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A bit of info on "Home-Shoring"..

Posted By: Pete Egeler <pegeler@yahoo.com>
Saturday, 28 January 2006, at 7:07 p.m.

In Response To: Re: Work at home and make $$$ (Paul Bergman)

I just did some very quick, down 'n' dirty research on "HomeShoring", and thought some of you might be interested.

1) Your costs: Some companies require you pay for a background check ($30)

2) You must have Hi-Speed Internet. (Broadband/Cable.. No DialUp allowed).

3) You will need a dedicated phone line. (No cell phones or wireless allowed)

4) You WILL NOT have insurance. (In most cases, though I saw one company that mentioned employee benifits. Just didn't look into it.)

I looked at 4 different companies, and found that most will require that you agree to 20-30 hours per week. In most cases, you can pick the times you work.

Pay appears to be pretty good for work-at-home, running $15-$20 an hour. (That's more than I make on my J.O.B.)

These "Home-Shore" jobs consist of customer support services via phone & Internet, and you'll need to be able to be talking on the phone and working on the computer at the same time.

If it sounds good, go for it. :)

Pete

> Hi Jodie,

> Here is an article from page 76 in the January 23, 2006 issue of
> BusinessWeek magazine. It gives some names of companies that provide
> real jobs for work at home.

> Paul Bergman

> Call Centers In The Rec Room
> "Homeshoring" takes off as moms and others provide an
> alternative to offshoring

> Three years ago, when the offshoring debate was in full fury, the director
> of vendor relations at 1-800-FLOWERS.com ran a pilot project to see if the
> company should be taking advantage of the new labor arbitrage. Within
> weeks,
> the trial in India bombed. For the executive in charge, Lou Orsi, it was a
> reminder that customer service is as much about psychology as technology.
> Florists often double as condolence therapists, interior design coaches,
> and
> relationship strategists. "The folks were difficult to
> understand," says
> Orsi. "We were afraid that we would lose sales, and we couldn't risk
> that."
> The company also needed to pour on the labor during spikes like
> Valentine's
> Day. (When it came to answering customers' e-mails, though, the dazzling
> prose
> of the Indians -- many of them PhDs -- outshone that of the Americans,
> most
> of whom had gone only to high school. So Orsi left some of the e-mail jobs
> overseas).

> The phone work stayed in the U.S. But not just in brick-and-mortar call
> centers. Instead, Orsi looked for another way to cut costs. He soon
> realized
> he could capitalize on a different and far less controversial option:
> sending
> the jobs to a U.S. outfit that specializes in a new trend called
> homeshoring.

> More and more, companies are moving customer service jobs out of
> high-overhead
> call centers and into what is possibly the lowest-overhead place in the
> U.S.:
> workers' homes. The savings are about more than just real estate, toilet
> paper, and coffee supplies. JetBlue Airways () is perhaps the most famous
> practitioner; all of its 1,400 reservation agents work from home. But they
> are employees. Most of the new homeshoring jobs are independent contractor
> positions offered by outsourcing companies. The agents are on the hook for
> their own health care, computer equipment, training -- even background
> checks.

> Outsourced homeshoring jobs grew 20% last year, to 112,000 jobs, estimates
> tech-market researcher IDC, and will hit 330,000 by 2010.
> "Offshoring's
> underestimated sibling, homeshoring, is about to hit a growth spurt,"
> says
> IDC analyst Stephen Loynd. Office Depot (), McKesson (), and J. Crew all
> use
> home agents. Homeshoring is less likely to risk the accent fatigue,
> cultural
> disconnection, and customer rage that offshoring can inspire. That's not
> to
> mention the mounting security fears (once your private data -- credit-card
> and
> Social Security numbers, medical and brokerage records -- go overseas,
> they're
> beyond the reach of U.S. law).

> LOYAL WORKFORCE
> For a fraction of the cost, companies get superior labor. Home workers --
> sometimes called cyberagents -- are being culled from a labor pool that,
> pre-
> broadband, was marooned from Big Business. The biggest group of home
> agents
> are educated, stay-at-home moms who were previously workforce MIAs because
> they lived in rural areas, couldn't afford child care, or were unable to
> contort their lives into mandatory, face-time schedules. More than 75% of
> home
> agents have some college, vs. 20% in call centers. Home-based agents are
> also
> far more experienced and radically more loyal.

> Aside from mothers with young children, virtual call-center providers like
> Alpine Access, LiveOps, Willow, and Working Solutions are hiring other
> members of the hidden labor force: itinerant military spouses, seasoned
> retirees living half the year down South, computer-savvy, disabled
> veterans
> -- even corporate wives looking to go back to work. "I have a
> daughter at NYU.
> That's like $40,000 a year," says LiveOps home agent Adrienne Byrne.
> She
> brings in about $1,200 biweekly working 40 hours a week out of the 4,000-
> square-foot colonial in Brookfield, Conn., that she shares with her
> husband,
> an executive in international finance.

> Homeshoring also provides a flexible, just-in-time workforce. Shifts can
> last
> as little as 15 minutes. Agents are paid only for the time spent on the
> phone
> -- a 21st-century piece-rate system. Technology lets companies monitor
> worker
> performance with the same precision as the machinery on their assembly
> lines.
> While a stateside call-center worker typically costs $31 an hour,
> including
> overhead and training, home agents cost only $21, says IDC. Home agents
> are
> also more productive. Willow CEO Angie Selden says the company's home
> agents
> make sales that are up to 25% higher than in call centers; their customer
> satisfaction rates are often 40% better.

> Another factor powering the trend is the awareness that it can cost up to
> six
> times as much to replace a customer as to keep him, points out Washington
> (D.C.)-based Telework Coalition senior vice-president Jack Heacock. Thus
> offshoring is giving way to a new "multishore" or
> "rightshore" strategy:
> matching consumers to a workforce that best serves them.

> The advantage for employees is an end to days where more time is spent
> commuting in a car than lounging on the living room couch -- or having
> only
> enough for a trip to McDonald's () after job-related expenses are paid.
> "I
> could get a job at the mall, but the $8.50 an hour would all be taken up
> by
> day care and gas," says Crystal Gilot, a military spouse who works
> for Willow
> from her home in Sierra Vista, Ariz., near Fort Huachuca. Her two kids are
> trained like soldiers not to utter a syllable when she's on the phone. She
> says that by taking calls for AAA roadside assistance and Office Depot,
> she
> can earn up to $20.70, with incentives. But she usually averages $15 an
> hour
> -- extra income that will be helpful when Gilot's husband leaves in six
> months
> for his second tour in Iraq.

> Of course, there's a dark side. While home agents earn more than their
> brick-
> and-mortar counterparts (most earn $10 to $15 an hour without benefits vs.
> $7
> to $9 with benefits in a call center), they are also going it alone in the
> workplace jungle. Critics say homeshoring is thrusting more jobs into the
> global discount-labor bazaar.

> In a scenario that's becoming increasingly familiar, Working Solutions
> cyberagent Jacqueline Lesane has a slice of the good life, including her
> own
> Atlanta home with a pool. But she and her husband have no health
> insurance.
> For now, she's willing to make the trade-off: no benefits, but more
> flexibility and control.

> By Michelle Conlin

Here's Your Niche...

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You'll find great information in this "Read Only" Archive, but remember..... things change.
Be sure to visit the Current Message Board when you're finished here.

We're very friendly, so don't be shy... just jump right in and post your question.
Scams outnumber legitimate biz ops about a bzillion to one, so it's well worth your time.



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