commissioner

sales advisor

customer service representative

sales associate

store manager


Minimal training, expected to master buggy systems quickly. Multiple sales systems exist, but certain ones are discouraged in favour of pushing higher value (but not necessarily customer-friendly) contracts. Dishonest sales tactics are encouraged under the guise of small savings, leading to customer frustration with no returns. We would often be told to try and get elderly customers to take out gaming systems/tablets as “gifts for the grandkids”, which ultimately felt very exploitative of elderly people who were coming in to get a simple tech problem fixed. That and pressuring old people on older devices to take out new ones that they didn’t overly understand how they worked, then they needed broadband and tv, too. I believe this stems higher into customer services because we would often have to deal with older people who were being put on very expensive broadband plans by phone agents, like FF Gigabit All Rounder whenever they only needed the broadband for one or two devices, then we’d have to deal with distressed older people who were paying almost £90 a month for broadband that they didn’t need! 

There is no communication between CS & Retail, particularly with what we can do in store. I’d have to constantly deal with disgruntled customers who had travelled to store  as per the advise of a phone agent only to be told we couldn’t help them, this was then an issue when we couldn’t sell anything to a rightfully angry customer. 

Store management is generally okay, but distant upper management offers little support, resorting to micromanagement under pressure. Expect unconstructive criticism, threats in private, and job insecurity unless unrealistic sales targets are met. The "uncapped" commission is usually unattainable. Part-time staff are treated like underpaid managers and publicly berated for store performance.  I was constantly messaged about store performance and told we needed to pick up the pace whilst I was at home, and also not a senior member of staff.
  
The work environment I experienced was deeply troubling, characterised by what appeared to be a culture of intimidation originating from regional management. It seemed that personal preferences could dictate an employee's future. This often manifested as what I perceived to be tactical management aimed at forcing individuals out of their roles, a pattern I witnessed repeatedly and ultimately believe I was subjected to myself. Beyond this, there was a stark lack of support when dealing with difficult customers. Employees were seemingly expected to endure verbal abuse, and any attempt to set boundaries with aggressive individuals were often undermined by store management, who would step in and allow the abusive behaviour to continue in hopes of a sale. During my time here I witnessed many broken employment laws.


This job suits those lacking ethics and seeking stress-related health issues.

I've worked in call centres all my life & it is the best place I have worked in - however this isn't saying much as it's the best of a bad lot.

Management only want you to hit numbers for ridiculously high targets.  If you're not hitting numbers then file notes & improvement plans are discussed.

Targets change all the time.
You end up finding out mid-month what your targets are, so you've not got enough time left in the month to actually be able to achieve your target.
You ask for things to be done to help improve your performance - never gets done or you get fobbed off with excuses.
You deal with fantastically entitled customers - which makes the job really stressful, knowing that you need to be nice to them in order to hit your NPS scores.

In short, you do not get paid enough for the amount of stuff you need to take from customers.  The verbal abuse, the mental strain of dealing with rude customers & ever increasing targets which are practically not achievable for most who work there & higher management that couldn't care less about you - you are a number at the end of the day & totally replaceable.
They expect all staff to work at the same level - which is not possible as certain folks excel in different areas, yet this is unacceptable.
You're seen as all the same - desk monkey drones that just need to get on with it.

Huge example of higher management being totally money driven, during the current pandemic, EE didn't close its doors - saying that upgrades were essential & all staff were essential workers.  Yet we were still expected to cross sell customers items they don't need.
The only calls we got through were for folk just fancying an upgrade - most to the latest iPhone, expecting to pay pennies per month for it.
What did we get for working through said pandemic you ask?...  Tomato seeds....  You read that right - tomato seeds to plant in a garden I don't even have.

Would have been really nice to get a pay rise, extra holidays, or a couple of months off like those who were furloughed.
But instead we got some seeds & our targets were increased - smashing work EE.

If you've not got any other choice, EE is the best of the worst.  However, call centre work in general is utterly gash - so just go work in a store instead.  You'd genuinely take less hassle by avoiding this place.

