None-existent management who blanket deny, deflect and gaslight regarding real issues.
Zero engagement from management unless it's reporting figures and trying to curry (no pun intended) favour with an exhausted confused and often demoralized team to squeeze more out of them. Superficial platitudes and fake positivity to 'rally the troop' but this falls on deaf ears and most staff know it's all nonsense. Team meetings from my experience are essentially awkward silence because everybody knows what's going on despite the fake happy forced conversations. The silence speaks volumes.
Encouragement comes from management who happily will discuss numbers but can barely respond to case escalations to a manager when a customer has been failed/let down. No leadership present at all. Helicopter management with next to zero presence at all. Your knowledge of management existing at all is a Teams profile that pops up in the chat once in a while. Lucky to hear a human voice you can connect to a real human being. You may never actually meet your manager in real life.
Next to zero training provided. Basic powerpoint presentations for the first few weeks and then, good luck cause you're on your own! Expected to jump in from day one at the deep end and struggle to keep above the surface. Left to be 'trained' by staff who are not trained/qualified or remotely competent to be in a supervisory role whatsoever.
Companywide practices/processes are 'gray' areas to say the least and lots of school boy errors being made across the entire company which borders of negligence and sometimes more significant than that. Made to keep hush about these things though and try and undermine any customer who can see what is going on and knows it's not right. Forbidden to discuss it or otherwise break from the ranks and be ostracized. Becomes a bitter tug of war where your aim is to undermine and deflect the customers experience instead of actually being a conduit for change, or at the very least, having a system in process to make sure these mistakes don't happen again - have due process that ACTUALLY works.
ZERO accountability for problems being caused. Managers nowhere to be seen when the gaping holes in the way customer services is run is exposed by concerned and confused staff. Just empty words and superficial quick fix solutions/distractions. Would be okay if you knew you were making a difference but the SAME problems happen ALL THE TIME without fail and NOBODY is taking ownership. This then drips down to the complaints department who are hung out to dry and martyred. Not paid nowhere near enough for this. This is the job of middle/upper management. As observed already, you'd be hard pushed to believe these even exist.
Basic lack of competency in most staff who granted may hit numbers expected but don't respect customers and actively encourage you to bend the rules, values, morals, principles etc to achieve goals. No real desire to help people in many staff but not everybody. Lots of corrupted people, particularly the most experienced who are from my observations dry of any empathy and shut off a long time ago. It's understandable really, the company does nothing to salvage any humanity you have left remaining after being barraged by endless complaints you know on a conscience level are evidence of global failings in the company. That's going to mess with anybody who has a strand of humanity and ability to put themselves in the shoes of many of the customers.
Systems are a joke. The IT department is overseas so completely detached from the real operations of the company in the UK. Support tickets are often not dealt with properly. The systems themselves are archaic and not fit for purpose. You're expected to normalize this. Problems almost everyday with staff not being able to do their job properly because of poor management of system infrastructure.
Mental health awareness visibility is close to ZERO. For a job that sucks everything from you, there is nothing but superficial 'solutions' which look good on paper but in reality are just facades. Stress is very real in this job and you'll find yourself questioning your abilities fairly soon. Burnout also very real as you lose the ability to be there for every customer who has been failed massively, and there is nothing to break the fall when you're feeling the heat. You're told you're a valued member of the team but you're nothing but numbers on spreadsheets. Any support is mere lip service. No communication between departments. It seems they live in completely different worlds which means problems occur all the time when teamwork on a wider level is really the left foot not knowing what the right foot is doing.
First level department are extremely poorly prepared for dealing with the public. Most customers will be very vocal about this. This department is based abroad in varying countries. Many can't speak reasonable levels of English to communicate. Many staff are not fit for the role and significantly destroy the reputation of Curry's by making monumentally poor and often damaging decisions. Most of them don't and won't listen. Most of them will mislead the customer. Most will send off complaints that contain information that makes no sense, missing information, wrong contact details, copy/paste data that is absolutely useless for escalations department to follow. Escalations are tasked with mopping up this mess which DID NOT exist before they dealt with the complaint so now, the complaint is basically about the FAILINGS of customer services AS WELL as the original complaint.
No progression opportunities. Everybody who has a 'different' role departmentally is assuming that role without a genuine promotion. Supervisors are really customer service reps that are doing the work of a higher position while being paid for a lower position. Lots of people really trying to make a difference but formally on paper are on a basic wage and their job role has never changed. Very few who are experienced in the team are in different positions than when they started. Some of them with the company for 5-10 years. Made to believe there are opportunities but you can't depend on recognition and fostering beneficial working relationships for it to happen as it won't make a difference. Lots of "managers", " supervisors" and "trainers" but none who are officially recognized as such.
You are simply not appreciated or even acknowledged.
You don't exist other than on a spreadsheet showing how many cases you have done. Made worse when its remote working and you're already isolated from the benefits of being in a physical workplace environment to reach out and get an idea of where you are working and who you are working with. Distance and detachment from others is encouraged so be prepared to feel alone much of the time. Good if you don't feel like people or can't be bothered with actually building working relationships and turning up because you can be illusive and shadowy and still get paid. Doesn't help the team dynamic in the long run.
Facilities/support in place to bridge the work from home gap do not exist. Microsoft Teams is all you have and that's all management seem to think is enough despite the job being so demanding and requiring constant communication and involvement to effectively do your job. Chat messages is all you'll see, occasional "team meeting" and if you start to think that's not cutting it, you're on your own from here. Can be very isolating which can stressful and demoralizing. Biggest takeaway here - support system DOES NOT exist. Managers can take days to respond to messages despite being in the same department. Escalations can take weeks to be dealt with.
Real meaningful conversations with the team to be conducive and effective, and functional dialogue are extremely rare. You won't hear anything from your colleagues (or even know they exist) unless you pursue the path of personally reaching out and removing the distance created by Curry's. And that's not your job and you're not getting paid enough to do the work they don't want to do or even seem realize is important to begin with.
You're not helping customers, you're covering the failings of the company on a massive level and the risk to reward ratio is nowhere near worthwhile. Very few complaints are one-off and organic. Mostly all are the same failings repeating over and over again and you're tasked with basically pretending to the customer what they are experiencing is a one-off and rare when you know that's far from the truth and nothing is being done. You know you're essentially lying to the customer. This over time, if you actually care and have a strand of regard for customers, will eat away at you.
