Pros
- free breakfast/hot drinks/fruits - good environment - people are the best - you can really experience the world by just working for Booking.com - there is a lot to learn from colleagues from all over the world and their fascinating stories as well that you can also met you colleagues from other offices by internal phone calls/workplace ( internal Facebook) or by working on same cases by cooperating/proving feedback or assitance - bonus, benefits, local discounts ( arranged by the work council) - good work-life balance - full time is 7 working hours per day + 45 minutes of lunch
Cons
- what made the difference in Booking.com was the QUALITY of the service and the approach to the job together with the skills and competentes, now it is all based on NUMBERS - ok the company is growing and also needs to standardize a service in a certain way, however being only focused on numbers change also the human touch that had always characterized Booking.com - as a consequence also the relationship with the Team Leaders has changed a lot and most Tls doesn't have the time/the competences/the means to understand the value of an agent and most of the times is not able to interpretate the numbers. Most KPIs are against each others as it is impossible to reach the target in all of them and provide at the same time a high quality of service, and the feeling to became always more close to a "robot" is always increasing. - There is a lot of pressure from the Management and you feel you are always under threat to be on MUP and being fired, no matter if you gave your energy and your dedication to the company for years - Of course we have to thank for having a space to eat and a Canteen with food at normal price, however the quality is very poor, people got sick more then once, and the service is low and slow. Sometimes you can spend more then 20 minutes of your lunch waiting for new sandwiches to arrive - it was hard and now is becaming harder to get holidays or request unpaid leave ( unless you are and agent working on small languages and you don't have to compete with many other agents) - also LILLE office is the only office that can't arrange the swaps with other offices - when Quality Team started to listen the phone calls regulary I thought it was a nice improvement of their work and could be really helpful for agents to receive detailed feedbacks and advises on how to handle the cases or on the other side recognize a very good agent and his ownership/ going extra mile, however their job became robotic as well and they check and they are asked to check only short phone calls and they are so schematic that often they make mistakes in the evaluation or give even RED FLAG without double checking ( disputed then by the agent) - you can take only 1 day off or half day off but if you need 1 hour or 2 hours it is not possible - "flexibility" to start a shift 15 minutes before/after and finish earlier/later, however there is less flexibility if you need a day of or a swap and the system doesn't allow you or you can't find another agent to swap