This is the kind of job that fits certain people, have you got a friend that speaks at the speed of sound and bounces from subject to subject? Yeah them kind of people. 
Personally the job is manageable and not difficult to do, achieving the minimum is easy. But the standards are always changing which makes doing your job difficult, the line managers are super nice and supportive from my experience (all three I’ve had so far), however the higher ups who decide targets seem to not have a clue. 
Think you can fix a long winded issue whilst asking questions and also talking about a customers personal life and making general conversation at the same time, wel yeah you gotta be pesonal, whilst also not being on the phone for longer then 600 seconds, not using more than 25 After Call Work and a requirement of less than 20 seconds hold time (this includes times waiting to call through to other departments). You have to keep your outbound calls to less than 30% but also they will give you call backs to do that other teams have asked to be picked up. 
Don’t forget value add! Make sure you recommend another product to a customer before the end of the call! You gotta do that on at least 30% of your calls too! 

Don’t get me wrong, the job has a lot of upsides, they do volunteering, you get 24 hours of paid hours to volunteer which is usually picking up trash on a costal path or beach and half the time it’s just your manager and your team messing about. 
Team meetings can be fun once all the boring stuff is out of the way and if you get a good team it is like having another little family. You will get a lot of funny calls, and customers that will have a laugh and a joke with you and tell you a funny and inappropriate story/joke at times. 

The systems you use can be confusing and difficult to learn, and even if you work in tech or mobile care you likely going to be picking up issues that wouldn’t be from your department as you gotta keep your transfers down! 

Honestly with this job it’s a sort of yiu got to try it yourself to judge, it has its ups and downs, outside of unrealistic target changes, it’s an easy job to learn, but atressfull

If you enjoy being constantly threatened to be out on improvement plans for not meeting unreachable targets then this is the place for you, they say that it’s fast paced but the reality of that is they don’t have anywhere near enough staff so from the moment you go ready you won’t catch a breath till you’re done, management are as useful as a chocolate teapot and that’s even assuming you can find one when y in need it, they’d be great if hide and seek was an Olympic sport, gold medals all round. Upper management don’t care either plenty of people handing in their notice due to the horrific conditions and they burry their head deeper into the sand and pretend everything is fine, blame staff constantly for it being busy because too long is spent either talking to customers on hold or in after call work or they’ve too many absences when the lack of staff is quite clearly an issue, maybe if they had more staff then these issues wouldn’t be an issue? But yeah if you enjoy being told you’re useless at your job and how the poor running of the company is all your fault this is exactly the place you wanna work! 

Also look forward to having paid breaks changed to unpaid and told you’re getting paid more! Yet the hours you work and wage at the end of the month are still the same, a nice way to make it look like they pay above minimum wage without the need to give us any more money. 

Patronising signs about how you can save money during this cost of living crisis and even some call centres with food banks that they like to disguise as being a hub to allow people who work shifts and can’t get to the shops to get stuff, you’re never going to be working so late that you can’t nip to the shop after work or send the on-site concierge to get it if you need it, if it looks like a food bank and smells like a food bank it’s just there for convenience, biggest sounding Tory bs I’ve ever heard 

Basically they are ab absolute joke of a company if you have any form of self respect go sign on it’s better for you than working for these clowns 

This company is starting to feel like an absolute joke....
It's starts from the top with the My EE training which states not to yo mis sell. don't hide costs, don't sell items or products that the customer requires,  but as you filter down the management chain down to store it's constant badgering of "why didn't you add a tablet go that sale? why didn't they take broadband? " and then when you justify your actions to store manager your told your just making excuses, there's the constant put downs on the region's sock group band,   

when you miss targets your performance managed,  If you don't fill out "customer resolution sheets" with every customer because they ethier a) walked in yo the wrong shop or b) have a very quick question c) top up thier old pay as you go phone cos there average top up is 10 pound a year  management jump on on you with " you didn't offer them a new!!! where the broadband conversation?"

