On call, agents can prosper while working at home

Independent contractors can set their own hours and choose programs they like.

By DON SHILLING

VINDICATOR BUSINESS EDITOR

Gwen Dean knows when a football game is on TV — Pizza Hut customers call her house nearly nonstop.

“It’s amazing how much people like pizza,” the Boardman woman said.

Pizza buyers from around the nation are calling her home because Dean is a new type of call center agent — one who works from home.

Four or five evenings a week, she sits in front of her computer at home and takes overflow orders for Pizza Hut restaurants that can’t keep up with their calls. She takes orders over the phone and sends them to restaurants over the Internet.

Meanwhile, she doesn’t have to drive to work or worry if the roads are plowed. She doesn’t have to dress up for work or bundle up to go outside.

And if it’s not a football night and calls are slow, she can lift weights right by her computer.

“For me, this is the new way to work,” said Dean, 67, a retired quality-control analyst who worked 30 years at a General Motors plant in Rochester, N.Y.

A lot of people apparently feel the same way.

The Yankee Group, a research firm, estimates that the number of home-based call center agents nationwide has tripled since 2000 to about 670,000.

Dean works as an independent contractor for LiveOps, which has doubled its agent base to 16,000 in the past year and a half.

Tim Whipple, vice president for the California-based company, said the Youngstown area is a good place to recruit agents.

He only wants agents with call center experience and he knows that the Youngstown area has plenty of those.

Call centers in the Mahoning Valley and New Castle employ more than 3,000 people and have been expanding.

Whipple said he can afford to be choosy when adding agents because he receives about 3,000 applications a week.

Dean heard about LiveOps from her daughter-in-law in Atlanta, who is an agent with the company. Dean had worked for two area call centers after moving here in 2000 to be closer to other family members.

The requirements for being a home-based agent are having a computer, high-speed Internet and a phone line that can be used only for business calls. And you need to be able to provide a quiet spot.

“The agents learn to train their kids, their husband and their dogs because noise is grounds for termination,” Whipple said.

Many agents are stay-at-home mothers who work while children are in school, while others are retirees or people with disabilities, he said.

Agents are paid by how much time they are on calls. There also are incentives that vary by the type of call program. For pizza orders, incentives cover how quickly a call is handled.

For taking orders during TV infomercials, incentives involve how many products are sold to callers.

Agents can choose what programs they work for, so people who don’t like to sell can limit themselves to order-taking calls, Whipple said.

Agents also can choose how often they want to work, anywhere from two to 80 hours a week.

Pay generally starts at about $7 an hour but can increase to between $12 and $20 an hour for successful agents who are on sales calls, he said.

Dean, who just started with LiveOps in September, figures she has the skills to make $20 an hour once she starts working with infomercials.

For now, she’s working 15 to 20 hours a week and earning $500 to $600 a month.

She considers that good money for doing something that she considers fun.

“For me, it’s a very relaxed thing,” she said.

Some companies have both home-based agents and call centers. West Corp., for example, has about 25 percent of its agents, or 7,500 people, working at home.

While the Nebraska-based company doesn’t have any home-based workers in Ohio, it does operate a call center in Niles that employs more than 1,000.

Dave Pleiss, director of investor and public relations for West, said the company added services from home-based agents in 2002 so it could offer lower prices to its clients.

Some customers have been interested and some haven’t, but the home-based division is growing every year, he said.

The Home Shopping Network and ShopNBC are two clients who like the flexibility that home-based agents provide, he said.

Staffing levels easily can be adjusted depending on products that are offered and how successful they are expected to be, he said.

One concern with home-based agents is the security of credit card numbers. Pleiss said agents in call centers aren’t allowed to have paper or pencils so they can’t write down any information.

For home-based agents, West uses software that allows customers to enter their credit card numbers over the phone without agents having access to it.

For Dean, there are plenty of benefits to being a home-based agent besides not having to drive to work.

She has a flexible schedule, signing up for only the shifts she wants to work. She feels pride because she’s an independent contractor who doesn’t need the oversight of a boss. And she’s enjoyed the training she’s received and new skills she has learned.

“You know what they say,” she said. “Mentally, if you don’t use it, you lose it. This helps keep me younger.”

shilling@vindy.com