Pros
The fact that you work from home. No traffic, no annoying coworkers, no politics, etc. You are eligible for benefits if part-time, but not insurance--that's exclusive to full-time employees.
Cons
The calls will be least of your worries or your bane, depending on the project. However, there are many universal issues. Training: What Teletech considers training is coming into a web conference and watch/be told how to perform the tasks you will need to do in production. Very little hands-on to speak of. This, of course, assumes you'll actually spend most of that 8.5 hour shift "training," as the bulk of it is dedicated to fixing technical issues due to Teletech's broken programs. You are "trained" for roughly 30%-50% of what you actually need to know before being thrown into production. System programs: Tech issues are a daily thing here. Programs that you NEED to work will crash and not be available for God-knows how long (all except the phone system Avaya--it just drops calls mid-transfer instead). The email system will randomly not be available. The knowledge base, SKE, was unavailable for a whole week, came back, and was then unavailable for another week. The chat system, APS, will frequently refuse to open and the only thing you can do is close it out and try again. It will also freeze while it's open and not update the messages until your clear the error pop-up. Their VMWare will kick you out and not reload, forcing you to exit another system called Workbooth entirely. You won't be able to log into WB, either, at times. Systems specific to a certain project also fail regularly. Being out too long because of this will require a ticket from ASD, Teletech's technical department, which I am convinced only exists so Teletech can say it has techincal support. ASD agents will ALWAYS blame you for a tech problem, never mind that you had no trouble before then. Their tech "support" consists of basic troubleshooting, stuff you can and most likely have already do. It's less than useless. The worst part about all of this, however, is Teletech's apathy--it can't be bothered to fix its broken systems. Scheduling: Your breaks and lunch are subject to random, nonsensical changes and you will not be notified. Entire shifts will change without prior notification. And yet, if you are a part-time employee, you will at times be required to work extra hours because of all the calls--or, in my case, calls and cases (moreso the latter). Management and Assistance: Management is terrible. It obsesses over stats and chastises you over some of the dumbest things (like bit saying a customer's name enough times). Trying to communicate with them necessitates sending an email that will take some time to get a response for. Since everything has to be requested through the Team Lead, it makes the response time slow. Scheduled for training? You usually won't know until the day of said training. Asking for any assistance with a call/case will rarely get you a response. When APS is actually working, the TL and chat "coaches" will ignore older questions asked in favor of ones readily viewable in the small chat window. It's possible to get a response for a question...long after you've resolved the customer's need. Get used to using the knowledge base. Co-workers: This reflects on the ineffective training. Agents attempting to transfer a call frequently do not gather enough information before transferring, often making you waste time on something completely unrelated to what the customer wants. They might even cold transfer calls to the wrong department, wasting more time. Many engage in not reading case information and responding to an email with something irrelevant to what the customer was actually asking. Pay: At $8.50, it's pitiful. Certain projects have higher positions that pay marginally more, but also have more to do and pretty much require you to have glowing metrics. Benefits: Your mileage will vary. Full-time agents have various perks that part-time agents do not (PTO, insurance, etc.), the trade-off for suffering more and longer. Even then, they are expensive. This is a last resort job. If you have other, superior options, RUN. Run and don't look back.
