ProtoCall Services Reviews

3.2

53% would recommend to a friend

(156 total reviews)
avatar

Phil Evans, MBA

70% approve of CEO

61% positive business outlook

ProtoCall Services has an employee rating of 3.2 out of 5 stars, based on 156 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The ProtoCall Services employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Healthcare industry (3.4 stars).

Reviews by job title

156 reviews
1.0
21 Mar 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Very thorough training. Training, while dry at times, was very extensive and I felt very well prepared when I got to the floor.

Cons

Let me start by saying that their scoring is incredibly manipulated on here and unethical. They never have had this high of a rating so I checked dates and sure enough loads of 4-5 star ratings by current employees ALL WITHIN 2-3 DAYS. As a former employee who knows how much they struggle to keep people around and get new clinicians hired, I would bet my life that they offered an incentive to current employees to write reviews. So that’s one major ding. Sometimes difficult to find a free desk (no assigned workspaces, which is a frank lloyd Wright concept that has been extremely poorly executed and dumbed down to modern office settings and has shown to do nothing positive for employees except save the companies money on space). which is frustrating when they’re so strict about being logged in on the dot. Taking time off is a nightmare. You’re expected to give 2 MONTHS in advance and expect to not be approved. Then they give you one option, bother your overworked and underpaid coworkers to try and get them to cover the days they didn’t approve. I saw people email about not being approved for random days within a vacation where they’re going out of town. But keep preaching how important self care is..just don’t expect them to allow you to actually implement any. The work you do as a Masters and Doctoral level clinician could easily be done by bachelors level social workers. You only get to stick to a script and when you try to work more intuitively they tell you things like “you’re not a detective”. My guess is they want graduate clinicians because it looks good for new business clients. They certainly pay you like a bsw. I’ve watched videos from volunteers on hotlines with no mental health background and they do almost the same level of work. My point is they could be using less educated people instead of underpaying actual professionals to be a glorified call center employee. The ceo is supposedly accessible but yet when I did reach out, my chats were read and never responded to. I heard one floor supervisor talk about another employee they had dated in not so nice words on the floor, talking about how crazy she was to other employees. He was incredibly rude and inappropriate. I have a work policy of not gossiping in the workplace and it’s so disheartening to see people in leadership roles doing it at work where others can hear. Really can impact morale. I felt very positive about the company in my first few months but after seeing how little they actually care about their clinicians (the employees who work the business side of things seem to get treated much better in terms of salaries, time off, etc), how they punish you for going to continuing education even tho it’s often required by your license (you have to use your own vacation time off and they give you an incredibly small stipend only if you’re licensed), how discouraging they are to actually take time off for yourself, How exhausting the work is, and how low the wages are, I quickly realized everyone there is pretty much miserable just waiting for their license to be obtained so they can leave. Half of the people I started with were gone before we even got to the floor and by the time I left there were only 2 people left. Best thing I did was quit and find new employment. My skills are being developed again, I feel valued and respected, and I actually get time off and encouraged to take CEU courses even tho I’m not licensed yet. Where I work now has a crisis team and they pay their crisis therapists about 30 an hour. I looked up pay distribution in Portland (where I live) and my pay was so little at Protocall that I was considered LOW INCOME. That’s right, they pay their graduate level clinicians what the city considers a low income wage. But they respect their clinicians, right? And yes they supposedly upped the wage by 2 dollars. What they don’t tell you is literally nobody actually works 40 hours. Almost all employees work 32 because it’s too stressful and they require you to be on call.

1.0
11 Jul 2023

Not worth the stress

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Remote position and decent pay

Cons

Micro-managed to the extreme! You have a mandatory 6 week rigorous training. During the last few weeks of training you are assigned different mentors daily. You are told by the Clinical Management Training Team that the mentors are here to help you, they are not. Those mentors score you and the training team takes everything they say at face value. You would assume the mentors who are trusted to train you have been there for several years right? Absolutely not the case! Most of the mentors haven’t even been there over two years and are trusted to train you. Many of my co-workers found ourselves educated them. Expect those mentors to score you low meanwhile they never mention it when they are debriefing you after a role play call. If you find yourself bringing up your concerns with the training team they will side with the mentor on all things. Those mentors determine if you graduate from training. My training class went from 25 to 7. Key things to remember at Protocall, metrics matters and so does sucking up. If you are not playing the part they want you to play you will not be favored. This company also has a diversity issue and chooses people of color to be in management that are easily controlled. Last Juneteenth the company sent out a picture of a cotton field on it and said Happy Juneteenth. Notable mention you will be told when you encounter a live DV situation on the hotline that you are suppose to not call 911 and listen while that individual is being abused and You do not hang up. As a call-taker you are expected to wait until the abuse is over then try to talk to the abuse….crazy right? When asking the training clinical person to clarify the DV situation he doubled down on that statement of not intervening when a domestic abuse is happening on the phone . This company is about taking calls to meet quotas to align their pockets. If you can avoid please do at all cost. If the CEO rebuttals this remember they are not in the field everyday and they receive their info from the lackeys they employ,I was in the trenches I have no reason to lie. This is a tough job and you are expected to take back to back calls with two 15mins breaks and one 30 minute break for lunch it’s not worth it. If you offer the job and become enticed by the monetary value remember your happiness has no price tag.

3.0
4 Sept 2023

For-Profit and Metrics Focused

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

-Work from home -24/7 so you can work anytime -Some supervisors and coworkers are very kind and supportive

Cons

The whole tone of the COO, Laura’s, answer to the review on 9/27/22 is representative of how seriously your concerns will be taken here. You will be gaslit and told that you’re actually wrong about your concerns and you just need to adapt better, rather than management empathizing with your concerns and actually trying to help you. It’s stated that there are no limits to call length in that reply. There are in fact “thresholds” to call length. Calls at an urgent level of risk can’t go above 24 minutes on average or you will get in trouble. Calls at a routine level of risk can’t go above 17 minutes on average. You can’t take more than 6 minutes on average to document after your call AND do any follow up or consultation after your call, or you will get in trouble. They focus so much more on these metrics than on the positive ways you are impacting callers. This is not to mention the new hire training, a Hunger Games-esque trial by fire where they try to scare you, break you down mentally and weed people out.

Viewing 1 - 3 of 156 Reviews

Glassdoor has 157 ProtoCall Services reviews submitted anonymously by ProtoCall Services employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if ProtoCall Services is right for you.