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Sep. 18th, 2020 07:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thedarlingoneStill alive. Have been having a lot of fun with budgeting and math, including figuring out how to calculate payroll taxes properly so I can predict my take-home pay better.
(That's actual fun, not like sarcastic fun. I don't know how I ever thought I was unmathematical, except that bad teaching can ruin anything. I love making numbers do a little dance and come out right. I can't remember numbers for three seconds, so there's a lot of tabbing back and forth between my calculator history and my Gdocs, but I can understand them. Hell, I only just got any training on the system at work that does bill projections for us, because my training login had had a glitch so I could never access that system during training, and then I'd just limped along for the next two years doing all my bill projections by hand. :P My supervisors kept saying "okay we need to get you some practice with that" and then Not. It was only like last week that I was finally brought for a meeting with my boss and my boss's boss about "why the hell did you have this three hour call yesterday", and I was like "You do realize I was never trained in the system you're telling me I should have been using to run a dozen different bill projections for these customers", and Bossboss was sort of like "what the hell you've been here for two years and had like fourteen supervisors how did none of them ever show you how to use one of our most important systems" only like in polite corporate speak, and then my boss actually did take some time to work with me and show me around the system and let me fiddle with it till I got a bit more comfortable.)
Um. That got long. I think I was saying I like math. ^_^ I found out the other day that Medicare and Social Security tax get deducted from my pre-tax 401(k) contributions, which seems kind of bass-ackwards, like... you're deducting my retirement savings... from my retirement savings? But it sort of makes sense that they wouldn't be getting it when I withdraw the 401(k) money and also start getting Social Security checks in my old age (assuming the Social Security program lasts that long which I am told it won't), so the guvmint gotta get their cut sometime, I guess. XD
I also just now found out that work recently changed our bonus structure in a way that delights me. See, for the first year I worked here, the bonus structure was broken in my favor, in such a way that I was bonusing $500 a month just on basically having good surveys. This was really nice and allowed me to pay down the majority of my debts. For this second year, though, they changed it drastically in order to weight in things like call length and cellular plan upsells ("value generation", gag me with a spoon), and I haven't bonused all year as a result. It is objectively a better structure, though, because it is now based off of hours worked -- instead of a flat $500 if your metrics are thus and so, you get a bonus amount per hour, ranging up to $4 an hour for the hypothetical perfect agent. So if you work full time and have all your relevant metrics good, you could bonus $704 an hour, more if you worked overtime. (You're allowed to work up to seven twelves if you choose. A hypothetically perfect agent who did that could bonus like $1056 a month. On top of the regular $14 an hour base pay.)
But NOW, okay, they have made one slight but very important change. It used to be that your call length, surveys, upsells, repeat callers, and time wasted on outbound calls were all balanced equally, and you had to have 3 of the 5 pretty good to bonus. I only had 2 of 5, so I did not bonus. This month, it is changed so that your surveys, upsells, repeats, and outbound are weighted equally, and then your potential bonus is just cut in half if you have super long calls like I do. It can also be cut in half if you transfer more than one in five calls, and cut by a quarter if you have more than three days unexcused absence in the work month, but those impact me less.
So all of a sudden, just having good surveys and low repeat callers is enough to qualify me for a bonus. Not a big one, maybe $100 if my metrics stay where they are, but maybe up to $350 or even $440 if I manage to make some fairly small improvements to my call length and get enough good surveys. (A satisfied customer accidentally gave me a failed survey early in the month, and even though she immediately sent "Oops I meant 10" in the comments block, apparently there's no way to remove it from reducing my bonus. I just have to get 34 good surveys to override it. o_O I'm at nine good surveys halfway through the month, so I doubt I'm going to make that. :P)
Anyway, and then also, what I found out while poking at my teammates' publicly visible metrics for comparison purposes, is that if your calls are short enough, you can now increase your bonus -- double it, or even get a total 250% of the originally calculated bonus if you're under par. (Par being the 12 minute 40 second sitewide goal in this case.) The hypothetical perfect agent could bonus a staggering $1760 a month, which is more than my total take-home pay, just by working 40 hours, and it's not even terribly hypothetical because I saw the record of an agent at another site who's set to bonus that $1760 for this month if her metrics don't slip. Or if a perfect agent worked seven twelves, which would be a superhuman feat to keep your metrics that good the whole time, they could make a fucking $2640 (pre-tax) just in bonus money for the month.
So, y'know, it's not like I'm suddenly going to double my pay. My outbound calls are consistently high, because I'll get a call where the person fell asleep listening to our hold music (true story) and then call them back and spend an hour helping them with shit. And my upsells are... sporadic. But I do tend to take care of all my customers' issues if possible so they don't have to call back. And except for the occasional fat-fingered customer or one who wasn't going to be pleased with anything, my surveys are consistently excellent. So if we keep this new bonus structure, which I really hope we do, it's like... it's extremely encouraging. Like I actually feel like I have a hope of bonusing again, which gives me more motivation to try to shave down my call time and work on my upsells.
