Vantaggi
a) flexible schedule -- I could often change a shift as late as the day prior
100% WFH, so no commute and office politics / office drama
b) fair salary (I got €14/hr, so roughly €2460 pcm)
c) polyglots are in for a treat -- due to the cross-team nature of the job, I got to practice my Norwegian, Polish, Serbo-Croatian, Romanian, Dutch/Afrikaans and German, while using my native Danish+Swedish in the line of duty
d) shifts go 8-16 or 10-18 CET, so those living in WET time zone (CET-1) can have a fairly good work-life balance (agents in EET (CET+1), not necessarily...)
Svantaggi
a) stuffy procedures where team lead approval is needed for each and every return of goods -- and because 95% of all customer contacts go down that alley, most of the day is chasing TL for approval while trying to professionally and politely keep the customer at bay
b) my team were told to basically neglect our own market (only answer emails older than from today) in order to help with perpetual backlogs on other language markets -- using translation bots. Which, gibberish aside, meant that next day, my team were backlogged instead. We finally cleared ours, the other markets' backlogs had meanwhile grown again.....rinse and repeat...
c) ridiculous punctuality-attendance bonus scheme, where one single sick day -- or logging in even a few seconds after official shift start more than once a month -- would disqualify you for the entire month (lost bonus €92-184 pcm, depending on seniority). If you fall ill the first few days in a month, you've no incentive to arrive 'on the dot' for the rest of the month. And if you fall I'll on one of the last days of the month, bonus is gone as well. Way to foster loyalty and esprit de corps
d) break times not included, so if during an 8-hr shift you take a total of 30 mins break, you must stay 30 mins longer to compensate -- I ended up starting my shifts 30-45 mins prior just to have that buffer so I could knock off at scheduled time
e) calls and chats are handled concurrently -- the two systems run independently and don't know if an agent is de facto already busy elsewhere: they just assign based on nominally Available status.