Your told during your traing that customer service is key but when helping you beraided for "why didn't they take a tablet? or broadband? why did you not sell them a watch ?"
when you state they said they can't afford that, your making excuses

the whole job is pitiful from management chain upwards. When you work in a store with no management for close to a year and basicly run store from rotas and complaince paperwork etc as a 
uatomer advisor  then you try for promotion you get told your not ready or your barely a good advisor brings down your moral. 
And when you do everything to thier scripted ways and it still doesn't show results your still thrown under the bus.

It is not a happy place to work when your not  120% performing individual because you don't or won't mis sell or drive hard sales

I wouldn't of even looked at applying with hind sight
worse place ever

oh and the systems constanly crash or break with cheap in house tech and that of course is advisor fault 
with being told just because systems are down doesn't mean you can't sell....edpicslly broadband.

don't apply

Whilst I admired the customer service aspect of the job (i.e. helping people out with their accounts and devices), the sales aspect was the part that took me out. 

You are given high targets (although they differ based on your hourly contract) and expected to sell multitudes of products in-store, even if you have no experience or if the customer expresses their disinterest in the item. You are expected to constantly sell every item under the sun and remember every little detail about every single item (which is hard considering all the devices that EE sells) and is completely unrealistic.

Managers will micromanage you to death and are incredibly inconsiderate about your job or how it affects you (many times, most managers don't even have any experience in selling as they are hired from outside the company due to limited upward mobility). Your manager (especially store manager or the one that you are with the most) will make or break your experience and you should be expected to be managed by Senior Guides (who I weep for as they are forced to do both a Guide's and manager's job simultaneously) instead of actual managers.

Training is dependent on your region but the overall consensus is that there is barely any training (and the training that you DO receive is completely inadequate as it does not focus on your day-to-day tasks at all and rather just legal obligations, all to protect BT Group). I had to learn everything that I did from other Guides (especially the Seniors who held a special place in my heart as they were more helpful than the actual managers). If you cannot sell something because you don't know how to, then that is seen as your fault and not theirs.

In conclusion, although there are many more aspects of the job I could write about, one key message I would like to leave is: do not apply and if you get the job, then do not expect to last long as labour/job turnover is so high that by the time you get to 6 months, half the faces you've grown accustomed to will have probably left the company anyways.

Working as part of a strong sales team to achieve targets. My role includes motivating and coaching the team to work together as a sales strong team to achieve and exceed store and personal targets. On many occasions I have run the store for weeks and months at a time while the manager has been absent on annual leave, during times of recruitment for new management. During these times great results have been delivered with targets being achieved, where other stores in the division have not managed to achieve them. On a day-to-day basis my role includes stocktaking and then investigating any discrepancies. I regularly manage business accounts and advise customers where changes could be made in order to achieve the best result for them. For the past five years I have been an appointed key holder, which means making sure the shop is open and ready to trade in the mornings, as well as being secure in the evening. Customer service is a huge focus for me; I believe the customers needs should where ever possible be met as well as delivering an expectation of service the customer will expect from the staff member as well as the company. I have recently transferred within EE to Wood Green, working as an assistant manager. The role involves managerial duties, such as team management, wages and general day-to-day running of the store as well as all the roles already mentioned.
I was also nominated as the store expert when the two brands of Orange and T mobile came together so that all stores would cross-sell both brands. On occasions I would attend training courses and on my return to store, was to train the team one by one. I was also required to train the staff in our buddy store how to use all the Orange systems as well as all the processes and procedures.
Over the years I have won many awards for delivering results I have, as well as achieving the targets I have been set. Being in the top 5 for sales figures in our area is one of my best achievements

In a typical day at EE I would begin by analysing the day's requests for agent offline time in all departments across two brands and six sites. This would be dependent on the departmental forecasts for the day, and also dependent on the variances to the forecast as the day progresses. I would then change agent skill profiles for agents completing overtime in other departments. I would then man the Real-time IVR throughout the day while completing any other work to follow. I would then liaise with Scheduling to produce a new staffing plan for the next day, which I would base tomorrow's decisions on. I would calculate shrinkage variances for senior staff to include in their commentary, volume and call handling time variances, and conformance. I would then speak to a duty operations manager about any discrepancies to investigate anything in the operation that may be causing them. 

