Job performance is measured via ridiculous metrics, not competence. People who are bad at their job are often promoted as a means of dropping them into someone else's hands. People who get the biggest raises are the ones that have figured out how to work the system to get good performance metrics.
If you're truly good at customer service and take the time to actually help people, your metrics aren't going to be as good as those who push every call off onto someone else. The company uses this as an efficient method of making sure you stay in that position with minimal pay increases or opportunity for promotion..
Favoritism is rampant, I can't say how many times I've seen a better qualified individual lose out on a promotion to someone who was 10x more competent. Some managers will "groom" individuals for promotion, particularly if the individual is the sort that tends to provoke customers into escalating their call to a manager. They don't want to have to deal with the escalations, so they hand them an easy project to work on. Fast forward a few months, the manager will post a formal position for that role, and naturally will pick the person they've already groomed as "most qualified".
Bad working relationship with other employees in other call centers. Other centers will call you routinely and demand you take calls that aren't really your responsibility to handle. This ties in to what was mentioned earlier; because the employees are concerned only with their performance metrics, they will transfer as many calls to other offices as possible. It's a mudslinging contest with the customer in the middle of it all. And since you can't really refuse a transfer, you'll routinely get screwed over by the people working the system.
Accountability is weak; bad performance routinely results in little more than a slap on the wrist.
