One way to reduce this time commitment and improve the chance of getting hired is to apply for a work-at-home position through the American Home Agent Association. This nonprofit association was created to bring call center jobs back from overseas to America and find employment for agents working from home.

With the American Home Agent Association, members complete the Associations  application process once. The Association then matches the member’s background to each company’s requirements and submits it to those companies that best match the members qualifications.

The American Home Agent Association follows the same enrollment steps that most companies use when evaluating a candidate:

1. Online application and skills assessment testing
2. Screening of applicant’s information and matching it to the job requirements
3. Auditioning the applicant’s voice
4. Phone interview when necessary
5. Background check 

Once you become a member of the American Home Agent Association, and complete the Association’s single application process, your information is submitted to multiple companies that are accepting indivdiuals with your background. 

 The Association investigates each corpevery company that is looking to hire work at home agents through the association. This investigation is done by LexisNexis, which employs 18,000 people and is a leader in the field for doing this type of work.

Becoming a member of the American Home Agent Association assures you that any company receiving your information is legitimate. Each company contacted on your behalf will send you a description of the specific job , the pay rate, along with a request for additional information, or your application status. You will always know where you stand, which avoids wondering for months whether or not you got the job.

Most companies require Home Agents to have a traditional corded phone with an attached headset, a recent-model personal computer, and a high-speed DSL  Internet connection. Agents must be at least 18 years of age and provide proof of eligibility to work in the United States.

The best candidates for these positions are able to follow directions on their own and have the discipline to work without a boss present. Those looking to socialize in an office setting should look for a different career opportunity. To avoid feeling isolated, most companies develop a sense of community through online chat rooms, team contests, conference calls, social media, and a mentor.

All companies using Home Agents provide online training to educate Home Agents on the products or services they will handle and on the company’s policies, systems and technology. You may or may not get paid for the time you spend being trained.

Other things to know:

• Good Home Agent candidates should have a clear speaking voice with good diction and grammar. Calls are normally recorded for quality control and training purposes.

 

• The most successful companies provide Home Agents with quick access to help desks.

 

• Punctuality, i.e., starting and ending a work shift on time — is a must.

 

• Background noise such as a TV, barking dogs, crying babies or a ringing doorbell is not tolerated.

 

• Home agents must also pass a reading and a basic computer skills tests, demonstrating they can access specific websites, use a search engine, put a disk drive in a computer, and troubleshoot computer problems with directions.

 

If you call JetBlue, you will speak to someone working from home. Call one of the Hilton Hotel chains and you may be talking to one of more than 600 Home Agents who handle thousands of reservations and support calls from customers every day. The following chart lists some of the other companies that make use of Home Agents.

Companies are hiring Home Agents for either full-time or part-time positions.  Most companies want to hire Home Agents that have their own corporation or Limited Liability Co. (LLC) and provide the at-home services as an independent contractor. Some companies will hire Home Agents as employees and provide employee benefits and retirement plans. 

Most Home Agent jobs enable you to select your own schedule and you can change it weekly. You can work days, nights, weekends, or even parts of the day, such as early morning, evening or late evening.  

A company will ask for at least 15 to 20 hours a week to make it worthwhile to train you.  Home Agents seeking a higher income can work for multiple companies and schedule as many as 60 hours a week.

A Home Agent job is best suited to a stay-at-home parent, dual-income family, undergraduate or graduate college student,  military spouse, retiree or a person who isn’t mobile because of special medical needs or disabilities.

People with telemarketing or sales experience, a second language or special licenses can make use of those skills, as well.

Legitimate Home Agent employment is usually not found in a search engine inquiry. Why? It’s a job or contract in which a company guarantees to pay you a specified salary, hourly wage, or an amount per call or project, on either a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly basis. These opportunities are carefully announced, not spammed.

The pay normally ranges from $8 to $30 per hour based on the types of calls, experience, work schedule and call volume.

A starting position with no prior call center experience may pay $8 to $12 an hour, whereas an individual trained to take technical support calls may be paid $20 per hour. A candidate with an insurance or securities license or with sales ability may take jobs that can earn them additional income from commissions totaling $30 per hour or more.

Here are some of the job categories that Home Agents excel at:

To understand the full value of being a Home Agent, add to your pay the $2,000 to $3,000 a year saved by working at home. This includes lower commuting expenses, work clothes, dry cleaning, lunch at restaurants and so on. Home Agents with children can save on childcare expenses and combine domestic activities with work.

Because you have a home-based business, you may be eligible to deduct from your income taxes certain business-related expenses such as:

• Telephone bills
• Internet connection bills
• Utility bills
• Equipment such as a computer, headset, security software and office furniture
• Medical coverage
• Retirement plan contributions
• Home-related costs, such as housecleaning, real estate taxes, home depreciation, mortgage interest or rent, home insurance, home repairs and security systems.

