Abstract
I recently went through a vigorous month of training here at AT&T and what I found that what is described in training is not WHATis expected of you once you are in the store. So what I will go over is what is expected of you in the training process once you return to your home store after you have spent a month on the road traveling and training. You can expect that 85% of what you were taught in training will have no effect on your everyday and ongoing training in your job.
Title of Paper
In the training process you are told to work on modules in a self-learn environment for your first 5 weeks and you are also told to observe other employees and that management is there to help you if you ever need help.
At AT&T the managers sole job is to OBSERVE and take notes based on how you interact with each customer. You will find that when you are with your first customer that you will be pulled aside and asked anything and everything about your customer. If you have ever been in a position where you have worked with the general public before this is something that is in the culture with your new job and for me this was something different for me. I was also told that I need to learn all about my customer before I am able to get from the safe what the customer asked for. So if a customer comes into your store and says “ I am here to upgrade I want the new iPhone”. You are required to ask them what they do for fun, who they have as home solutions and also if they have home security. Your manager will pull you aside for what is called a halftime and ask you all of the above and if you don’t have the answers with multiple customers you will be put on what is called counseling. If you by chance think that you can make these things up think again, because after your halftime your manager goes over and interacts with the customer. You are also required to take multiple products out even if the customer asks just for one and show them to the customer and ask them to spend more money.
In training it was brought up that we are to follow the five steps with all customers and that is something that the management team also stresses daily. If they see you not doing one of the five steps you will be pulled aside and you will have to role-play on all of the five steps that they teach. For me in my experience I was not shaking every customers hand when they walked in the door and I instantly was yelled at and had to do the role-playing immediately.
You are also required to walk each customer through the door and hand him or her business cards, if by chance you don’t walk the customer through the door and just to the door you will also be placed on a verbal warning.
Having been in the cellular industry for many years I was always taught to make sure that you activate a device and get credit approved before you open the device incase there is a hang up in the transaction.
AT&T wants the device set up and ready to go BEFORE the transaction is actually completed. So if you fear of having a transaction not approved because of credit per say they don’t care they want to see you setting up the device before you ring it out.
TIME AND ATTENDANCE are a very important part of your job; they work on a point system so if you are ever five minutes late or call off you achieve points. Once you have so many points you will be terminated, so what the union reps in training said about not being able to be fired because of tardiness was not true. In my training the union representative said that since we were union that AT&T could not fire you without union representation, this is true accept when it pertains to the time and attendance policy. We were told in training that we are actually allowed to take a hour break off of the clock and then have two 15 minute breaks on the clock during the day and this is also not the case. There is a queue system as it pertains to customers and checking in breaks is scheduled according to customer need and the queue. For instance I worked on a Sunday and there were about 10 customers in the queue and I had to ask a customer to excuse me to use the restroom, based on management expecting me to continuously go from customer to customer.
It will be very rare in busy times that you actually get your lunch break and also your two 15 minute breaks. You may also find yourself only have being at work for an hour and management tells you to go to lunch already, because they fear that it may get busy later, this all depends on the volume of your store and traffic.
It was also told to you in training that you will receive a guaranteed commission within the first six months of employment, this is true But that commission is on what you would call an at risk. What at risk means is that you will receive that 1300 in commission, but if you are not hitting your sales numbers within six months you may be at risk to lose your job. During the training the union representative stated that they will always threaten your job and this is true when you aren’t selling or selling the way they want you too because it is a numbers game. You will be required to hit your at risk numbers along with also selling your home solutions and warranties or you will be written up once again.
IN training with AT&T you are told many things that you will find to not be true once you hit the ground running in your store. This can be frustrating so I wanted to give you an exact job description of what will be asked of you. I was caught off guard by many of these things as I have always thought of AT&T as one of the best carriers and always thought they were ranked so high because they treated people fairly. Being in the wireless industry the last five years this was a dream job to me and they tell you all the things that you want to hear in the interview and training processes. Only about 15% of what you were taught in training actually pertains to your job. The trainers don’t tell you about the coaching’s the halftime’s the one on ones that you are required to do with managers each week and if you are not mentally prepared for these things it can be very intimidating for you the first couple weeks. For me personally I was shocked and I still feel like I am always being watched or that I am about to be yelled at for something that I did wrong. I guess that if AT&T were forthcoming on the level of micromanaging that they do in the job they would have less people apply for the job. It makes sense why they are always on a hiring circle and recruiting, because a person can only take so much and I hope that this helps you have a better understanding of your job instructions and what will be expected of you.