retail advisor

sales advisor

assistant store manager

retail sales associate

retail assistant store manager

Vodafone

Having experienced first-hand to what I'd describe as my best job, Three strives to perfect the business relations between its customers, network and broadbanding as well as in-store service and communication. I worked there for little under a year (10 months at most) and undoubtedly, my favourite part of each day was the team. My work colleagues and I all got along well - similar age, interests and so on. My assistant manager was always a blessing as humor and general conversation with them was nothing but appreciated, alike the same with my team.

However, what first seemed like a perfect opportunity to grow in to a genuine career, like most reviews with Three, it was snubbed and ruined by the likes of poor management. My Store Manager, although what he thought to be "Helpful", "Doing us a service" and "Productive" in the workplace with nothing but a nightmare. Though having a sizeable amount of experience within Customer Service, I've never seen anything like I did at Three, both in the store I worked, and company-wide.

Thoughout the time of my employment with Three, I began to notice a common trend in the upper-hierarchy of the business. That being, "NUMBERS", simply. All those wanting to start at Three will have to attend a 3 day training course to expand your knowledge on Customer Service, Satisfaction and Store/Business Equity. During these training periods, you'll be taught the key elements of WHAT you should do and expect, and WHY you should. Yet despite these teachings, what I experienced in my job was nothing but the complete opposite!

We had been taught to care and aid our customers with any query, opportunity and problem they may have encountered. My Store Manager however had the narrow mindset of trying to force products down the throats of each of our customers, regardless of age, gender and so on. I had to unfortunately witness him force an iPhone Tablet to be bought by an elderly woman who was clearly against the idea and even said so, but felt like she had to take it anyway due to how confrontational my manager was being. I know this as she came in the following day to try and return the product as she felt forced, but couldn't as our contracts state that there isn't a returns policy under "Change of Mind". This scenario has happened multiple times beforehand.

Again, this became an on-going occurrence whenever my Store Manager would see to a customer only when he NEEDED to. He used to spend most of the day sitting in the office, watching us from the CCTV doing little to nothing and drinking coffee on most work-days. Both myself and my colleagues also felt abused in the workplace due to the amount of, to what he called, "criticism". However, calling someone something derogatory or offensive isn't what I'd remark as critique, especially when we're tasked to ask our Store Manager for feedback on a daily/weekly basis depending on footfall.

The commission and targets set for each month are ridiculously high. So much so that you'll never achieve them unless its been a REALLY good month with continous customer-flow which was... one every 4-5 months? With that in mind, each of us at the end of the month would be taken in to the office individually only to be berated would treated poorly because we hadn't reached target. At least, that's what he says it is. I later found out that our numbers contributed to his at the same time meaning that he would get a portion of our bonus despite doing nothing, very fair system.

Another example of hierarchy ignorance is when my team and I were met by a new Area Manager who proceeded to insult myself, my Assistant Manager who was asian and of darker skin was called "Mohammed" despite that not being his name at ALL (Racial Stereotyping and Generalized) due to his look which is unacceptable, and was overlooked despite brining it up with HR. We were also told that we clearly didn't know how to dress ourselves because our shirts were untucked and that someone was wearing coloured socks, despite sock-colour not being a legal requirement on our contracts or the uniform code.

In short, Three IS a decent company to work for. Benefits are alright but COULD be better. In-store team and general conversations are sought after and appreciated. I talk to my team still as good friendships were made, as well as my Assistant Manager. But, much like the reviews on this website, the ONLY thing that needs to be sorted and overseen is the upper-management i.e. Store Manager(s), Area Manager(s) etc as there's clearly a social clique within the company's circle, and what I believe to be an extreme case of narcissistic, misogynistic and racist behaviour. One that breeds toxicity, makes the work enviornment unruly and truly unprofessional.

