Vantaggi
The communication within the department is high, and everyone starts to know eachother. even across departments it can generally be easy to get in contact with someone.
Another nice thing is we have a script to follow if needed, but for those who have a handle of things, you're allowed to troubleshoot as you see fit. Gives flexibility to better handle issues in a timely manner.
Svantaggi
1) Once a week, if not more, there is general some mid to large scale outage.
2) There are several ongoing issues at any given time. Some we are able to handle easily in short term but keep popping up over and over. Some have been going on so long with no way for us to feasible handle them for one reason or another.
3) The CSR role is designed to cover everything. Billing, sales, troubleshooting, etc. 99% of the time if someone calls in, you are supposed to handle it. They have recently started specializing some people, and sales has taken over more for general sales, but it's still an all-in-one position.
4) Evening/Nights/Weekend do not have hefty network support. Unless a tower or something major is down, if there is a network escalation or specific sales question, you will not likely have any assistance until Monday. There is people there for major issues, but individual accounts generally wait till Monday.