call center representative

intervieweur

market researcher

data entry clerk

superviseur

Elemental Data Collection

Like all Market Research Firms, Elemental Data Collections has standards to meet and they expect every employee to exceed these standards. Maybe they had a hard time meeting their own standards which was why they had awful hours to work in a typical week.

During my application process I was given the hours I was expected to work. No less than twenty per week, no more than forty-four, evening and nights, etc. Then there was a day shift that was started for some reason and I thought that was a little odd. We were calling residences as early as 10am during the week and expecting them to be home, not working at their home office, not caring for their children while the spouse was at work, or being well enough to complete surveys. It seemed to me this was not only affecting my daily rate, but the rate of the entire company as well.

Management was sub par most times repeating the same lines over and over again hoping you'd improve. They listened in on you but rarely gave productive feedback as they were so busy also listening to everyone else and completing their paperwork. The productivity training was basically looking at statistics that meant nothing to you. Instead, it would have been helpful to listen to some calls for examples of what to do or what not to do. Maybe some refusal conversions, irate respondents, etc. because just reading a list of lines off a paper isn't always effective.

The environment was loud while sitting in the cubicles. I can see how they wanted you to listen to co-workers to get ideas on how to do your job better, but it was more distracting than anything. Having the cubicle walls a little longer could have made them more sound proof and allowed you to concentrate on voice control and convincing the respondent to complete the survey. I felt I was being judged by co-workers rather than feeling like I could help them or vice versa.

The co-workers there were very friendly and approachable which was nice because I felt like even when complaints or frustration was looming, there was always a positive outlook and words of encouragement. There were people from all walks of life, the young, the old, the middle aged, and I felt like I could have been friends with all of them.

The hardest part of the job was working with the computer system which felt out of date. Often times the headsets didn't work which meant having to hold the telephone handset. That made it difficult to write out responses. Often times the set up of the survey was awkward as well. The introduction script was there on the first page and I found it convenient to practice that while I was waiting for someone to answer. But when you clicked on answer it took you to the script again (usually there was stuff added to it) and then it took forever to get through the next pages. The computers froze, the questions were ridiculous. Did these companies writing these surveys have monkeys working for them? Anyway, that aside the equipment was from ten years ago, the program was from twenty years ago and nothing ever worked 100%.

The pay could have been much better for the amount of work you had to do. The perks just weren't enough. The extra training wasn't enough and a whole bunch of updates really needed to be done yesterday.

The problem lies with HR. They put too much pressure on supervisors to push the quota, who then pressure on the call agents and it's just a cluster of miserable people turned sociopaths.

On my first day I was barked at by a supervisor because I didn't know how to sign in. Nice to meet you ..to ? Irony is he's actually one of the nicer ones. General passive aggressive behaviour non exclusive to elemental that's every work place honestly feel like I'm dealing with a bunch of artificially intelligent robots with no soul and im the only sane person hmmmmm... ;)

Pros:
-Nice building
-Nice office 
-The ability to dress nicely and not wear a degrading uniform 
-Downtown, accesible location 
- Cool concept ( elements, nice photos of Montreal in the office)
-Some people are nice ... Some. Make me actually look forward to going but sometimes I want to cry. 
-Ability to move up quickly and be put on harder projects if you try 

Cons:

-Double standards: people show up like actual slobs wearing sweat pants, Kylie Jenner bicycle shorts, trashy clothing even though the dress code is posted every where.. bringing snacks to desk and leaving garbage behind and drink coffee at desk I did that once but only I got in trouble for having coffee at desk no one else did.... Coffee is understandable but people literally bring snack to their desk like could you not wait until break.. self entitlement here is insane Seems like the wicked prevail here it's some twilight galaxy here ..  ( also there's marks all over some of the furniture people scribble all over it.. gross )

-Alot of the people are excessively bitter and I can't relate to that 

-Every time I get up to go to the washroom people stare weirdly sometimes follow me to be weird by proxy and lack boundaries.

- If I ask HR a question they look at me like I have 3 heads and I think I'm beneath them because I'm a call agent it's pretty implicit 

-Some people are told to change their names I mean that's kinda racist but anyway they put me near someone who chose my name 3 days in a row and she mocks the way I speak and smirks at me in a very creepy way 

-Found out I have a code name people use to gossip about me said right in front of me by someone slightly above a call agent position professionalism doesn't exist here 

- They want students but they say missing and saying you can't go to shifts due to school duties results in demerits ??? Illogical. 

