plumbing engineer

gas engineer

drainage engineer

water resources engineer

customer service representative

Homeserve

I had been employed with Homeserve for around 4 years. The workplace is somewhere that if your face fits or you really kiss upto people you will go places however if you are like myself and do none of the above and wanted to be awarded based on being best performing, or within the top 1% that are at the workplace and expect some recognition/reward/progression please think again. It will not work out the way you think. Promotions or secondments are given out to favourites or subpar people who have no experience or skill in the role and like in my case they will come to you for help or to guide them around processes as they do not know. If you are outspoken or show any sort of intelligence or want to do better or go into a particular role you may find that someone has been digging in the background to nitpick and within the next week you may be called into a meeting for a warning or worse. This was experienced on many occasions over the 4 years as I was part of 8 different training groups consisting of new starters which would take place during the start and end of the years to help with the peak of the company. Alot of people have doubs themselves without a job once things go quiet or are encouraged and told by there manager that they are doing fantastic and the next week they are gone as people are not honest or willing to help someone. These people are those within management positions whose main concern is to look out for there team as they are a reflection of themselves however they only look after themselves and anyone they may have as a favourite.
You are a favourite with the company aslong as you are willing to take on extra duties which time is not allocted seperately from your call KPIS, you would be taking calls from customers and doing tasks on the side as noone will schedule time as they are busy and understaffed and cant due to this.
I have lost out on progression/secondment to a person who I personally trained and showed how to do the job role. the person in question was not in the top1% of the dept but when I said if the face fits…
I have been first hand witness with the company and once they have fell out of favour with people, this is usually because the person doing the favours gets tired of doing it for no reward or so called non existent “progression” and they have lost there job due to a technicality or a process which may have been told by management to do to get a task done quicker but when bought up management have advised noone knows anything and the person looks as though they are a liar. This has happened to several people over the years.
The company also does not understand mental health and I have seen people have hr warnings and lost there job due to management not taking time to support the people or understand.
The workplace is a good stepping stone to gain some experience to move onto another business in a higher position, I would not look at anything long term as normally a decision has been made prior to who will take over something regardless of if they open an internal recruitment link for a role etc.


I recently left Homeserve with a very heavy heart, the company are awesome to work for, the decision wasn't easy. I would recommend them to anyone interested in pursuing their career in a company which will allow you to nourish and develop. 

You are given autonomy in your role to do the right thing, I managed the Supply Chain Department and got  support from everyone in the business and together we delivered great results. 

The communication and focus on engagement is brilliant. The CEO and all senior leaders are very approachable and truly support you. 

I had the pleasure of attending the Big Red Sofa as a guest which is a live broadcast with a great host and guests from around the business, a great way to ensure everyone knows what's going on.

The company promote the use of Yammer our social media platform and a fun way to keep in contact with colleagues from all around the business.

Homeserve know how to Celebrate success we had pizzas, family fun days and the place truly becomes an extension to your family, My kids use to love going into the office to see everyone, it's very family friendly and they will bend over backwards to help you if they can. I personally experienced it and during my difficult time the company were there providing morale support.

The people charter and customer promises are truly engrained into day to day life, simple thank you cards and chance to nominate colleagues for awards are a great booster, a won three awards during my two years and earned over £1,500 in star award vouchers just from colleague nominations.  No wonder it's rated as best companies to work for on Glassdoor. 

I had daily interaction with frontline teams and the senior exec team and everyone is treated the same. 
My business performance updates always started with customer metrics and the COO and CEO would personally read customer reviews and encourage us to dare to care and offer an effortless service.

This year, the company had their annual cascades at the NEC. Wow.  What an experience. The brand and comms teams pulled out all stops and everyone enjoyed the sessions. 

Customers & the People do come first at Homeserve and they aren't many businesses that demonstrate this as well as HomeServe do.  The people values do matter!  

I had interaction with customers and gathered insight when things didn't go well but we always made sure we got everything back on track and we did. 

