Stability is vital during these times of uncertainty, especially when it comes to your career. When the going gets tough, you need to know that your employer will support you.
Here at Activus Connect, we do everything in our power to help our people stay safe, develop their careers, and feel like an essential part of a growing company that values every employee. For Nitza Cortes, the stability of a job at Activus came at the perfect time for her and her family.
Looking for a Lifeline
Nitza lives in Aguadilla—a town on Puerto Rico’s northwestern tip—with her 14-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter.
Before Activus, Nitza spent five years working in technical support for a telecommunications provider on the island. Her job was to troubleshoot internet problems for customers, so she had experience working in a contact center environment. It was only after her daughter’s epilepsy worsened that Nitza’s CX career was put on hold.
“Once we realized that medication wasn’t helping her, we had to travel to Boston to get her evaluated, which was a long process,” she recalled. “My previous employer only allowed us to take a maximum of three months for family leave, but the evaluation process was much longer, so they showed me the door. It was a challenging time for us.”
After her daughter underwent surgery, Nitza spent a few months without work while caring for her daughter. As her health started to improve, Nitza began looking for stable employment that could allow her to continue caring for her kids at home. That’s when she found Activus.
Enhancing CX Quality Safely From Home
Nitza joined Activus Connect in December 2019, starting her career as an Ambassador and eventually becoming a Quality Coach in late 2020. As a Quality Coach at Activus Connect, Nitza spends her day listening to calls to determine how well our Ambassadors are performing and providing valuable feedback to them.
“The idea is to find areas for improvement so we can arrange tailored coaching sessions that focus on those areas,” she said. “As well as maximizing each Ambassador’s performance, it’s important that we verify if they’re saying the right things in the right way to ensure we remain compliant and keep our clients happy.”
Nitza is always on the lookout for long moments of silence, inappropriate tone of voice, or language that could be considered rude. While these issues are few and far between at Activus, they’re a pretty common complaint in the call center industry, which is why we need people like Nitza to keep our teams on track to deliver exceptional experiences.
Finding a Unique Opportunity to Thrive at Work
Nitza was educated at the University of Puerto Rico and completed her studies at Inter-American University, where she obtained a bachelor’s in biotechnology. Unfortunately, she didn’t have any luck finding work in that field, so she hopped around in different jobs for several years before finding her footing in the CX industry.
“I’ve worked in a coffee shop, a cell phone kiosk, a supermarket—you name it, I’ve done it,” she laughed. “Nothing was ever really that satisfying to me, so I was always looking for something else. It’s only once I started helping people in a customer experience role that I really started to enjoy my work.”
Like many of us, Nitza is currently home-schooling her kids during the pandemic. She has to make sure they attend their online classes, help them prepare for their exams, and keep them motivated to pursue their education, all while working full-time at home.
“Here in Puerto Rico, it’s tough to find jobs that are 100% work-at-home,” she explained. “I felt fortunate to find Activus because I needed something that would allow me to stay at home, raise my kids, and care for my daughter in case something happened.”
With both of her kids in the at-risk group for covid, Nitza and her family take short, daily walks of around 30 minutes to one hour but spend most of the day safely at home. The opportunity to protect her family’s health while earning a living wage has been an enormous blessing, she tells us.
“I love Activus because they make you feel like family,” she said. “Felix is the CEO, but he makes us feel like we can talk with him whenever we need to. If you have a problem, you can talk with anyone, and they will support you. At Activus, family truly comes first, and you won’t lose your job because of it.”