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Applied for home-based phone sales job/voice audition blown?
    #24257350 -

So I applied for a work-from-home position today. The company is a third-party support provider and does "branded" customer service for a number of different unknown companies. I've done work like this before but I put off applying to yet-another indie contractor job of this sort for a while due to bad experiences in the past... but I'm pretty broke and going nowhere with my life until I get some money.

So anyway... part of the process was to call a toll-free number and do a "voice audition". I had to read a pre-written script and also answer a couple questions on-the-fly. The whole thing was automated. I think I did fairly OK on reading the pre-written script, considering that it was my first time reading it aloud. I know from experience that these scripts get easier with practice, and I did practice it a few times before I called... but I made a few mistakes here and there. Also my tone could have been better but I was more concerned with making mistakes in the reading.

The next part, where I had to respond to a couple of scenarios (as though I were speaking directly to the customer). The first scenario wasn't too bad but on the second one I feel like I didn't really know how to respond and I flubbered a bit.

I'm hoping that my extensive past experience in storefront and remote/telephone/chat IT support and sales overshadows my fair-at-best voice audition.

Anyone have any experience auditing customer support or doing HR stuff? Any opinions on what sort of outcome this could have? Any experiences in work-from-home telephone/chat/email support you'd like to relate? I've done DSL/telephone support, sales and support for educational products from a mainstream publisher, roadside assistance and a lot of crap like that but I always find that the pay is too low, the employer is too demanding or the customers are such shit that I don't want to put up with it for too long.


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- Demon

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Re: Applied for home-based phone sales job/voice audition blown? [Re: MXDemon]
    #24257367 -

i could be wrong, but i doubt these companies receive a high volume of applications


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channel your inner Larry David

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Re: Applied for home-based phone sales job/voice audition blown? [Re: demiu5]
    #24257555 -

demiu5 said:
i could be wrong, but i doubt these companies receive a high volume of applications



They do actually. And the turn over rate is insanely high. There's a reason it's an "at home" position. It's not cuz they care about the health and well-being of their employees. It's cuz they want to spend as little time and money on them as possible. Even in-office call centers tend to have high turn over rates.


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          :dancingbear: Free time is the only time :dancingbear:                    :thatsinteresting:

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Re: Applied for home-based phone sales job/voice audition blown? [Re: CookieCrumbs]
    #24257617 -

That's pretty much right. It saves them a hell of a lot of money to hire independent contractors. This company, for instance, doesn't offer benefits nor unemployment. It was in the agreement on the job application. It's funny because I breezed through the whole thing and I'm like "Yeah yeah... I pretty much know more about your company and your line of work than you do already just through conjecture." Lack of any substantial benefits or pay and having to deal with non-stop bullshit is part of why they have such a high turn-over rate. Oh well.. when I worked in a "brick-and-mortar" call center, the benefits were great and the hours were non-stop but the pay could have been considerably better and they wanted you to work more hours than humanly possible. I ended up getting myself fired. It's funny because when they say "all of our calls are monitored and recorded", they're not fucking lying. Our computer screens were also recorded during calls and I got caught putting in for time off (so that I could look for another job incidentally) during the middle of filing an insurance claim for a client. I'd already had strikes against me and I'd already told HR that I fucking hated their company and their guts so it was just time for it to happen.


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- Demon

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Re: Applied for home-based phone sales job/voice audition blown? [Re: MXDemon]
    #24257618 -

Also... ME LOVE COOKIEMONSTER! OMNOMNOMNOM!


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- Demon

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Re: Applied for home-based phone sales job/voice audition blown? [Re: MXDemon]
    #24257650 -

What do jobs like that typically pay?

A work from home job like that, i mean


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Re: Applied for home-based phone sales job/voice audition blown? [Re: JvF]
    #24257672 -

Mostly, not much. Sometimes $9-$12/hr base pay at entry-level. Some jobs offer commission on product sales. like The job I worked in telephone and DSL support had me attempting to sell customers on various PC security products. The problem is, when you're calling to voice your dissatisfaction with a service that you're already paying for, you're not likely to want to piss away money on something else from the same people.


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- Demon

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Re: Applied for home-based phone sales job/voice audition blown? [Re: CookieCrumbs]
    #24257765 -

CookieCrumbs said:
demiu5 said:
i could be wrong, but i doubt these companies receive a high volume of applications



They do actually. And the turn over rate is insanely high. There's a reason it's an "at home" position. It's not cuz they care about the health and well-being of their employees. It's cuz they want to spend as little time and money on them as possible. Even in-office call centers tend to have high turn over rates.


The turn over rate is likely so high,
because the work sucks to do,
get auto-dialed to someone, interrupt them at supper, get yelled at
repeat until some lonely old lady answers

only two places to go are to quit,
or to stick around long enough to be assigned to a supervisor position,
where the really angry respondents get relayed to you

personally replaced it with a new job at the first available opportunity
tho at least it served as motivational in terms of finding something better

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Re: Applied for home-based phone sales job/voice audition blown? [Re: CookieCrumbs]
    #24257772 -

CookieCrumbs said:
demiu5 said:
i could be wrong, but i doubt these companies receive a high volume of applications



They do actually. And the turn over rate is insanely high. There's a reason it's an "at home" position. It's not cuz they care about the health and well-being of their employees. It's cuz they want to spend as little time and money on them as possible. Even in-office call centers tend to have high turn over rates.




that's quite surprising to me.  i figured the turnover to be high (some people probably not lasting a week), but i didn't really expect there to be numerous applications.  i thought these were typically high school/college jobs or people needing a second part timer


:themoreyouknow:


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channel your inner Larry David

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Re: Applied for home-based phone sales job/voice audition blown? [Re: demiu5]
    #24257803 -

Well you don't have much of a business, or room to be a dickhead employer, if you have a high turnover rate but a low number of applicants per job.

Alot of them invest most of their marketing budgets into suckering people into the job. Mostly with like the "work from home" or "choose your hours" deal. Of course they're always leaving out the details, like yeah you work from home but you have to provide your own hardware and consent to corporate monitoring software. Or you get to choose your hours but only some times and still have to work more than so many hours a week.

Or I've seen a lot lately that are "make up to $1000 a week!" but don't tell you the salary is half that and your chances of making commission that high is almost none.



Sounds like shitty ass work to me. Being who I am I'm sure I'd want to shoot myself in a week, home or not.


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          :dancingbear: Free time is the only time :dancingbear:                    :thatsinteresting:

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