I am a highly motivated individual with exceptional cross-functional management experience.
I have a broad range of skills including people management, account management, recruitment, recruitment branch management, sales and service management. I also have a deep understanding and experience of areas such as customer service, sales, retail, credit and collections, MI, scheduling, manufacturing, construction and utilities.
I currently work in the telecommunications industry, where I am a respected and influential member of the team.
Throughout my time at Vodafone I have won awards for my service and skills. I strongly believe that you are only as good as your team, and that a healthy performance comes from nurturing and growing your team enabling them to be the best they can be, every day without exception.
I am always looking for ways to improve myself, processes and procedures that don’t work or could be done better to give us continuous improvement and growth in performance and associated results. I am adaptable, flexible, calm and thrive on a challenge.
I love people management and my passion is developing people to be the best they can be. Providing constructive feedback continually is just as important as positive feedback – it’s how your deliver it. 
Team work is key to success, and building the strongest team relationship is very important to me and to the success of my team. 
Customer service is at the heart of everything I do, and I do not answer questions / submit bids etc, without knowing it is 100% accurate and what the customer has asked for. 
I currently work in a sales role where negotiating and influencing is essential, as well as building strong and lasting relationships with customers. I work by the phrase: ‘It takes a long time to build trust, and seconds to destroy it’ – I live by this phrase. 
As my current customers fall under the large enterprise umbrella, they can be quite demanding and expect things completed within very tight timescales. It is important to remember that a flexible approach helps both parties. I am very good at problem solving and am often given ‘problem’ accounts to turnaround, due to my tenacity, my ability to engage others, get a root cause and solve issues quickly.  
I hold regular service review meetings with my customers to ensure I stay on top of issues as soon as they arise. 
Ultimately, the customers I manage are my responsibility and I am accountable if they are unhappy and choose to leave Vodafone. So I go above and beyond to ensure that their needs and requirements are being met and where possible exceeded, it is imperative that I understand how their organisation works. My customers enjoy working with me, and I have received positive feedback from them repeatedly – the main one being, “we are so glad that you have joined the account, we are seeing real progress from where we were”. 
In my previous role, I managed the Corporate Customer Service team. (12 -20 team members) It’s very easy as a manager to ‘tell’ the team what to do, but I don’t believe that works long term (i.e. what happens if you are out of the office or on annual leave – the team will not be able to run without instruction). When I take on any new team, I continually speak with each team member, l get to know them and work out what they want, what they enjoy about their role, and what they don’t. I can then tailor a plan for the team to enable each person to have a ‘champion’ role, something they are really good at and very passionate about. It also helps to identify where the team have knowledge gaps and where extra training is required. I also ask them what they think would help, and where possible implement their ideas – I find that this technique works especially well in times of cultural change and it empowers them.
This approach encourages development within the team and facilitates a happy, highly motivated team, it also ensures that the team are putting the customers first, and aiming for a first time resolution every time - they listen and care more.
My role’s have also included 121 performance reviews, coaching, stakeholder management, feedback, performance and absence management, HR queries, KPI and SLA management, remote people management, project management and holiday cover for senior management. 

Thank you.

READ THIS FOR A FULL BREAKDOWN ON VODAFONE

First off, the bonus scheme - they tell you that you can get up to £2000 extra in bonuses but when they get your payslip they deduct from the bonus itself. Each month my bonus should have been £180 which they would tell me, but on the payslip it is deducted from and halved. 

Second, employee mental health. They preach that they cater to it but don't, and especially during the Covid-19 pandemic where all employees were working from home. It was stressful being cut off from people, but they removed systems and processes to the point we couldn't do anything for customers and were frequently yelled at for not being able to do a simple thing we could have done before. It wasn't until six weeks in that they gave us alternate processes. 

Thirdly, they don't treat their employees like human being. Some of the processes are poorly explained or subject to interpretation that it becomes so easy for an employee to make a punishable mistake. They talk about the severity of these issues but do nothing to make them easily avoided as they should be, and the employee pays the price, not the company. I have watched hard working people lose their jobs or put under more stress by the company for simple mistakes; breaking down in tears at their desks and where are management? No where to be seen. It's other colleagues having to step in to help before being yelled at for not being on the phones. There is no such thing as compassion at this company. 

Fourth, the hours. This isn't a 9-5 job. This is typically an 8-5 job or 12-9 with little flexibility, and poor management of breaks. I've seen people, and myself, having to sit at their desk for four hours straight with no breaks, and that's not easy. There is always at least one call a day that has a negative impact; whether that's an abusive customer or one going through so many horrible things and suddenly your the messenger for further problems. You also have barely any time off or time outside of work to do anything. Day's off don't come in pairs, you get sporadic single days each week; for example work Monday - Wednesday, have Thursday off, work Friday, Saturday off, in on Sunday then you are onto the following weeks rotation which could be Monday-Friday; putting you on six days straight of working. The only days where you can do anything after work is on an 8-5 shift, but that's still not much and i only had for one week in a month. This is very much a job where you live to work, not work to live as it should be. 

