Pros
First job as a Customer Representative was extremely laid-back. I had to work for 30 minutes to max 4-5 hours per day (rarely). Extremely low work volume and minimal responsibilities that also reflected in the salary. I received about 20% more than the minimum wage in my country at the time for sending English template based emails and querying a few things in a local e-coms database (nothing too complicated). Salary was incredible for the amount of work I had to do at the time but it was only good for someone looking to get their first job and/or also working remotely since living alone in a city while having to pay rent and manage other expenses would have been quite hard. My trainer, who also worked in the quality department, was an empathetic, smart, open and nice person but quite strict and passive-aggressive at times when she felt I was not focusing enough during training. All of the team leaders I've had at this role were top of the line friendly, encouraging and chill, just great, relaxed and understanding people that also did their job very well. They were young and within the same age category as myself. After I finished my work for the day, because I was not expecting tickets for the rest of my shift, I could go out for long walks, play video games, do grocery shopping and to my managers it never really mattered when I was clocking out in Workday. Very simple project policy and rules for handling daily tasks. Remote work. Email only. No phonecalls Double pay on national holidays. Overall just chill and stress free.
Cons
As a CSR at Telus, I would say that the role often felt lacking in purpose, and the work became repetitive, monotonous, and generally like a dead end once you were fully used to it. Most of the time, after completing my assigned tasks, there was nothing productive left to do, which I consider a disadvantage, though this also relates partly to my own work style. I was given two monitors and a desktop instead of a laptop, which felt unnecessary for the level of responsibilities involved and limited my mobility, since it prevented me from changing work locations easily. There were also no additional self-improvement benefits such as Udemy or Coursera. Instead, they offered a Bookster subscription, which I don’t believe many employees actually used. Bonuses were quite low—around 60 euros per year in total, divided between Easter and Christmas. As in any customer-facing job, I occasionally had to deal with aggressive or impolite individuals, as well as strict response time expectations. Fortunately, because the work was email-based, these situations were manageable. As a side note, the other project I worked on, as a Content Moderator at Telus, was extremely challenging in terms of management style. The level of micromanagement was very high, despite the team seeming friendly at first. They monitored every second after a 15-minute break ended, and you were required to log each break individually in their system, along with a single 30-minute lunch break. This meant you couldn’t simply step away for an hour; instead, you had to return to the desktop, log back in, and then start the next break. The level of control felt excessive and unnecessarily rigid. I was considered “one of the fortunate ones” for working on what management described as the easiest project available in my country, Romania. Based on their own statements, the other projects were said to be extremely demanding, stressful, and generally exhausting, both mentally and physically.