I learned a very high ability to multi-task and work under pressure, particularly during the merge of our two brands. I learned to perfect my management technique and the value of good quality conversations to maximise productivity in the operation. I enhanced my use of Microsoft Office applications and internal resource systems. 

I felt the structure of the department was quite top heavy but there was the benefit of career progression with so many senior roles to potentially move into. 

My co-workers could be quite challenging sometimes, but this made my attention to detail scrupulous and encouraged me to think about my reasons for making decisions before communicating them to my colleagues. 

The most difficult part of my job was managing departments on other sites, particularly following call routing changes.

The most enjoyable part of my job was building relationships with other colleagues, both on site and elsewhere.    

Not sure what happened at EE but there has been a massive change in the way things get done. As a customer service representative you are just simply viewed as a number/bum on seat taking calls.

Operation Managers act as they are Gods looking down their noses at you. And if you have an issue with shifts or something happens at home then they go out their way to tell you why you should be lucky to have a job and not to bother them.

The Managers keep going MIA (for smoke breaks, extended lunches and even in some cases for their hair appointment) and are only interested in their bonus and keeping the Operations Managers off their backs by blaming anyone but themselves. 

There is no accountability for their actions and God forbid you take a complaint call to them after you have followed the company process to the letter, they just say/do anything to avoid taking the complaint call (but in the odd occasion the call is taken then the generic outcome is only to credit the balance in full just to get the call ended) 

Shifts are 'looked at' all the time and it is messaged to you as the company is looking at the best shift rotations to give you a balance however in truth it simply means you will be working more late shifts and weekends and we're not interested in you having a life or commitments.

Support. You are told that you will be supported all the time however in truth this is just an empty statement to get you to buy in to their lies.

If you are sick then the managers look to issue Stages (sanctions/warnings) without carrying out any investigations although they say they have. I have even known of members of my own department suffering from cancer and managers looking to sack them for this!

I am looking at getting out of here as soon as possible (most likely after Christmas) so my advice to you looking is stay where you are, this place will ruin you.

When you first join, you are enthused by the "sales pitch" for the job role given by the caffine driven training staff. This involves flip charts and endless hand outs of customer lifecycle revision. 

By the time you actually sus the place out, you come to realise that its very clicky. One of the call centre managers even handed his mrs and her friends easy roles with good pay despite having being vastly under qualified. Others seemed to kiss back sides to get a leg up.

Very incestual as everyone seems to be in a relationship with another staff member and usually has a string of ex partners within the staff. This can make it awkward to make friends outside your actual team through fear of breaking loyalties.

Heavily stats driven and if you fail to conform then you can be managed out of the company.

Very high level of clinical depression and many off sick with this. One local doctors surgery even spoke to a local MP about the issue. 

I worked at the place for around 5 years and saw many come and go. I was given privillages that others were denied purley due to friendships with managment and this seemed unfair but I wasn't complaining.

I finally left the role to go travelling and would never go back.

To quote 99% of the long term staff, "i got stuck in a rutt" 

Good as a short term stop gap but if your at the place over a year, expect to become depressed unless you have it easy like I did.

Some team leaders are great, others let power go to their heads and can be a nightmare. The micro mangment is not a good thing for the enviroment. 

I have seen both grown men and women in tears leaving meetings due to the way managment conduct disciplinary meetings. Hardly appropriate for such a role.

Very high turn over of staff for the above reasons.

Top Job Titles	Average salary
Commissioner 246 salaries reported	£25,006 per year
Sales advisor 76 salaries reported	£24,912 per year
Customer service representative 26 salaries reported	£24,291 per year
Sales associate 136 salaries reported	£26,253 per year
Store manager 50 salaries reported	£33,322 per year

Working at EE: company overview and reviews

EE

EE ratings

Popular jobs at EE

Salary satisfaction

Jobseeker tools

Employer Tools

Browse

Stay Connected