Work At Home Telecommuting As A Call Center Agent

If you are looking online for jobs you can do at home, you will undoubtedly have come across many home business opportunities where you get to do work such as affiliate marketing or joining an MLM program. Opportunities and advice on starting your own home business are advertised all over the Internet, however, real jobs you can do at home are nigh on impossible to locate.

Why is this? Well, for a start, not all jobs are suitable for home based employment so the opportunities for working at home are reduced. Another reason is that employers have been slow to catch on to the idea of employing staff to work at home. Instead of considering the massive savings they could make in terms of office space, lighting, heating and so on, employers focus on the fact that they will be unable to directly supervise their staff members. If staff are paid by results, they have a better chance of finding jobs where they can work from home than if they were paid a set hourly rate.

All these things combine to limit the number of work at home jobs available. Demand for work at home jobs currently far exceeds the supply. There are, however, a couple of areas where real work at home jobs are becoming more plentiful; one area where the number of jobs at home on offer are increasing is in call-center work.

Anyone who has needed to contact a company's Customer Service Department and has been routed to a call-center will know that many of them are based overseas but there is a less well-known trend for hiring more local call-center staff. Between 2000 and 2007 the number of home-based call-center employees in the USA tripled. According to research conducted by Yankee Group there are more than 670,000 work at home phone agents employed in the USA and Canada alone.

Working at home as a call-center agent has many of the advantages of running your own home business including the obvious ones such as flexible working hours and no commuting. You are, however, an employee just as much as if you were working in your employer's building and your earning potential is dictated by how much work the employer provides. Home-based call-center workers are normally contractors who are paid for the actual number of minutes they spend on the phone to customers. Working hours, although flexible, have to be sanctioned by the employer, so you can't just decide to change your hours without giving any notice.

Hourly rates of pay for work at home call-center staff are not particularly high and depend upon the type of work undertaken. For example if your job is to simply take down customer orders over the phone, you will not earn as much as you would providing technical support or in a position requiring sales skills.

When considering the rates of pay for a home-based call-center agent job, you need to take into account that by working at home, you will be saving money. For example, you won't have to pay for fares or fuel, you won't have to maintain a working-clothes wardrobe and, if you are a parent (as most people who want to work at home are), you won't have to pay expensive child-care fees. Despite the comparatively low rates of pay, telecommuting as a call-center agent is worth considering if you want a job where you can work at home.

To find sources of legitimate telecommuting work at home, visit Elaine Currie's Work At Home Directory. While you are there, pick up a free copy of Ezine Article Writing - 10 Steps To Success

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Telecommuting Customer Service Agent

If you're just starting out on your telecommuting job search; you may be getting a feel for what types of jobs are out there and want to know which ones you can do. For this article we'll tackle one of the most popular telecommuting positions out there - Customer Service.

Each company has their own customer service duties, but for the most part, you're job is to help that company's customers get their questions answered or help them solve a problem.

How is Customer Service performed?

There are three ways that one could perform their customer service duties. The most popular being by the phone. You would have a phone in your home office and when you're on duty for the company; the calls would be transferred to your home line, where you would take care of the customer.

There are some positions where you could perform your customer service duties using an email program. Typically, you would gain access to the company's customer service email address account, where you can take the emails of customers and answer their questions that way.

There are also jobs where you can perform your customer service duties by using a special live chat program on a company's website. It works much like an instant message program that you might use to chat with friends. A customer would come to the site, and use the chat program to converse with you about whatever their needs are.

How much can they make?

This is a tough question to answer, since so many companies do it differently. You would have to look closely at the websites of companies that you're considering applying to. Here are some ways that you may encounter in your job search:

Hourly pay- This is the most sought after type of position. Most people look for this, but there aren't too many out there. This type of position is where you would work a set number of hours, say 8-2 and get paid for an hourly rate for the hours you worked. These positions can run from $8-$12 in most cases.

Pay per Call- Some companies will pay a certain amount of money for every call you make or receive. Again, these types of positions aren't seen too often, but they're out there.

Pay per Minute Talked- This is the most popular type of position you can find. This is where you will be paid a certain amount per minute that you talk with a customer. For example, you work one hour for a company. In that hour you receive one phone call and you talk with them for 5 minutes. The pay you would receive for that one hour of work is the 5 minutes of actual talk time. Some companies will offer other tasks to perform in between calls, but the other tasks will generally have a different rate of pay.

Do you need a lot of experience to work as a customer service agent?

Typically, you don't need that much experience. Some companies will ask for at least 6 months of experience, but most are okay with you having none. Generally, you would receive training with them, so you'll get the knowledge you need to perform your duties.

On occasion, there will be positions where you will have access to some sensitive material, like credit card numbers. Those positions will require you to have a good credit record, so they can trust you to be discreet with their customer's financial information.

If you have some customer service experience or if you have the ability to work with people in some of the toughest situations without getting riled up too easily, then this is a job you should consider.

Since each company is different, you will want to check out their websites or email your questions to them. Make sure you understand what the position entails or what the pay will be before applying.

Nell Taliercio has been working at home full time since 2004. She's worked as a telecommuter, virtual assistant and affiliate marketer. In 5 years she's discovered many secrets to finding legitimate work at home jobs and securing them. You can find work at home job information and tips at: http://www.justonlinejobs.com

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