-225 is deducted from your first pay the contract says something different I had to badger people 3 times just to get them to send my online pay stub to access my ADP thing... My training was being briefed in a room for 20 mins and then thrown right into it please tell me how that's 225 worth ?

- if a project ends at 9pm and you work until 10pm they don't even have the common decency to tell you in advance . The first time this happened to me I didn't know how it worked and was upset confused and felt humiliated and they made it implicit it was "my fault" for not knowing how it worked, just no empathy or regard for others.

-They seem to hire almost anyone even this girl who didn't read well made it to orientation, big red flag

That being said if you learn to block out the cons, it's an enjoyable workplace

Where do you start?

Here are the pros:

Flexible scheduling - you can work any 4 shifts throughout the week, 5 hour stretches

Easy to get - super informal interview, not very much in terms of requirements.

Communication - this job is a great way to build communication skills with people (even considering the cussing and rude people). Thickens your skin. Wonderful experience in this way.

Other Interviewers - you will meet some fascinating people that you can have great connections with. Cherish these friendships and stay close to people that you can trust. Having a positive attitude here is critical not for success, just for survival.

Here are the cons (and there are MANY):

***Please be aware that the above was stated simply as a way of letting you know that there ARE in fact some benefits that you can derive from this position, if you'd like to perform it. This list of cons, in my experience, will far exceed anything you read above in terms of positivity. If you have to take the job, take the skills you learn and leave as soon as you can.

- Political toxicity of the environment. Management is hyper-political; they've got their cliques and favourites. Stay away from these guys and you'll be OK. All companies have this to some extent, but it's just putrid/festering here. These are a bunch of middle managers that will likely work the same positions for the rest of their lives. If you have any personal standards at all, which you should, management will play mind games with you. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

- Unfortunately, the flexibility of scheduling is more reminiscent of a Greek myth than reality. Changing your availability, even with several week's notice, was impossible. Reasons kept changing etc...

- Low pay: expected in this type of environment, no surprise here.

- Broken Equipment: can't tell you how many times I ran into this. Broken mute buttons, keyboards. Becomes more of a running joke after awhile. Shows the standard of professionalism,

- Supervisors - no names need to be mentioned here - power trip like it's the last job that they'll ever have. They've never tasted authority before and therefore have no idea how to respectfully use it with their subordinates. Bullying is commonplace.

And if you've made it through the jungle to this point, you're probably just sick of the fact that you even have to deal with this stuff for such a low wage. At some point, it's simply not worth it anymore.

Summary: Go in with a personal purpose and reason to improve yourself with this job in some way. If you walk in blind, you'll get thrown to the wolves and treated like a slave. You can derive great things in terms of insightful conversations with some of your respondents as well as your fellow coworkers, while improving your personal communication and effectiveness with others. Please do so intelligently. Remain vigilant.

This is a terrible place to work. They guilt trip you into working past your end shift and guilt you when you say you can't work a shift. They even tried telling me to work the day before my exam and the day of my exam. They do not care about you, all they care about is meeting rate. And the thing is, when you don't get a good amount of completed surveys they make it seem like it's your fault. BUT NOT EVERYONE WANTS TO PARTICIPATE IN A 15 MINUTE SURVEY!! The breaks are so short, all you can do is force your food down your throat and run back to your 3x3 cubicle.

Hours are terrible. They say 5-10 but it's really 5-11. It's calling/dialling non stop, if they see you not calling they'll yell at you. Weekend shifts are the worst from 12-8. If you enjoy sitting down calling non stop, getting hung up or insulted on every call then this is the job for you. OH AND NO PHONES, COATS, BAGS, SCARFS, MEDICATIONS ALLOWED IN THE CALL CENTER. It's just not a good environment. It really does something to you mentally. They make it seem like you're the reason you aren't getting any completed surveys when in reality people just don't want to be bothered during dinner. OH AND WHEN SOMEONE SAYS THEY'RE TOO BUSY TO DO THE SURVEY THEY LITERALLY WANT YOU TO PRY UNTIL YOU'RE ABLE TO FORCE THEM TO PARTICIPATE IN THE SURVEY. WHETHER THEY'RE IN A NURSING HOME, FAMILY DINNER OR WORK.

