As a technical support agent, the training focus is pushed more towards customer service than actual technical knowledge. Customer service training is great however, when you hire people JUST for their customer support experience and not for their technical knowledge it makes it really hard to provide a positive customer experience when you are not knowledgable in the area that you are required to assist. We are trained on how to use the internal systems and how to submit support tickets. We are given a free domain and hosting package as a way to train us technically. We are told to build a website for a final grade in training...that is the extent of our technical training. We are taught "big" words and do not know what most of them truly mean. When asking for assistance or clarification, we are told to read an article...often the same one available to the general public. Once we are out of training, there is virtually no managerial support. Even if a customer requests a manager, we are told NOT to escalate the call. Managers will not take customer calls. We are actually TOLD to put customers on hold (up to five minutes) telling them that we are waiting for an available manager...after the five minutes are up we have to get back on the line and tell the customer that there is no manager available and that we can submit their request via support ticket. The biggest issue that I see with HostGator is that they push upsells, although they tell you that you are not a sales agent. If you do not make a certain amount of offers and produce leads to are placed under disciplinary review or even terminated. The biggest problem is not upselling but the fact that we are not given full information on what exactly it is that we are upselling. For example; we are required to offer website design and marketing however, we are not given prices or even a breakdown of what is included with those services...we transfer to another department who then closes on the lead and gets full credit. They have increased the amount of "sales" required and removed the commission that you would make for those sales. So in short, you have a company that pushes out mass amounts new hires with little to no technical knowledge. They are only given the tools to work the internal systems and look up technical information (while having the customer holding). Agents are forced to upsell on every call with the threat of being terminated (even though this is not a sales position).
