Pluspunten
You will make great friends here.
Minpunten
Having worked at Townsquare for 2 years and attained numerous Senior statuses, I wanted to provide some insight as I know these are common thoughts amongst your floor. 1- Devaluing your products – When a client requests to cancel you are taught to do everything in your power to keep them on. Typically, the cancel request comes from a price point perspective as the client feels there is no ROI due to our services being the most basic. We have dedicated teams for content, SEO and design however they are either “closed”, take to long to complete the task or when the task is complete it is done wrong so majority of it falls on the DMS role’s back. If I were to be the CEO of the company and I knew my management team was encouraging our DMS (retention specialists) to downgrade customers to the lowest price point possible however continue to complete SEO services and or other services to keep clients satisfied I would be pissed as that is lost revenue for the corporation however it just goes to show they are not concerned with long term success of the company however short term of hitting their numbers to show to investors. This can also apply to what you are calling “win backs” if I was a client who continuously paid $500+ month after month for your services but suddenly fell in to a nonpayment status 2 months straight because I did not want to continue working with your company and all of a sudden to negate that now $1,000 due you are offering to waive it for a measly $19 I would have some concerns if your products were ever worth the $500 to begin with. 2- Such a push for go lives to influx and “improve” your numbers- At the end of each month if the floor as a whole has not hit the goal of net clients gained, there wish be a push on the OBS (onboarding specialist) side to push clients live even if they are not ready immediately putting a sour taste in our customers mouth. This can mean not completing edit requests per the client, not asking them if they’re ready to be put on their domain for the whole world to see something that they’re not happy with, the sales team taking on GCC calls (calls to question the client on what they’d like displayed on the site) who are not qualified, etc.. this directly effects the quality of the design and content to go down and therefore your companies’ revenue suffers. Again this is a prime example of being so concerned with short term numbers to throw up to your investors however no plan for the long term revenue success of your company and what you could be making if you listened and just had patience in the beginning. 3- Technological advancements- we are not top notch on our platform, trainings, service offerings, etc - our offerings are small up until recently with Townsquare “engage” which is really just Vcita we are white labeling and charging more money for, our clients couldn’t even email market, have online bookings, etc.. Also employee trainings.. we are trained and “certified” in objection handling + introductory calls.. YOURE JOKING what good are these certifications to the real digital marketing world? As far as I can see these are just a way for you to weed out the weak and put them on performance plans or have something to hold over their heads when you no longer like them. 4- Over worked DMS - Way too large of a book size – Daily you will be told you “own your book” however your “book” is comprised of sales lies (ie your in NYC with a population of over 2mill but don’t worry our organic SEO will get you on that first page) along with lazy OBS handoffs (doing bare minimum to push a clients site live so they can hit their goal) with this it is now your job to do clean up… rest expectations, tell the clients the truth all while trying to build rapport that basically their first two weeks were a bunch of lies to get them to come on board. Townsquare should fix the problem from the beginning with an honest sale and a campaign set up for success, the technology to monitor a sales call for key words that would be lies is out there, they’re just not willing to invest in your company. Prime example of again short-term numbers and not long-term success of the business. Our offerings are NOT for the plumber in Indianapolis. 5- Shift gears every 2 weeks because your plan isn’t working – Constantly, Townsquare will implement a change to just implement a change in the total opposite direction when it doesn’t work in their favor. One cannot tell if something is working in just 14 days.. For example, the 2 month cancellation period just 2 weeks short of their 2019 Q4 numbers needing to be submitted to investors so they can close the year on a good note but then be screwed come 2020 however I’m sure they’ll have an excuse now to just blame 2020’s failings on COVID 6- “Our 2019 goal is employee retention, client retention and company revenue” – I’d like to note here that towards the end of 2019 a bunch of ppl quit, when this is brought up in company meetings, they quickly brush it under the rug with “our number of employees is the same as the previous year” With this, I need you to be looking at those that have been here more than 1 year hell.. more than 6 months lately.. again an example above of cushioning numbers. 