The leadership is great and are doing all the right things.

HomeServe is now regularly recognised by various official bodies for its great leadership and People, however individual stories from members of the team help complement that recognition and bring home the reality of what goes on from day to day.

I am still in my first year at the company having worked in a number of similar organisations over the years, so I feel I have a reasonable frame of reference. I've worked for a mixed bag of leadership teams, some great, some terrible (my previous company being the latter)... and then there's HomeServe. 

Put simply: believe the hype. But mainly because it's not hype, it's just an honest reflection of what goes on here. The leadership team truly care about both Customers and the company's People. We're encouraged to make decisions, to take ownership and accountability - even to take risks, and all that's required in return is that we think things through, have the best intentions in mind, and learn from those decisions whatever the outcome. That might sound like common sense, but the funny thing about common sense is that it's not very common.

Those positive, inspirational behaviours don't start and end at the top either. The can-do attitude, commitment to doing the right thing, and personal accountability flows right through the company - in fact the most inspirational leadership often comes from the teams at the coal face who are determined to ensure Customers get the best possible outcomes - and not just the outcomes needed to satisfy the FCA or the company's P&L - way, way more than that. 

The People are empowered and it shows in their actions, their words and even their faces. There is plenty of investment in going above and beyond for Customers that you'll never read about in the press, because the company believes in doing the right thing without needing to be recognised for it beyond the intrinsic reward of knowing you're doing the right thing. 

No company is perfect, but the ones that stay the distance are those which take care of their People, making them feel valued and empowered, and lead by genuine example rather than by dictat or by paying lip service to values written on a wall. HomeServe does a very good job on all those fronts and avoids some of the major pitfalls I've seen at other businesses.

I started with such optimism and enthusiasm! Barely took breaks (my own decision) to go above and beyond, not only for customers but also the engineers. Came in earlier and left later. Instead of taking full days of holidays, i offered to do half days to help out. Even did work at home demonstrating ideas and solutions to help improve things.

Then came more and more work load. People in my position literally dealt with the majority of the business and that soon became mandatory. Our job roles came second and doing the work of every other department was priority. Taking payments, planning, scheduling, customer service, escalations, complaints and complaint closure, emergencies, code red, chasing parts, chasing engineers and their managers. Our managers were nowhere insight, unless it was to enforce more processes or to make sure people had valid reasons for being in code.

People were under that much duress, that naturally people made mistakes... and clearing up those mistakes was a job within itself. From what the job was advertised and marketed for, was a farcry from the reality. I was told I would be planning/optimising engineers travel - the reality was that we were told not to interfere with the system at all. Which resulted in a LOT of travel and zig zagging for engineers, who then called in and blamed us for the bad planning.

I saw lots of people go during my brief time, due to stress, lack of management and support, being over worked and over looked. There are still some absolute gems that still work there that literally have been so far above and beyond, yet they were only ever picked up on mistakes and always expected the help.

The job role is definitely a specialist role (when you're actually doing your role) and the salary is diabolical especially considering the fact that homeserve posted a customer service role with a higher salary than that of a dispatcher - who transfer most calls to us to deal with.

They talk about looking after their front line and have adopted it as a mantra but the reality is that there is absolutely no consideration at all for the front line 

Prepare to be worked to the bone with no gratitude and expect to be held accountable for every mistake made.

Homeserve had so much potential...

Worked in the Preston call centre for a number of years where all the claims calls are handled.

Homeserve usually uses external company's to undertake repairs for customers on its behalf and it has an appalling working relationship with them all. This is caused by the middle management of Homeserve oppressing the engineers and working them to the point of breaking point to maximize results. They then report to the higher management showing them how good of a job they are doing while everyone below them suffers. The engineers who go out to site are stuck in the crossfire between their own bosses, and the middle management. The engineers who go to site then have a negative view of everyone working for Homeserve, as a result call centre staff are unable to do anything to help the customers when we have to speak to the engineers, customers then take it out on the call centre staff, its a vicious circle that's beyond repair.