You can hear absolutely everyone in the call centre, it's the worst. The cubicles are so small, you're gonna get so bored easily. It's honestly slave hours. Absolutely not a good job if you're in high school, college or university!! They are constantly hiring because everyone quits. It's just bad. The only good part is when they tell you to go home early. Also the people you meet there are not bad. We all hate t there so we can easily relate. I started November 2017 and quit March 2018. They do not care about your priorities or your education. And the pay isn't even great man.

Supervisors that I remembered were okay.

Overall, this is a bad place to work. It's a good 2 week job so you ca put it on your resume but yeah never again. However, money is money and if you want to lose your human dignity & f up your mental health, definitely apply here! Good luck :)

These folks were flexible in the sense that you only have to work 4 days minimum. And they let me take a whole bunch of days off before I even started working. And they were pretty responsive to emails. Also, the dress code was pretty chill. They got slippers!

But call centers have a bad rep for a reason. I gave these guys a chance, despite the little voice in my head saying don't do it. The building looked Art-Deco like. And the office itself had nice colors and didn't look all that dreadful. So I said why not?

Now, they could've really played out the whole elemental thing (cmon, yall have a fire, water, and earth team). But they choose to be stuck in their ways:

A typical day is making calls, being micromanaged, taking a "break", and trying to remember why you're still there.

One of the managers decided to publicly humiliate me because he thought I was slacking off for 40 min. Should've done just that.

So, I decided not to stoop to his level and called him to the side. I let him know what he did was wrong. He didn't show any remorse. You can obviously tell upper management is puppeteering these poor souls. 

Anywho, even the people who have been working here for years complained about the inexcuseable surveys and work-life.

I tried talking to the staff to get them to loosen up. Even made a new logo design for the company. But all that washed away when I was "terminated" for being 7 min late. They didn't even ask why- just "fire"d me. 

They don't offer incentives/commission but expect you to make "completes". Or they will send you home. But really though, they should be offering incentives. We are not slaves. 

And it doesn't have to be money; 1 complete = 5 min more for a break. They can get really creative if they put their heart in it.

All in all, if you really got no other option then go ahead and work here. But remember, you are not alone and are worth way more than what places like this try to make you into. This goes for the good staff too :)

PS, slavery is not dead. It just adapted

Job is easy if you know what your doing but it's still horrible. Toxic work environment, cold calling strangers to do surveys in a call centre environment, people will say the worst things to you over the phone but it's understandable and this wasnt the worst part.

They ease you into the job by at first calling older people to do a 5 minute survey.. then after a while they have you just call anyone sometimes businesses to do surveys that can take 30 to 40 minutes to complete, kinda shady, I think they purposely do this cause turnover is so high

Alot of the Managers and supervisors are losers and are on a real power trip, some of them were nice and chill but some will belittle you for being a caller which I think is funny cause they all started out as one, and when they do rarely have to start doing calls to meet quota they are terrible at it but dont get reprimanded.

Theres competitive scheduling of shifts and also a demerit point system, basically they only make their best employees have the best shifts and get guaranteed work but if your productivity falls they will slowly just stop giving you shifts 
Demerit point system is strict, even small easy to make mistakes can cause you to get demerits.

Shifts are short 5 hours, only kinda good thing I can say is they let you have a break which is nice, legally I dont think they have to

Quota you have to hit for each survey varies, but the ones for the longer surveys tend to be very high and difficult to achieve, they always will tell you the quotas are achievable but it's all lies, you cant manipulate every person you call and expect them to complete the surveys, and alot of the time you are calling you will just get answering machines or people constantly hanging up on you which kills your productivity even more.

It's really bad, I would not reccomend working here unless you are a college student or foreign student looking to improve their english skills as you can pick your shifts, 

On my first day, I was asked to do over time last minute to meet a quota. I started at 12 pm and was supposed to finish at 7 pm. I went home around 9:30 pm. After being cursed at by people I don't even know because I was interrupting their time off (and I don't blame them, really) it was frustrating having to be one of the people they ask literally an hour before your shift is supposed to end. I feel like they take advantage of the fact that they know you're new, so you're less likely to refuse because it would look bad if you do. 

