hour contract you can and likely will still end up working 6 days a week, unless you want back to back calls everyday from 9-7pm.
There are heavily monitored bathroom breaks that we needed to announce on livedesk by putting 'QBP' (quick personal break) like small children, which are then timed. Good luck if you have IBS.
My manager was an absolute wolf in sheep's clothing. Really acted the part of the sweet & innocent motherly woman which people fall for hook, line and sinker. Initially she was very kind, supportive and nice, but would have excessively long one to ones where you basically had to tell her your life story and everything that had been going on. After a few months her 'nice' persona gradually started slipping and she would be so incredibly rude, unhelpful and incompetent on livedesk. If she made a mistake regarding you, and you brought it up, she would gaslight or try to twist the situation to fit her narrative (even if there was literal written evidence to the contrary) which was so bizarre and uncomfortable. If you also didn't answer her replies immediately or within a minute she would put banners across the screen demanding a response, even if you were busy on the phone with a customer, which was utterly obnoxious.
Ended up having to put in a complaint as after a specific one to one with her, she was VERY unhappy that I wouldn't tell her every detail of my life and was making snide comments about how 'some people just can't multi task' as I apparently should have been writing call notes, sending emails, talking to the customer & replying on livedesk during live calls, which is impossible. Also laughable considering she could not handle even simple tasks herself without making a complete mess or getting other senior staff to do them for her.
Further to this, during the next one to one she made a false allegation regarding one of my calls by claiming I was very unhappy, short and rude to the customer. This has NEVER occurred. She deliberately hid "the call" from her QA marking by not listing it. Eventually this was found and unsurprisingly it was absolutely nothing like she had claimed. She was so irritated that I wouldn't divulge every detail of my life and just answered the questions with simple answers, that she went out of her way to make a false allegations during a one to one. She followed this up by saying that she will be listening to more of my calls to 'make sure' her made up scenario didn't happen again. This was basically her way of saying that if I don't do what she wants and divulge every detail of my life with her, she will go out of her way to make it difficult for me at work.
She also made an absolute mess of my hours when trying to move these for a medical appointment on multiple occasions, and despite me giving her weeks of notice and specifying the dates multiple times, went in a removed hours from the wrong dates. When confronted she made excuses and then hid the previous conversation on livedesk, while repeatedly gaslighting me that it was my mistake/fault and blaming another colleague. Again this is so embarrassing as there was literally written evidence of her doing this (you get email notification when hours are changed etc).
After she found out I put in a complaint about her, suddenly another team member who she is close with immediately began being rude to me on Livedesk, where apparently a literal question mark was used in the wrong 'tone of voice' and I was told off publicly regarding this.
I decided to leave after putting my complaint in as I believe she would have continued to behave this way and made my work life difficult. I have absolutely no intention of working with anyone who behaves this way and will not risk my mental health putting up with it.
The whole environment is absolutely awful for anyone's mental health anyway - call centres are not great working environments, please do not work in one unless you are completely desperate.
I understand that Sensee is one of the better call centres to work for, however it is pretty obvious why they have a high staff turnover.
Terrible company to work for, don't bother.
It’s very disappointing to read your comments, this is certainly not the company we set out to be.
I note at the outset that you say you liked the work-from-home (WFH) aspect of your role as it meant you didn’t have to spend time and money commuting to work. However, you also clearly encountered issues that made the role stressful and unenjoyable.
If you felt that the problems you encountered could be resolved by switching to a different account, or by applying for a different type of role, then please contact our recruitment team on [email protected] to discuss. However if, as you suggest at the end of your piece, that contact centre work in general is simply not for you, then we wish you the best in the next role you choose to do.
There are a few points you raise that I’d like to respond to:
It’s vital that Sensée employees have a suitable work-from-home space that meets our privacy, health and safety, security and other requirements. We insist on this to safeguard our client’s interests (and their customer data) as well as to ensure our employees are comfortable and not putting themselves at risk of harm.
A key reason we operate a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) model is that it just wouldn’t be possible to physically maintain equipment and connections in every single employees’ household given that our people live the length and breadth of the country. So we ask our employees to take responsibility for their own quality kit and connections. However, we provide extensive IT support and make it as quick, simple and cost-effective as possible for them to do so…. While also providing access to a cost-effective source of appropriate hardware.
Given the confidential and often sensitive nature of the work that our people carry out for clients’ customers it is essential that we monitor their work environments when on shift. However, we don’t ‘spy’ on anyone’s activities. We also can’t see any thing else on those machines apart from the work that is directly related to our work. We certainly don’t have access to homeworkers’ hardware when people are not on shift. The intention is to ensure efficiency and maintain tight security, it is not to ‘micromanage’.
You say ‘there is an expectation that we have to work over our breaks and even completely miss these if a call goes over’. Clearly, customer calls can sometimes run over the end of a shift, it’s the nature of call centre work. However, we absolutely believe in compensating our people for all the time they are on shift. And everyone is entitled to breaks as per their contracts.
Finally, it’s very important to state that Sensée has a zero tolerance towards bullying and employees should contact their direct line manager or HR if they ever feel they have witnessed bullying.
Colleagues wishing to provide any other feedback such as ideas on how processes can be improved or workplace issues, are encouraged to use the [email protected] email (anonymously if preferred) and we will respond promptly.