The call centre staff (at all sites) has a really high attrition rate when it comes to staff, it's a revolving door throughout the year. 

Stress levels are at an all time high, if your unlucky enough to suffer from mental health problems the call centre management have no understanding of how to deal with people with mental health issues. Staff are lucky if they get good support if you go on long term sick and then return to work, depending on which manager you have depends on the support you get. Once you do come back they go through a tick list so they can say they took all legally required action, then they forget about your on going mental health problems and your thrown back into the deep end after a few weeks, all support is then withdrawn and they don't think about you a second time.

There is constant in fighting across all the departments (and across other sites), creating a stressful, and extremely unprofessional working environment. This leads to the claims department being woefully indicate to actually handle the repairs, basically if a customer is lucky enough for everything to go well with the job, it goes fantastic, the moment it goes wrong, it goes completely off the rails and is un salvageable.

So i worked for a customer service advisor for just over 3 years (left Dec 2019)

I’ll be completely honest - when I first started, even with a pretty terrible manager, it was still quite enjoyable. The job was quick to pick up and there were quite a lot of perks e.g canteen, resources provided, big company so lots of new people to meet 

HOWEVER, following a very large management change involving the employment of I believe 4(?) new customer service senior managers, the place became unbearable. 

I was disciplined for poor mental health and was asked to come into work following a serious MH hospital visit. My health conditions were not taken seriously and I was quite honestly laughed out of any meeting rooms I was in 

The friends I ended up making- you couldn’t ever talk to as your every move is a watched by resource planning. If you don’t hit the robotic targets you were threatened and NONE of your concerns taken on board

After 2.5 years of making my way up the customer ladder I wanted to dabble in training however I’ll warn you - with it being a call centre there is very very little progression as they almost always need you to answer the phones and there is no room for improvement

I rate this a 2 as if sitting at your desk for 8 hours a day with no desire for progression and having a comfortable repetitive job is your forte - I genuinely do recommend it. It’s secure as it’s a big busy company and the salary is relatively decent. You get trained on new skills to assist with the calls and you can sit at your desk without ever needing to lift a finger. You are a voice at the end of a phone and on a bigger scale - most people probably don’t even know your name 

However, if you ever want to move sideways; it honestly isn’t possible. As a big busy call centre - moving away from your desk and from your headset is so highly discouraged you really would need a miracle to grow and move.

Hope those who do work there are better suited than I was. I left on slightly bad terms as it was definitely not the job for me. 

The call centre duties involve sales through customer service.
There are targets to assist the customer with his/her queries, to register guarantees and to also sell additional policies to the customer.

In this workplace, as well as attending calls, I have also carried out lead agent duties, during which I conducted team meetings to update the team on any changes on the call centre floor, I also conducted feedback on call quality, which updated the agent’s on how many calls they had passed and how many had been classed as failed calls or calls that could have been improved.

I have also worked on a complaint reduction project which involved screening calls for all agents from different departments that talk directly to customers, and to make sure that everything is done correctly on the call e.g. if customer want’s to be taken off marketing, it is done, and that all Data Protection questions have been correctly asked by the agent, another point that is looked at is the attitude of the Agent that has taken the call, making sure that the agent has dealt with the customer professionally. The calls that I find could be escalated to a complaint in the future for any reason are then feedback to the agent’s manager so that he/she can feed the call back to the agent and action the call before it is turned into a complaint.

The mangagers in the Workplace are very supportive and understanding, they are always willing to help and adapt to individual circumstances.

The most enjoyable part of my job was that i was able to take part in different activities, for example, mentoring new starters, taking customer's calls, and also taking part in different incentives.
There were also other incentives to keep everyone motivated and also monthly achievement awards so that the achievers could get recognised.