You're supposed to call people and "ask about their opinions", but often you end up calling them at the most inconvenient times which makes you feel like a bother. You sit in a little cubicle all day which makes it hard to talk and get to know the other people you work with (which isn't so important but it would be nice if it wasn't so awkward in the break room, since there isn't really anywhere else to go during break). I've seen some employees pick on the new hires just because they're not used to the work yet or because they have an accent/trouble pronouncing certain words. 

I would say the only good thing about this job is that you personally get to pick your shifts. But even then, you're not guaranteed of being scheduled to come in. The first two weeks I was hired, I wasn't scheduled in, but then all the sudden they get you to come in for all the shifts that you put in the next week. It was inconsistent since they tend to give priority for people who've worked there longer. Management was nice, but I felt like they literally just give you a script to read and hand you a phone and then pick at the mistakes you've made, all the while not even knowing you've made one. 

Overall, I don't recommend working here. Like at all.

elemental management helped me understand that no matter how old you are you can always act like a child. every employee is incompetent due to either their inherent stupidity or lack of training. When something goes bad, they blame the callers. when something goes right they brag and take the all the credit. 

management will belittle callers with accents and reduce their hours just on that. 

basic empathy is seen as unusual. apparently there is 0 sensitivity or interaction with callers training and being authoritarian is encouraged. 

they forced callers to do work during the peak of covid because it was "essential" to the success of the employee. imagine bastardizing actual essential employees like that. the job that can obviously be done at home too. 

when they put in a mask requirement, free thinking management would walk around without masks anyway. 

if you bring any complaints to hr you will be ignored or met with more questions to the legitimacy of your complaint than answers by an hr team that fancies themselves detectives. 

and whenever they do respond, it's full with incomplete sentences and preschool grammar that nothing is understood anyway. 

they will randomly call you on your off hours or while you're in a call to give you criticism, and since they can't be bothered to write a proper email instead you can't refer back to the feedback without going through talking to them again.

Beginning to end, working at Elemental DCI was a miserable experience. Communication is not a strong suit here, you'll be lucky to get an email to management responded to within two business days, let alone one. They have no handle on the WebEx software for the purposes of messaging, you will often be strung up without instruction for upwards of 30 minutes. If you present these issues to HR, you'll be met with excuses rather than promises to fix the issues.

This doesn't even get into the quality of the work itself. Have fun haggling people to take a 15-30 minute survey, no matter how busy they are. This will often involve lying about the duration of the survey, repeatedly calling people back, and reading convoluted and poorly written scripts. Worth noting that failing to meet your quotas is probably the only reason that management would ever contact you in a timely manner. You also get to call into many places as late as 8pm, and people sure love to get those calls at hours like that.

All of that is through an online job where you get next to no interaction with your coworkers. It's as if it was designed to break down employees. I noted that during my training I would see between 5 and 7 new employees show up every other shift. Massive turnover. That should have been a red flag. Avoid this place at all costs.

TLDR: AVOID AT ALL COSTS

Absolutely terrible company culture/work environment. Some supervisors are alright, but others are on a major power trip and will belittle you for the tiniest of mistakes and rule infractions. 

There are targets for # of survey completions you must get for each shift. They are set unrealistically high, so good luck meeting them. If you don't, expect to get micromanaged to the moon and back.

They forbid you from doing anything to distract yourself with during shifts. The booths are really cramped and uncomfortable and there's a lot of background noise from other people in the call centre. Constantly making calls for 5+ hours (or 8 hours on weekends) is incredibly boring and exhausting. This job will take a serious toll on your mental health.

They will look to deduct your hours worked at every possible opportunity. If your bathroom break was too long, that's coming out of your pay. Oh and also, there's $200 withhold if you quit without providing notice (which I'm pretty sure is not even legal in Ontario).

You get paid minimum wage and it is just so, so not worth it. Avoid Elemental Data at all costs unless you are desperately in need of a job.

Top Job Titles	Average salary
Call center representative 3 salaries reported	$17.60 per hour
Intervieweur 1 salary reported	$17.20 per hour
Market researcher 1 salary reported	$38,500 per year
Data entry clerk 1 salary reported	$302 per day
Superviseur 1 salary reported	$47,500 per year

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