Mum finds right opportunity to work from home

Lisa Corneck has the best of all worlds ““ she is a stay at home mum living in a coastal town with a corporate job.

The 36-year old works as a home based, call centre agent, which means working flexible hours for a reputable employer on a wide range of projects involving leading Australian companies.

“Six weeks after I had my son I started working doing about ten hours a week while he was asleep,” she revealed.

“Now that he is two-years-old I tend to work in the evening when my husband gets home, from 7.00pm to 8.30pm.”

“I love doing it. It’s great to have some time away from my son to keep my brain active without having to get in the car and drive to work.

Ms Corneck, who previously worked for a Telco, gave up full-time employment to care for her son but still wanted to earn an income.

“When I stopped work, I was still really keen to find something I could do from home” Ms Corneck recalled.

“Trawling the internet for jobs I just kept coming across those “˜get rich quick’ schemes that always involve putting up money. Eventually, my husband found a website advertising call centre jobs that could be done from home.”

The site he had stumbled across was Salesforce@home; the “˜working from home’ arm of the Australian sales and customer service outsourcing group, Salmat Salesforce.

Ms Corneck applied to a job working on a loyalty card campaign for Woolworths.

“It was for Everyday Rewards like FlyBuys where you get money off petrol through points accumulated by what you spend in the supermarket. The job involved people phoning up to register their cards so they could start earning the points,” she explained.

Salesforce@home moved quickly to arrange a phone interview with Ms Corneck to assess her “telephone etiquette” and find out more about her.

With a background in customer service and experience in both inbound and outbound call operation, Ms Corneck got though the interview easily. She was then put through the company’s online testing and training to familiarise herself with the technology used by Salesforce@home.

Ms Corneck, who lives on NSW’s central coast, is one of Salesforce@home’s 111 regional workers.

“We currently have 300 home-based agents across Australia and New Zealand; 22 per cent are inner suburban, 41 percent are outer suburban and 37 per cent are regional,” revealed Jacob Murray-White, General Manager for Salesforce@home.

“Our average agent is a 38 year-old female living in outer suburban Melbourne. But the work also appeals to carers, those with family responsibilities, people with disabilities, sea changers, career transitioners and those who’ve gone back to study because it gives them the flexibility to fit it in around their lives,” he added.

Mr Murray-White said customer service calls were mostly inbound and the amount of hours a contractor dedicated to answering or making calls was “totally up to them.”

“Most of our agents do 10 to 12 hours week but we have people who do less, between four and six and those who are doing more, 38 to 40 hour weeks,” he said.

“Although they are not paid an hourly rate, [people are paid] rather by the number and quality of the phone call and they can generally earn anywhere between $16 and $20 per hour and are paid weekly.”

“All our agents need to get started is a phone line, broadband, a headset compatible telephone and a quiet and safe place to work.”

According to Ms Corneck all Salesforce@home agents office are actually required to send through pictures of their workspace, desk and chair for safety and ergonomic assessment by the company before they can get started.

“One that’s been approved you’re ready to go.”

Agents are all registered sole traders with their own ABN’s who work on a contract basis choosing the campaigns they would like to work on next.

At the beginning of each work session agents log on to an internal system that puts them in direct contact with their supervisor, who provides call support, and other members of “the team” working on the same customer service campaign.

“It’s like MSN messenger ““ I’m on the Central Cost but I’ll be chatting to people in Queensland, Melbourne or even Tasmania,” Ms Corneck explained.