7- Bonus structure, better known as your COM score- To make a bonus each month or move through their promotional senior tiers, you are provided a COM score. What does COM even stand for? Idk that I was ever told? This COM score is given sometimes half way through the month (why wouldn’t it be provided prior to the month starting so you knew what to run towards, not sure) however what makes your COM score remains a mystery even though its how your entire performance and payout will be calculated. Having worked at Townsquare for 2 years, I have been under 5 different managers. With these 5 managers, I find it odd that I’ve asked 5 managers to explain it to me and I get “there’s a bunch that goes into it” I even went as far to ask our VP and was told she can “explain it to me sometime” however I’m still waiting on that explanation. 8- Wasting Our Time – Here I would like to note about a time back in 2019 when we were taken off the floor for an entire hour to hype up a contest to win a potential 2 grand from the own pockets of our president because he’s just soooo great and thoughtful.. well when they realized a lot of people were hitting this goal and they no longer wanted to pay out, just 10 days before the payout would occur they retracted their statement… this caused a lot of employees who were counting on this bonus especially right before the holidays to resent the company. Sounds to me like a tactic for your employees to work extremely hard to save your numbers to show investors and then just taking it as a win for yourself. 9- Talk Time, Outbound dials and now LVP – at one point in my time of employment recently Townsquare monitored every minute of time you spent on their phones and how many people you talked to. You were told you EITHER have to have 1 hour of talk time a day OR 20 outbound dials for you day to be considered a success, if you did not do this, you would be put on a performance plan so they could weed you out and at that point their story changed and you needed to be doing BOTH a day to be considered a success. When complaints were made about this publicly throughout the floor, they stated they would no longer do this (even though some managers still do) and now they would be implementing LVP (last value provided) they tried being slick saying this is a way for you to monitor what “touch topic” you’ve provided so you can provide new value moving forward however I am not fooled- this is the new way you will measure and put people on PIPS.. personally, when you are reaching out to a client and clicking your “Last attempted contact” you should have been providing that value all along so I’m confused. 10- Public Embarrassment- I would honestly go as far to say the VP was hazing employees. For a few months time span when Townsquare’s numbers weren’t doing so great, the company thought it’d be appropriate to send out where the ENTIRE floor lied with their cancellation numbers compared to their COM score in a stack rank for EVERYONE TO SEE.. meaning everyone would know how good or bad you are at your job along with how much many you were making that month……… How humiliating, and what a great way to cause extreme anxiety and promote an elitist culture. 11- Non-payments- When you have your book of business (especially when there are 250, 260 sometimes even up to 290+ clients in your name) you’re responsible to solely call them once a month and that’s IF you do your job correctly. However, when a client falls behind on their bill you will be enforced to harass them and call them daily, send them emails, we even have an automated emailing system that sends them notifications. If I were to be a paying client who only ever heard from you once a month but have now fallen on hard times and have not only my POC but every random person in the organization calling me daily, I’d cancel too. It goes to show the company is money hungry. 12- Cancels- I understand that a cancellation results in loss of revenue for Townsquare. However, if you have a dbl, triple, quad account and they cancel. It’s counts against you 4x. That can ruin an employee’s entire month. Also, if you have those situations and they stay on with Townsquare but merge all to one site... it counts against you as cancellations. If you have a client who either shut down their business, passed away or even went to jail, it counts against you and this all effects your money you take home at the end of the day. 13- Diversity- Sadly being caucasian I never truthfully felt a problem with the diversity as majority of our floor is the same ethnicity as I am however taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture the situation is clearly evident. What it took for change was people coming on glassdoor and making note of it for people of alternative color to get a shot at management. It was clearly evident when 2 managerial positions opened and 1 went to the director’s best friend and the other went to a female of color. They tried to solve this with a meeting of people of color to help them solve their issue however when you have white men grooming other white men into management and have never opened up positions to the floor for everyone to openly apply up until now, what did you expect? 14- Company Morale – The company is looking to open another location on the West coast. They sent out a survey asking who would be interested in moving to basically help them get their company up off the ground however when asked about moving costs replied no stipend to move would be provided to their new location. Also, no stipend amount for WFH during this mandated time with COVID when employees are using personal devices for business profits is occurring because as the president of Townsquare says, “they’re not paying for something you were already paying for” however without consent of their employees forwarded all work lines to the employees personal cellphone number.