Fifth; their are massive divides between departments and branches. Nobody wants to help each other, and that adds to employee stress, but also to customer stress. Customers are constantly transferred incorrectly by cowards unwilling to do their jobs, or agents with no knowledge of who the customer should be with. I've witnessed customers being transferred through ten agents just for a simple billing question that nobody wants to answer because a mistake has been made, and they don't want to admit it. 

To anyone who has bothered to read this; don't join this company. They day I finally left was surprisingly the happiest I've felt after a year working for this company and I've landed on my feet in less than two weeks of going. There are better jobs out there that balance work, living, and don't leave you in a position where your life is just work. I barely got time with my friends. I barely got to see my family. My days off were spent getting things in order; washing, shopping, anything that needed doing, and with the structure of days off I barely got a day to properly relax or do anything I wanted. As I said before, this is a job where you live to work. Work to live and enjoy your life. Here you'll just be miserable.

Vodafone is a great company to work for. Obvious benefits are huge discounts on your airtime which cut a lot of money of your personal phone contract, the signal is genuinely good and when offers are on its great for selling. 

This place is great for teaching you general social skills and complaint management, and the downfall is in the word. Management.

The stores are franchised (kinda like McDonald's or subway) so it's not officially vodafone, leaving the partner agents to do what they please. The partner agent at the Warrington store is fantastic. Could not fault anything with them at all; empathetic, genuinely cares for your well-being, chatty, upbeat and always brightens your day.

The store manager however is not. They are a great manager for a store, but they are not a sales manager. They're more a manager plus a sales agent. They do not help you generate sales, they go so far as to take sales for themselves if you're on the wrong side of them, even though the sales they make do not go towards their bonus, like yours do. They are not open to any idea of change, it's either their way, or no way. They do not motivate you to generate sales in any type of way, and only focus on the negatives of your performance. Even after a month of having the highest sales targets in the store by a lot, and hitting every statistic apart from one, they will zone into that one that you didn't hit, and make you feel worthless. 

If you're contracted to 20 hours, and do regular overtime, they will not pro rata this into the holidays that you actually get. You are expected to arrive 15 minutes before your start time (unpaid), at every shift, just to be told how the store is failing and how individual performance is not good. Even in months where the store is overperforming, the manager will find that one thing that the store isn't, and make everyone feel terrible because of it. 

They expect you to book all of your holidays at the start of the year, and you're not allowed to book for example Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday, instead, you have to book the whole week off, wasting your holidays if you've got nothing to use them for.

If there is ever a problem or a certain reason as to why you haven't hit a statistic or maybe slightly under your revenue, I wouldn't even bother trying to explain it. The manager will get their own idea in their head as to why this is, and will twist your words and thoughts into thinking that's why it is too.

Overall, the pay is just above minimum wage, the manager will make you feel terrible, they will take sales from you in front of your face, they don't motivate you to generate sales, no incentives at all, and they're more than happy to retract or remove anything, as part of the "business needs". 

So if you are an experienced sales agent, who is more than happy to accept a less minimum pay, and a worse bonus structure, or, someone looking for a part time job, where they will milk overtime as much as they can do, with no benefits included, then apply here!


My typical day was opening the store, completing daily tasks, such as cash management, stock reports and checks, accepting in deliveries and return products to the warehouse. Respond to daily communications such as sales figures, training requirements or other store requests for help and assistance. Would rely important information back to the store team. Supervise, motivate and train staff, under direction of manager. On several occasions ran the store inbetween managers coming and leaving the store and during annual leave. As well as effectively managing and delegating tasks, I also managed my own sales targets, gave great customer services, promoted, persuaded, negotiated and listened to customers about products and services. As superviser I would have to manage difficult situations with customers, trying to resolve issues straight away, as well as deal with staff issues.
The role changes depending on your level and how many hours you work. Began as a 16 hour trainee and grew and developed myself into supervisory level and full time.
Hardest part of the job is the constant pressure of targets, striving to achieve targets on a monthly basis. In addition working as part of a very small team of 5. If a personality clash occured, sometimes it is not possible to avoid that person in the way you can in a larger store or office with more than 5 team members. Found progression can be slow in many instances in getting to higher levels in the retail side, as with small teams you may have to wait some time to be able to get physically into the role.
Best part of the job, the customers, especially those you build up a good rapport with, who will travel store to store with you. Every day has different customers and a different need or issue to work through. The team achieving their sales results as a store, it can be a real 'buzz' and can be a close knit 'family' style experience.
I learned about people in a store sense, in terms of hierarchy, learning traits, different personalities, how to manage people and keep calm in difficult situations. I learned to cope with pressure in various forms and when to pick people up during difficult times in different ways that benefitted them.
Overall my experience with the company was a positive one, but it is not a job that anyone can do. As it involves a constantly changing environment, pressure, speaking one to one with people all day long, and always training in new technology and services which at times can be every single day.