I am proud to shout out that I work for HomeServe. I have seen this business change its culture so dramatically in the last 4 years and continues to drive change for the benefit of our People and our Customers.  HomeServe believes fervently in People and making the working environment better.  From our CEO to the Frontline our mantra is People First and it is not a surprise that he won an award for most engaging CEO and we were rated 3rd best place to work by Glassdoor in 2017.  

I am sure everyone can find someting to complain about and it surprises me how memories can fail.  If we look at where we were and how we operated 10 years ago and compare to Today, it is a much better place.  We care about our People and we believe wholeheartedly in empowering our People to care about our Customers.  Our CEO constantly reminds us to learn from the Past and not Live in it! We have moved forward on so many levels and the constant is that our senior Exec and Board directors Listen to our People.  They regularly go out to engineer meetings and spend man in van days and days in our contact centres listening to calls so they can get a better understanding of the reality for our frontline. 

The management style and culture is open and our values are clear. We have seen some really great investment in People over the past 4 years and all because we have access to our senior leaders and developed many different communication channels so if we want to talk directly we can attend a Cascade or a Big Conversation, if we want to write we can email or Yammer or if we want to offer our views anonymously we can use the People Surveys which are available twice a year. We have opportunity which many of us have used and seen the benefits coming through.  

This business genuinely Dares to Care.

I am currently working as a Remediation Officer. We send letters out to customers who may not be eligible for the cover. Customers call us and I explain to customers why we want to review the policy sale. If customer agrees to go ahead with the review. I manually locate the original sales call. Listen into this and match this with FSA guidelines, record this on to the system accurately by inputting agents statements and customers, what was said in the call, was the policy suitable for customer? Is customer in any kind of detriment?. If it comes back as unsuitable, I then work out redress for customers, so I have a look the timescale customer had the policy for, look at how much they have paid, if customer has made any claims etc. Then I send a letter out to customer advising customer that it is unsuitable and how much redress they will be getting. All the cases go to Quality and Director of Remediation for a second opinion. 

Everyday is different for me as I am doing different things, that are allocated to me. So I do other things like listening into other people's cases to make sure that the case is evaluated correctly. 

Also help my manager's with coaching sessions with colleagues that are struggling to reach their targets. 

At the moment I am managing the Administration Department, which includes organising mail every morning and recording this on the system, making sure customers complaints have been logged and verified to Customer Relations and updating systems accordingly. Monitoring quality standards with agents to ensure compliance and providing them with daily targets. Providing my colleagues with regular feedback on their work and giving agent’s appropriate coaching. Planning how to manage back log and updating this to my managers.

Offered job at interview, turned it down as 20 years experience does not a level 2 plumber make! Was assured that it was entry level procedure and that after 6 months level and salary would go up. Took job on this basis as the sales pitch for the job is strong!
Cue 18 months of stonewalling by a incompetent ASM as the company completely reneged on all its commitments to the engineers because they wanted to expand into the US and buy the AA emergency home response and  Checkatrade-now investing millions into the Checkatrade marketing.
Repeated attempts to engage with HR were blocked and at one point I was told pursuing would have ‘consequences’. Homeserve seem to encourage a ‘them and us’ between managers and engineers as I felt this during all communications. 
Work wise-insane hours, constant battle to get paid properly for those hours, endless 1:1’s with no feedback or progression routes. Targets which seem to benefit everyone but the engineer meeting them as they dismantled the bonus scheme (for buying new shiny things) 
Given holiday when you don’t want it-refused it when you do.
The only way to make the money they promise is to already have been employed by them for the past 5 years as the new scheme is just made that way. Ie-my colleague making over 45k because of bonus percentage based on length of employment. But now earnings capped so I could never make that. Pointless!
 A definite feeling of ‘it’s who you know’ if you want to progress-or that may just be the god-awful management style. If you take a job here - join a union. You’ll need their support. Otherwise have a look at your skills, realise your own value and be self-employed. Maybe when they’ve got to sub-contract us all they’ll get it.

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