Company: Apple
Date: 2015-09-12
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: former

Overhyped, Just Like Their Product Line
Pros: I should start this review off by saying that I serviced Apple’s “At-Home Advisor” (AHA) program through one of their vendors, Kelly Services.  However, the reason why I’m posting this review under Apple instead of Kelly Services is because my review is based on certain global processes within Apple itself rather than its vendor.  Having said that, some of the benefits include…

* Excellent compensation.  Apple has an established reputation as compensating its employees well, and this is something that passes through pretty well through its vendors.  Even working through one of its vendors, I earned $11.00 an hour – a very competitive wage for work at home (WAH) lines of work.  There also seem to be plenty of opportunities for overtime and extra hours.

* Constant opportunities for advancement.  There always seems to be room for growth and development at Apple.  Its vendors are always looking for ways to move people up to the next level of support (Tier 2 / senior advisor) or in leadership positions.  The availability of these positions within Apple’s vendors directly reflects on Apple’s growth.  Apple’s need for additional advisors/agents – and the leadership groups that support them – are clearly growing.  This is evidenced by concurrent aggressive hiring efforts from multiple vendors, including Concentrix, Arise Virtual Solutions, Teleperformance, Xerox, and Kelly Services.

* Provides all necessary equipment for the job.  With other WAH lines of work, you often must provide your own computer and headset.  Apple ensures that its direct employees and vendors are provided with the equipment they need to do the job.  (In this case, this includes an iMac, keyboard, mouse, USB headset, phone system, and Ethernet cable.)  An exception to this is Arise Virtual Solutions, which requires its independent contractors to provide their own equipment.  (That’s one of the qualities of an independent contractor.)  Beyond that, though, Apple seems dedicated to equipping its people for their roles.
Cons: However, as anyone born in the last three decades might realize, Apple also does not lead the market in terms of operating system brand or affordability.  As a result, most prospective Apple employees (whether direct or through a vendor) need to have some degree of experience with their products before providing service to their customers, or it’s going to be an uphill battle.

* Inadequate training curriculum.  Now, I know what you might be thinking; this is where Apple’s responsibility might be blurred with the vendor’s responsibility, since the vendor – as a contractor – provides its own trainers and can make its own adaptations to the training process for its agents.  Nevertheless, Apple clearly intends for its vendors to use their proprietary training process (known as “New Advisor Training – Academy”) inside a portal known as iDesk in order to complete the training process.

--- It lasts several weeks, but the training itself involves very few simulations or interaction on the part of the student.  Most of the training consists of boring, unengaging lectures from classroom instructors who go through a slide show presentation.  

--- Those of us who net less than $20k a year tend not to be familiar with Apple’s product line.  This means that something as innocuous as swiping back or going to the ‘settings’ area on an iOS device can be hard to understand or describe because it’s just “one of those things” you have to PRACTICE in order to remember.  Training might be able to fill the gaps, but with very little hands-on practice of any kind (even simulated), most of the information just goes in one ear and out the other.  Aggravating this situation is the fact that my employer (Apple’s vendor) - Kelly Services - never provided the promised iPod that we could use to familiarize ourselves with the product line we would be supporting.

* Poor support structure.  Just like many other call center projects, Apple has an additional level of support known as Tier 2.  This queue consists entirely of agents who are supposedly the “best of the best” and are there to support customers and the agents on the frontline.  In contrast to other projects, however, agents are actually allowed to reach out to Tier 2 for help when they aren’t comfortable handling a call.  Apple itself makes getting help very hard, however – even for newer agents.

--- Apple tracks the number of times agents reach out to Tier 2 for support.  I don’t know how the other vendors do things, but Kelly Services held agents accountable to this metric right from the start.  To keep Tier 2 escalations low, agents would be strongly encouraged to reach out to local management and chat support for assistance.

--- Even if agents just needed to ask a question or get help with a call instead of escalating, the very act of dialing Tier 2’s line would count as an “escalation” for purposes of the “Tier 2 Escalations” metric.  While I can understand the potential for abuse of phone consultations as a method to avoid customer interactions, this puts unnecessary stress on frontline agents – especially newbie agents – who could be panicking because they don’t know what the heck they’re doing.

--- Tier 2 also seems to have an attitude problem.  Agents on the line don’t generally assume good faith in Tier 1 agents and tend to leave Tier 1 agents with the impression that the act of escalating is an inconvenience.  As a former Tier 2 phone agent and Team Lead on another project, I understand how frustrating it can be to get agents who don’t use their tools before calling in; however, this lack of willingness to assist discourages Tier 1 agents from asking for help and hurts customer satisfaction.  With such a poor training process in place, reaching out to an additional level of support really should not be such an involved process.

--- Adding even more stress to the situation is the fact that Tier 2 agents give “peer feedbacks,” which are basically reviews on the Tier 1 agent’s performance.  So, as a Tier 1 agent:  if a Tier 2 agent is miffed because their 30 minutes of ‘available’ time is interrupted with your phone call, there’s nothing stopping them from giving you a negative peer feedback.

--- To my utter amazement, Apple also mixes all of its Tier 2 agents from multiple vendors into one gigantic queue – a very unusual practice for a call center, in my experience.  So, when you reach out for help, you might get a Tier 2 agent from your own employer, or it could be someone from one of Apple’s many vendors – all of whom have their own policies, techniques, and personalities.  This is just additional inconsistency to further complicate an already convoluted support process.

* Ineffective tools.  iLog, the application that allows Apple’s support agents to connect with and assist customers, tries to be an all-in-one tool for agents to efficiently assist customers.  However, it, too, has its shortcomings.

--- The knowledge base (“Knowledge Center”) is a collection of how-to articles and procedural documentation agents use to support customers.  However, agents must rely entirely on keyword searches or a list of article suggestions (based on how agents classify their case) when finding relevant resources.  There’s no menu or organized list of topics from which to drill-down.  Additionally, some questions on simpler topics are only available in product manuals, which requires a PDF file download – further extending the call’s average handle time, harming agent confidence, and lowering customer satisfaction.

* Strange quality expectations.  Apple’s approach to empathy and rapport-building is embodied in something it coins the “Three A’s,” which are:  Acknowledge, Align, and Assure.  Agents with Kelly Services routinely miss “Align” in quality evaluations.  Sometimes, agents overlook empathy during their phone calls and don’t use the right voice inflection; in Apple’s case, however, I think empathy is more complex than it needs to be.  Most call centers – even the ones who use NPS and follow a CARES quality model – combine or link acknowledgement and “alignment” together.  So, a simple statement such as, “we want to get your screen repaired so that touch functionality works normally” combines acknowledgement and empathy in one simple statement.  Apple’s idea of empathy (or “alignment”), however, is “I would feel that way too” statements, which tend to patronize the customer – especially on calls with very simple issues.