(That's actual fun, not like sarcastic fun. I don't know how I ever thought I was unmathematical, except that bad teaching can ruin anything. I love making numbers do a little dance and come out right. I can't remember numbers for three seconds, so there's a lot of tabbing back and forth between my calculator history and my Gdocs, but I can understand them. Hell, I only just got any training on the system at work that does bill projections for us, because my training login had had a glitch so I could never access that system during training, and then I'd just limped along for the next two years doing all my bill projections by hand. :P My supervisors kept saying "okay we need to get you some practice with that" and then Not. It was only like last week that I was finally brought for a meeting with my boss and my boss's boss about "why the hell did you have this three hour call yesterday", and I was like "You do realize I was never trained in the system you're telling me I should have been using to run a dozen different bill projections for these customers", and Bossboss was sort of like "what the hell you've been here for two years and had like fourteen supervisors how did none of them ever show you how to use one of our most important systems" only like in polite corporate speak, and then my boss actually did take some time to work with me and show me around the system and let me fiddle with it till I got a bit more comfortable.)
Um. That got long. I think I was saying I like math. ^_^ I found out the other day that Medicare and Social Security tax get deducted from my pre-tax 401(k) contributions, which seems kind of bass-ackwards, like... you're deducting my retirement savings... from my retirement savings? But it sort of makes sense that they wouldn't be getting it when I withdraw the 401(k) money and also start getting Social Security checks in my old age (assuming the Social Security program lasts that long which I am told it won't), so the guvmint gotta get their cut sometime, I guess. XD
I also just now found out that work recently changed our bonus structure in a way that delights me. See, for the first year I worked here, the bonus structure was broken in my favor, in such a way that I was bonusing $500 a month just on basically having good surveys. This was really nice and allowed me to pay down the majority of my debts. For this second year, though, they changed it drastically in order to weight in things like call length and cellular plan upsells ("value generation", gag me with a spoon), and I haven't bonused all year as a result. It is objectively a better structure, though, because it is now based off of hours worked -- instead of a flat $500 if your metrics are thus and so, you get a bonus amount per hour, ranging up to $4 an hour for the hypothetical perfect agent. So if you work full time and have all your relevant metrics good, you could bonus $704 an hour, more if you worked overtime. (You're allowed to work up to seven twelves if you choose. A hypothetically perfect agent who did that could bonus like $1056 a month. On top of the regular $14 an hour base pay.)
But NOW, okay, they have made one slight but very important change. It used to be that your call length, surveys, upsells, repeat callers, and time wasted on outbound calls were all balanced equally, and you had to have 3 of the 5 pretty good to bonus. I only had 2 of 5, so I did not bonus. This month, it is changed so that your surveys, upsells, repeats, and outbound are weighted equally, and then your potential bonus is just cut in half if you have super long calls like I do. It can also be cut in half if you transfer more than one in five calls, and cut by a quarter if you have more than three days unexcused absence in the work month, but those impact me less.
So all of a sudden, just having good surveys and low repeat callers is enough to qualify me for a bonus. Not a big one, maybe $100 if my metrics stay where they are, but maybe up to $350 or even $440 if I manage to make some fairly small improvements to my call length and get enough good surveys. (A satisfied customer accidentally gave me a failed survey early in the month, and even though she immediately sent "Oops I meant 10" in the comments block, apparently there's no way to remove it from reducing my bonus. I just have to get 34 good surveys to override it. o_O I'm at nine good surveys halfway through the month, so I doubt I'm going to make that. :P)
Anyway, and then also, what I found out while poking at my teammates' publicly visible metrics for comparison purposes, is that if your calls are short enough, you can now increase your bonus -- double it, or even get a total 250% of the originally calculated bonus if you're under par. (Par being the 12 minute 40 second sitewide goal in this case.) The hypothetical perfect agent could bonus a staggering $1760 a month, which is more than my total take-home pay, just by working 40 hours, and it's not even terribly hypothetical because I saw the record of an agent at another site who's set to bonus that $1760 for this month if her metrics don't slip. Or if a perfect agent worked seven twelves, which would be a superhuman feat to keep your metrics that good the whole time, they could make a fucking $2640 (pre-tax) just in bonus money for the month.
So, y'know, it's not like I'm suddenly going to double my pay. My outbound calls are consistently high, because I'll get a call where the person fell asleep listening to our hold music (true story) and then call them back and spend an hour helping them with shit. And my upsells are... sporadic. But I do tend to take care of all my customers' issues if possible so they don't have to call back. And except for the occasional fat-fingered customer or one who wasn't going to be pleased with anything, my surveys are consistently excellent. So if we keep this new bonus structure, which I really hope we do, it's like... it's extremely encouraging. Like I actually feel like I have a hope of bonusing again, which gives me more motivation to try to shave down my call time and work on my upsells.
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Date: 2020-09-19 09:06 am (UTC)Yay! Also Roo the day! lol. ♥