Is it just I or the Bloomberg help desk is just useless? One hour going back and forth with them for a simple query question only to get transferred five times to different people and tell me that they can't figure it out. How do people get hired for that job?
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Lamushi, hey, look at the bright side, at least you didn't get a ton of monkey shit thrown at you...here is my best guess on threads that might be helpful:
If those topics were completely useless, don't blame me, blame my programmers...
they get no bonuses and have no incentive to help you
You think the BB desk is bad? You must have never used Factset before. It's quite possibly the worst customer/client experience I think I've ever experienced in my life. BB desk is 10x better than factset, and I don't have an overly high opinion of the BB desk either.
Bump this haha
To complement the first reply, which is pretty succinctly accurate, I’ll add my perspective since I used to be a BBG help desk monkey and witnessed what I believe are reasons the client experience is so bad:
1) help desk reps are consistently in 3-5 chats at a time since reps are purposefully understaffed, so it’s very difficult to multi task on that level for 7 hours a day, and that’s because
2) the 1 hour of the day reps aren’t in chats, they either cold call existing clients about product updates or do Sales’ technical work since most of Sales is nothing more than glorified admin assistants who may also open their own help desk chats despite working in the role previously;
3) reps are tracked by the % of time active out of staffed time, so taking breaks for the restroom is tracked — you actually have to physically hit a button to go, and if you’re gone too long, a manager IBs you and asks why you were gone and not open to taking chats;
4) the AI for identifying which team addresses your question is pretty laughable, so there’s some time friction in transferring your chat to the right team(s), and that process in itself could be 5-10 minutes per chat;
5) one measure of success for performance is % of chats resolved, and higher is better, so there’s a bit of selfishness in hanging onto your chat longer so the rep can “get the resolve;”
6) the hiring pool has changed such that Analytics (this is what help desk department is called) hiring managers would rather someone who exhibits positive customer service traits rather than “hidden gems” with critical thinking ability (usually non-finance majors or those who worked in a FO internship but didn’t want to be in finance that got tricked into what the job was since BBG is a product company). This change was due to many of the hidden gems leaving for better roles, so you just have less competent people;
7) the handful competent people that are there are still in 3-5 chats at least and realize there’s no incentive to answer more chats after a certain point, so they just hold onto them for longer even if they know the answer to give themselves a break; and
8) the product is more limited than you think, and your chat will probably be linked to a dead engineering request that Product has deprioritized.
These are just points off the top of my head, and I’m sure there are more that I haven’t thought of. But yeah, for a starting salary in the low 70s with 0 bonus, there’s less incentive to do a good job.
Thanks for the details. How were the exit options from the help desk?
I'm just seeing this now. I wouldn't say there are really exit ops. The BBG Help Desk is meant to be a product learning role that feeds to BBG sales. In my experience, it feels like 5-10% end up doing something else directly out of Help Desk. I'm in ER now for context, but some of have moved to portfolio analyst or trader roles. I want to stress this is a minority. After BBG sales, common paths I've seen are sales at different companies (can include S&T), business school, or something within product development/management.
Thanks for the helpful additional details. I hope all goes well with your current role.
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