The benefits you seemingly get  working for Vodafone are wonderful, along side the positive attitude of everyone who works there, upon first encounter it seems like a wonderful place to work.

In all honesty, it is pretty great, at times, everything other than the physical job is wonderful, the way they take care of staff is lovely, and generally speaking everyone is there to help everyone and management is wonderful. 

However, some of the elements that your job performance is entirely based on are things you can't control. For example: 
 - Those scores you get back after a phone call (the ratings that sometimes get sent out) are something that heavily monitors how successful you are in your job. The ones Vodafone typically send out are ratings for; 
   > Vodafone as a whole
   > Service from the person on the phone 
   > System experience.
Now, only the 'Vodafone as a whole' score matters, you could be receiving constant 10/10's for the service you're providing and the system experience for the customer but those aren't counted or taken into consideration when looking at you as an employee. It's hard to change someones negative opinion of a company as a whole if they've encountered a lot of negativity in the past, no matter how good the one experience with you as a call taker was. Which, is unfair. 
However, there's more, those surveys are sent out to everyone, even those who you can't gain account access for (without account access you can only really point them to store, or help with general physical phone problems, how to take a photo etc), if a customer can't gain access to an account because of failed security checks we can't escalate to a manager, and in most cases, can't help them further which results in a very unhappy caller, and of course, a very negative survey coming back. Now, if we can't help customers without gaining account access or can't escalate further internally; then surely we as staff shouldn't be penalised for following procedure? But, we are. 

If you can handle a very regimented day, sometimes showing up for your shift and within half a hour having to take your 30 minute break for the day because you have to follow a strict day rota, and are ok with shifts sometimes falling 6 days in a row, then you'll be fine. That sounds like a negative but some people are built to be able to handle that environment. 

Vodafone do look after their staff, and I only ever had positive interactions with the staff around me as a whole. The job is just, tough, and very draining physically and mentally. Vodafone clearly know this and benefit the staff as such.

The work environment and staff were so much fun, I learned a lot about selling in a creative way, using the prices in away to manipulate them into working out to be a multi product offer and selling to people that weren't even present like family members and friends because it sounded and worked out to be beneficial to them and us in the way we used our price matrix.
Management was very tough as we were to think smart in every situation and not waste any opportunity or time during our hours of work, using our spare time to go onto our retail intranet and use the support there to improve our sales pitch and limit down the errors that we were making. Due to it being such a target driven work environment we were always reprimanded for anything we done to sabotage the chances of us hitting our store targets and also making any errors during the time we spent processing contracts for our customers. It was a very easy thing to do by mistake in a fast paced environment as there was a set process for each type of contract and each type of offer and each type of customer, and whenever an error was made, however little or large you will always get a one to one with the management and/or a record of discussion.
It was a lot of fun meeting customers, talking with them and going through the process of signing up to a contract; advising them on different products and prices, having conversations with them that invited me into their world and preference when coming to buy a phone, however what was hard was the knowing prices and product knowledge off of the top of my head as there was a lot to take in and only so little time in each shift (as little as 4 hours per shift, full of customer service).
Some days would be completely quiet all day meaning we'd not even touch on our daily target and some days would be very quiet and then all of a sudden so busy that you are having to quickly process everything, ensuring everything is done correctly, which sometimes wouldn't be so easy and would result in a record of discussion due to the simple fact of me forgetting to include one compulsory thing, which was forgotten in the busy moment we were facing, trying to satisfy all customers entering our store to live us to our store foot fall, or else we would have a one to one with our manager asking us what went wrong with all of the customers that enter the store that day.

been with the company for a few years, worked hard in different stores with a performance always above average, years later i'm still stuck at the bottom of the chain as a sales adviser. progress is way much more about politics and how you project yourself to others than based on actual personal achievements. this company prefers to reward unproven people and unlawful cowboys, instead of people who do the right things the right way that won't put themselves in front of others.

it's a sales job so there is quite a lot of pressure to sell and at the same time keeping the customers satisfied, which is incredibly hard as there are many different variables why customers won't be happy and the liability is on the adviser that gets to serve them. at the end of that you will be personally blamed, named and shamed as it impacts on store performance, even if you haven't done something wrong, doesn't matter.

