RSSYou can make money from the comfort of your living room, talking on the phone!
You probably won’t be having social discussions, but there is a great opportunity to grow your business and work from home simply by talking on the phone. I’m talking about using your home phone line to be an inbound call center agent. Now I know that all of that information probably conjured up frightening images of cubicles, college drop outs, and cigarette butts covering your living room floor, but it isn’t that way.
What is it and how do I?
In essence, you are taking a job done by someone in a call center somewhere and bringing it inside your home. You will be taking calls for a company and answering customer questions for them. Many companies are willing and able to answer customer questions but they don’t always have the wherewithal to bring on a full time, internal inbound call center to field these questions. That’s where you come in. You can offer your services to them and provide a link to the company while lounging casually about in your living room.
Do your research!
When you are looking for companies to sign up with, do your research. I recommend checking out about.com’s site. They give a list of several companies that do inbound home-based call centers. The site also gives you the type of position, what costs, the hours and duration, and the geographic restrictions.
Don’t forget to do research on the company for which you will want to work. Hoovers.com can provide some basic business to business comparisons, and you can go to places like the Better Business Bureau and ripoffreport.com to find more information about the company. A word of warning about ripoffreport.com. They don’t ever take down someone’s complaint once it has been filed, like the Better Business Bureau does, so the reviews you will get on their site will be very biased against the company.
The idea is to make sure that you find a reputable company, who will pay you promptly, and isn’t a likely scam.
What you’ll need
Most people already have most of these items, but don’t forget to read this bit, just in case.
· A desktop computer
Most places like you to have a desktop computer, and not a laptop. They also discourage Macintosh, not because they have a deep seeded hatred against Mac, but the software they use is generally restricted to use on a PC computer.
· High Speed Internet
Most companies don’t like you to have satellite internet, but DSL, Cable or Broadband are generally accepted.
· Printer
This will allow you to print important documents from the company. Some companies require these, some don’t.
This will allow you to communicate with the company you are working for and they will usually communicate through email and instant messenger. There are several free email services that you can use, such as yahoo, aol, or gmail. Some companies require that you use a specific service. If that is the case, Mozilla provides an email client, much like Microsof Outlook, for free. It is called Thunderbird. When you talk to the companies that you are going to communicate with, they can give you information on what service you need to use, and can also give you some technical support if you are setting up a service like Thunderbird or Outlook.
· Land-Line Phone Service
This will be an added expense, but you cannot beat the quality of the landline and it will provide greater reliability for the company for whom you take calls.
· Corded Telephone
The quality of sound during these calls is of utmost importance to the companies, so you will want to make sure that the phone that you have is corded, and that the buttons are on a separate part of the phone than the handset. For your benefit, you will also want to get a corded headset with a noise cancelling microphone. This will free your hands and allow you to take notes and communicate while you are talking on the phone.
· Instant Messenger Account
I recommend using the free version of Trillian. This allows you to combine several different messenger services, such as gmail chat, facebook chat, msn instant messanging, yahoo, aim, and others, all into one program. There is a Trillian Pro, but I don’t recommend it because the free version has everything you need.
The whole point of having an instant messenger account is to be able to communicate with either the customers or the company while you are talking to the customers.
· Web Browser
Most companies will use Internet Explorer 6 or higher, and some like you to use Firefox. Just make sure that whatever they require, you have.
Do your research, get the equipment, sign up with the company, and start making money online while working from home!
Filed Under: Work From Home
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