DaJobSucks

When most think of a job in customer services, they think of long hours around a phone or in a bank or convenience store helping customers to find the products they need or answering the thousands of questions that comes to them on a daily basis. The difference between what has just been described and being a customer services rep. from home, is that, you perform the services from the comfort of your home and most importantly, the earning potential is greater. The foregoing reasons along with the increased demand for work-at-home customer service representatives, has led to increased interest in the industry from persons looking for work at home opportunities. Companies have driven this increased demand as they seem to prefer to contract an agent or service company to provide the service from home than to have full time staff and purchase the required infrastructure (hardware and software) to support quality customer care. The savings that companies achieve as a result of the foregoing has led to increases in the earnings of work at home customer services reps to an average of $13 per hour, which is far above the rate that is payed to full time employees which averages about $8.50 per hour.

Basic Company requirements

There are many different responsibilities of a customers service department within a company. The functions ranges from handling customer queries, communicating company products to customers, providing technical support etc. For these responsibilities companies need some basic things which will also be necessary if you intend on providing customer rep services. The foregoing equipment is as follows:

• A high speed computer;
• A DSL or Cable modem for a fast internet connection;
  
• An up to date operating system for your computer;
• An up to date Internet application;
  
• A phone line for use in providing the service;
• A quiet working environment;
  
• In some instances, companies may already have a customer services software that they will give to you to help you serve their customers;
  
• Basic computer skills; and
• Self motivatation(This is important as you will not have a supervisor at your back to motivate you to work.)
  

Companies may also require you to take training courses developed by them and may require you to complete typing, writing and language tests. Some companies have gone as far as to require drug tests and in most cases will do background checks on whoever will be representing the company as a customer services rep. Companies may also require that you are bi-lingual or have persons on your team who are bilingual.

These jobs are not easy to find currently, however you can take a look at the following sites for job openings in this field:

Alpine Access

National Telecommuting Institute

Working Solutions

Yahoo! HotJobs

Career Builder

West Corporation