Vantaggi
Home office had a great team of customer service reps who worked together before Symetra went public and hired new CEO. Then management decided that customer service was an expense that needed to be drastically cut back. The ensuing fall out there decimated the department. There were many good people here before the change in management. I don't know how many are left, certainly not me.
Svantaggi
Hiring a bunch of sales reps to grow the company and making every other department pay for that growth by overworking and underpaying them. We had one year of no raises during the recession, then small raises afterwards, then pay cuts to reduce the "expense" of customer service. Without CSRs explaining things to customers, Symetra would have lost a lot of policies sold by number hunger sales reps.