Before taking any of the deductions, speak to a qualified tax advisor for a full understanding of the rules.

Unfortunately, we at the American Home Agent Association have found that the vast majority of work from home job offers are either fraudulent or have little opportunity for real income. Many websites make appealing claims such as: “Earn a $1,000 dollars a day! Work less than 20 minutes a day! I made $8,755 my first month! Spend time with your family! Be your own boss!”.

These job opportunities all sound too good to be true and they are. As a Director of the American Home Agent Association, LLC and companies that provide call-center services, here’s what my research shows:

1. ONLINE SURVEYS seem to be a great way to earn extra income, but those websites are all about asking you for a membership fee to provide a list of websites that offer online surveying jobs or to enroll you in a huge marketing program in which you are the sales target. Even when the surveys provide real work, the time you spend versus the pay you receive amounts to less than the minimum wage

 

2. DATA ENTRY is advertised as simple transcript or data-word work. Often you must  pay a fee of $3 to $20 to receive training materials in order to earn as much as $5,000 a month. This high promised income is very unrealistic for an entry-level keyboarding job. When a colleague of mine paid for training materials, he received instructions to type the same ad he answered and send it out to people to get them to also pay for the same material. This was an illegal pyramid scheme because no one is selling a product or service.
     
3. PROCESSING MEDICAL INSURANCE CLAIMS WEBSITES say that there is a “crisis in the medical business” and there are not enough qualified people to process the landslide of paperwork. These sites promise $20,000 to $25,000 a year for working less than “30 minutes per day.”  The real motive is to sell you a training program for thousands of dollars that consists of a video, computer diskettes, brochures, testimonials, a licensing agreement and other documents.  When the material arrives, you often find that you could have purchased the same software and instruction guides for less than $100.

The list of scams goes on and on. You may now be wondering: Are any of the offers legitimate? Can I work from home and make an honest income?  The answer is “yes.” We at the American Home Agent Association have found that the most bona-fide, no risk, way to work from home is by working for an established company, the kind you recognize by name. You are paid a guanateed pay rate for providing a real service, such as call center support in the areas of customer service, technical support, market research, direct response, sales or some other form of customer care.

These jobs are now appearing in the United States after 20 years of Fortune 1000 companies trying to save money by outsourcing customer service, tech support and other contact-center services to offshore call centers.

Many of those companies have learned that sending calls to emerging countries such as India saved money, but led their customers to express dissatisfaction with the quality of service.  As a result, the percentage of calls routed to offshore call centers has declined for the second straight year, according to CFI Group’s Call Center Satisfaction Index Report. 

The Internet and new call-routing technology now makes it possible for companies to handle customer interactions with professionally trained agents working from home. These U.S. based home agents enable companies to meet customer needs faster and provide a better customer experience. The result: improved customer loyalty.

With unemployment raising at home the sentiment has been to encourage companies to keep or bring back to the United States as many jobs as possible.  Legislation in Congress was recently introduced that would impose a fee of 25 cents for every call that a company sends offshore. The added cost gives companies an incentive to try U.S. based Home Agents.

Our Association obtains background information on our member agents and matches that information to the agent requirements of companies offering work from home opportunites. 

Our Association researches companies to find legitimate work from home jobs, and only accepts jobs that offer a guaranteed pay rate. We then provide a single enrollment process, training when necessary, and match the background of our agent members to companies looking for individuals with their qualifications. We submit the agent’s information to each company who will then contact the agents directly. This saves the average job seeker 15 to 20 hours a week normally spent looking for a work from home job and completing multiple applications.

While in school, Mr. Schein became so skilled at picking stocks that student’s, parents and even a few faculty members gave him funds to invest. In one year, his disciplined approach turned his own $3,000 into more than $100,000.

Mr. Schein did his Mater’s work at  The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and left after a year to start Venture Data, a financial advisory firm. He also founded Barclay Associates, which today is one of the largest 401(k) plan administration firms in the nation.

After selling Barclay, Mr. Schein moved to Florida and developed call center strategies, processes, technologies used to found The Results Companies in 1990. Over the next 20 years, The Results Companies grew to nearly 5,000 callers, making it the 12th largest of its kind nationwide. He also pioneered the creation and manufacture of leading technology used by call centers to improve their performance.

Revenue reached $100 million in fiscal year 2010 with many Fortune 500 company clients and well known national brands. His dedication to providing superior consumer service led to his firm helping a client win the JD Power Award for customer service. In the fall of 2010, Mr. Schein sold The Results Companies.

Alan Schein recently launched the American Home Agent Association, as a nonprofit organization to help bring call center jobs back to America and improve the overall level of customer satisfaction. This association helps qualify and train at-home U.S. workers and matches them with corporations looking to on-shore customer service telephone jobs back to the U.S. The association also helps companies obtain the equipment, technology and systems needed to operate an effective Work From Home Agent program.