Habla Blog

By Mary Bartlett, Arise Virtual Solutions 

The need for bilingual workers is at its highest level ever in the U.S.  In fact, a recent survey of 2,417 U.S. hiring managers and human resource professionals conducted by Spanish-language job search site empleosCB.com revealed that Spanish-speaking job candidates will be in especially high demand by employers within the next year.  More specifically, 48 percent of hiring managers expect to seek Spanish-speaking job candidates in 2008.

The customer service industry, in particular, is one work sector that has seen growth due to our increasingly multicultural society.  Being able to interact - and ultimately serve and satisfy - a growing population of Spanish-speaking people living in the United States, is invaluable to many large corporations. While some companies opt to outsource customer service operations to countries having an abundance of Spanish-speaking workers, many have turned to “homeshoring,” or routing their customer calls to Spanish-speaking, home-based customer service professionals here in the U.S.

Currently, with a slower economy and consumers spending less, companies across a range of industries are doing whatever they can to keep their customers coming back.  For example, if you are a Spanish speaker, but are unsatisfied with a company because you cannot easily communicate to them what you want or need, then chances are you may look elsewhere to satisfy your needs. Therefore, these companies need more help in order to better communicate with this select group of people.  Therefore, bilingual home-based customer service agents serve an important role in customer satisfaction for their Spanish-speaking customers. 

Proof of the homeshoring concept comes from Arise Virtual Solutions (Arise.com).  Arise recruits and trains independent, home-based customer care agents around the country with various skills in customer service, tech support and sales.  Being a leader in the home-based customer care industry, Arise has recently noted an increase in demand from their clients (some of the largest technology, retail and tourism companies in the world) for customer care agents that are English/Spanish bilingual speakers. 

Because customer demand for Spanish-language customer assistance is growing so rapidly, companies such as Arise are currently experiencing immense demand for bilingual agents.  As a result, home-based bilingual agents have a great advantage over their unilingual counterparts.  Besides being able to take advantage of working from home and choosing what hours they work, bilingual agents also have an opportunity to earn a 20 percent premium over the typical $10-14 many Arise Certified Professionals make per hour – just by engaging a language one may have learned at home, from life experience or through schooling.

The process for becoming an independent, bilingual home-based customer care representative with Arise, and many other companies, is fairly simple (varies slightly by company):

• Potential agents must have a separate phone line dedicated to their Arise business; a high speed, secure internet connection (broadband or cable); and a headset with microphones.
• Fill out an online profile at www.Arise.com.
• Successfully complete screening and pay for a required background check (this is necessary as many agents work with sensitive customer information).
• Complete required Arise e-learning/training to acquire the needed skills for working as a home-based Arise Certified Professional ($99 or less).
• Become incorporated (cost varies by state) so you may work as an independent agent servicing Arise clients such as AAA, Home Depot and Verizon.
  

Once the required client certification is completed, Arise agents are then free to choose their days and hours of service – availability for bilingual applications is near unlimited. 

For more information about working as a home-based agent, visit www.Arise.com.

The author is a vice president at Arise and head of agent communication development.

For more information on Spanish for Professionals programs, ebooks, courses, or materials, visit us at www.wardspeaking.com.