Pros
- Can be a fun work environment with co-workers.
Cons
I worked at Cellular Sales for a little less than a year. I came in with an open mind wanting to succeed and left extremely let down. I can say that my coworkers were the only good part of this job - besides that everything was miserable. From work-life balance, training, to upper management. First off - I am an honest and empathetic person. I cared about my customers and went above and beyond to make sure they received a great experience every time they came into the store. I never let my customers leave without my contact information or a solution to what they needed. I would never over sell, but offered products I thought best fit their needs. I was always on time, respectful, and got along with my coworkers. I was told often by customers how helpful and good I was at my position. I was a mid-tier rep and made okay money (because I didn't oversell) and made many close relationships with my customers. Unfortunately, these qualities will never be recognized at this company. All they care about are the numbers on the paper. They only want you to sell what makes THEM the most money, not what the customer wants, needs, or what the rep recommends. So even if you are making sales and generating revenue, it will not be good enough. You have to sell what makes them the most money or you will be reprimanded. Profitable products change monthly so expect to push a different product every time a customer comes in. Your day will consist of mainly customer service that you are unpaid for. This made me a resentful person towards people who just needed help. So often you were encouraged to take advantage and push products on people who simply had a bill question and could not afford what was being sold. We are trained not to accept that customer "can't afford" something and are told to get creative with a variety of payment options which tricks the less fortunate customer into thinking they are getting something great - when in fact they are going further into the financial hole. Morally I do not stand with this practice. It is sad the amount of people I would see come in and sign contracts knowing nothing about the terms since a lot of reps are money hungry and don't disclose 99% of the info - leaving the customer with a giant bill that eventually goes to collections. Second: Do not expect to have a life outside this job. They promise you any time off you want if you get it covered. Being constantly short staffed, this will never happen without a great struggle. On top of that they will make you feel bad and tell you that you are letting everyone down if you take time off. Forget about if you have any personal appointments, children, etc - they could care less. & if you do take time off you are immediately expected to pick up shifts upon returning on your assigned off days and work 7-10 days in a row to "make it up." Expect to work 40+ hours a week with making as little as $20 a day. On top of that expect to work extended hours during holidays and weekends to make up for short staffing. They will reject many candidates, even people who want to be “re-hired” due to their pride - and then extend the hours of reps to make up for it. You also frequently have unpaid 7am meetings that can easily be replaced with an email or zoom call. Third: praise is few and far between and the platform used to do everything regarding an account frequently malfunctions. Upper management chooses favorites and invests their time into those select few - many times being males over females. These people will also get the best shift times. For the rest of us - never expect any sort of praise. I constantly felt like I was giving my most and received no feedback unless it was negative. Along with this expect day to day technical malfunctions with their platform that is used. Not shocking that this selfish company refuses to invest money into a smoothly running platform to ensure reps can provide a functional experience to their customers. On top of that we have to perform this platform on dated technology - such as a run down, very slow iPad - which creates another hurdle. You would think a phone store would give their employees decent technology to perform tasks on. This will often lead to hours of phone calls to customer support and lost sales for reps. Fourth: Your week of training class is useless. You learn absolutely nothing about how to use the platform and are thrown into the field expecting to learn it on your own. I did a week of training with random workshops seemingly unimportant to the job itself. Training should include simulations on the platform used to do the job. Such as how to create a customer account, add a line etc. instead we spent time focusing on product specs or selling styles which is something that could be summarized in half a day. The job itself is not hard, but many reps end up unhappy with the schedule, how they are treated, and the daily frustrations of this job. This is proven through their high turnover rate. You can succeed at this job, but only if you are a pushy salesperson with zero commitments outside of work, and very little care for others well-being.
