Modern office employees have more options than ever when it comes to their work. Technology and communication features such as laptops and computers, the Internet, telephones (mobile and landline), live video chat, and Cloud data storage make modern workers quite flexible employees. This is a boon for everyone involved, since this independent contractor work from home may allow someone to choose their own hours and makes them more productive and profitable. Customer service jobs, in home agent call work, inbound sales business over the home phone, and more can be quite useful and accelerate a business’s growth. It should be noted that even with the Internet so prevalent, phone calls are still a major aspect of any business’s interactions with its customers, clients, and general consumers. Good phone skills can make any employee or independent contractor work from home more profitable.
Using the Phone
In any work paradigm, may it be independent contractor work from home or working in a call center or office, phone skills are crucial for many employees, such as those who work in sales or customer service. Why is this? Many consumers and clients today, especially older ones, make use of phone calls to businesses to have their questions answered, their complaints heard, or their business offers considered. This is a major route for communication and profit, and today’s business managers know it well. Studies have confirmed that many customers and clients today regularly use the phone like this, and good customer service will impress them and inspire trust while poor service may anger them or even drive them away. This is true for both potential and regular customers, and it is 25 times more expensive to bring on new customers than retain current ones. Treating new and current customers alike well is important, but good phone service with existing customers may be the fastest route to protecting the company’s profits. Meanwhile, many surveyed customers have shown that they are more willing to spend money on a company that gave them good customer service, and even just one instance of bad phone service may anger a customer and drive them to quit dealing with that company entirely. A manager can’t afford to lose so many customers because of bad phone conversations.
Working in a call center or an office may present some hazards to good phone conversation quality, however. A crowded call center or office will be a noisy place, since there are many other employees there who are also having phone calls or in-person conversations. This ambient noise may drive up an employee’s stress levels and make it tougher to hear the other person on the line (or be heard). If both parties have to keep asking each to speak up or repeat themselves, this could lead to poor customer service and a lost client or customer. Some offices have soundproof phone booths installed to get around this, and many employees like using them. But there is another option for employees and independent contractors alike: working remotely.
Remote Work
Independent contractor work from home, or an office employee working remotely, may yield more than a few benefits. For one thing, such a worker is not commuting anywhere, meaning that they can reallocate commute time to and from the office to extra work, allowing them to be even more productive since home and the office are the same thing. Not only that, but one’s home is a quiet and controlled environment, free of chatty co-workers. Noise levels are lower, and air quality is higher, too. After all, the cold or flu may be easily spread around in a crowded office, and some offices have a lot of airborne particles and dust that workers inhale. Studies have shown that such poor air quality may in fact reduce cognitive function in adults, and no manager would want that. Remote employee work, or independent contractor work from home, gets around that issue. And with phone lines, a secure Internet connection on a computer, live video chat, and Cloud data storage, such remote workers will be fully connected to their peers and customers alike. A home office is a fine place for all of this work. Single parents may choose this option if they can’t easily leave home for work.