considering that bonus is won and lost not only through sales but with customer satisfaction scores it makes the reward very random as you deal with 100s of customers a month and each unhappy one has a massive impact over your bonus pay. this often leads to deflation as you have to work on the edge most of the time to only seldomly get something in return. 

the culture (depending upon managers and regional managers) is often not the healthiest as it hard sales more than ever, putting the advisers under high pressure to sell additional products every time someone comes to a store with a sales query or something else. this also means that depending on the morals of the manager you'll be forced into doing more or less dodgy stuff, and you will often be blamed for not doing "your job" if you don't deliver the consistency they expect you to, no matter how hard you are working.

one of the biggest issues at the present time is the fact that everything takes a back seat vs sales, including things like lunches, mindful, effort-managing rotas, you'll find yourself often working 5, 6 days in a row for no good reason, which is an absolute killer in a job like this where you need to be fresh like sparkling water. and forget about weekends off. if you get a manager who is only focused on kpis, rotas and breaks and overall satisfaction goes out the window, it will be all about the numbers, and you are one.

on the bright side the company still has a few decent benefits (not as many as when i joined) and the wage isn't bad, despite being low for the amount of skills needed and generated revenue.

They put you on a 3 week training program where the first week is one where they give you a week long propaganda advert of how Vodafone is all about the customers and taking care of their employees. 2 weeks is spent on roleplay and group/team exercises and with little or no focus upon learning the complicated and temperamental system they use called "Siebel". 

You then go into a crash course known as "Gradbay", which is designated in a disorganised way where a large group of trainees are thrust into a call centre environment to struggle their way through live calls with little or no idea how to use/navigate their way through the system and constantly having to put customers on hold to ask questions to a floorwalker for clarification, when that same floorwalker has about thirty other trainees asking for the same help and assistance. 

Basically you are set up to fail in a job before you have even began. You find that the entire premise of the job is to fob angry customers off with paltry sums of money and apply them as "credits" to their accounts and expect them to accept it and go away in order to stop them taking it further to the Ombudsman. 

The hours are an endurance test where 8-10 hour shift patterns drain you of any enthusiasm you initially had for the job at the beginning and any guidance you ask from other more experienced staff is generally met with derision as it is interpreted as a "weakness" rather than something to work on and improve. 

It is a shame that such a company has no interest in developing its trainees and chooses to spend so much time in propagating the illusion that it is trying to improve its public image rather than the one that got a record fine of £4.6m for its poor customer service. 

If it spent more time and money on training its staff on the dated systems and convoluted processes it expects its trainees to pick up within a short space of time then its purported focus on customer service would be more believable. 

In short, i wouldn't recommend Vodafone as an employer as despite the sleek and smooth billion dollar corporate persona it tries to present, it really is quite a shambles as a company.

From the start they were told about my learning disabilities, dyslexia to name one and I was assured there’d be help there to allow me to fulfil the role as a TSAR agent. There is absolutely no help. There is no occupational health, no adjustments made to assist and no outside help was offered. They don’t even recognise any Union so you’re on your own. 

After the interview, the vetting process was a ridiculous. It’s a job taking calls and they vetted you like you were going to work for the secret service. It was long winded, way to personal and they were on to you all the time. They called my son who applied there and hit the job a liar because he put down he used to earn money through Twitch but had no payslips. He withdrew his job in the end because he was literally bombarded with emails and calls from them. 

The training was an absolute shitshow, sitting infront of computer modules being told to click through it as fast as you can do it can be completed is not training. I was verbally attacked and humiliated because of my learning disabilities by one of the trainers in Stoke in front of a classroom of 18. The training was a joke. Next you’d get a week in a classroom going over products then a week listening to calls. 

The day we started with live customers is the first day we had access to the actual system. There’s was minimal training and they literally just expect you to get on with it. The pressure being dyslexic and having to keep asking them for help which was just we’re giving you more time was their response. 

I kept asking for help, I received none. When a customer calls they go through a vulnerability script but if you’re an employee who’s vulnerable, don’t bother applying, they really are a terrible company with absolutely no regards or understanding of disabilities. 

Top Job Titles	Average salary
Retail advisor 800 salaries reported	£13.15 per hour
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Assistant store manager 3 salaries reported	£13.37 per hour
Retail sales associate 2 salaries reported	£13.47 per hour
Retail assistant store manager 1 salary reported	£16.60 per hour

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