How to Hire a Freelance Customer Service Representative

Does your company need to hire a freelance customer service representative? There shouldn’t be any shortage of options.

The customer service field is filled with millions of Americans with excellent customer service skills. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, almost 3 million people work in the customer service industry today.

All of that being said, you don’t want to hire the first customer service representative you can find to work for your company. You should begin by considering trying to track down a freelance customer service representative to handle your customer support tickets.

What’s the best way to do this? Check out this guide on how to hire a freelance customer service representative that is equipped to provide the live customer support your customers need.

Create a List of Responsibilities

What exactly will you need a freelance customer service representative to do when you bring them on board to work for your company? This is one of the first things you’ll need to think about before you start your search for a freelance customer service representative.

Here are just a few of the responsibilities you might want to give to a freelance customer service representative:

• Take phone calls from customers and address their questions, concerns, and complaints
• Manage emails from customers and respond to them accordingly
• Hold live chat sessions with customers
• Provide technical support for customers

In some instances, you might only need a freelance customer service representative to do one or two of these things. In others, they might have to do all of them.

Whatever the case, you should have clear ideas of what you’ll expect from a freelance customer service representative. It’ll help you hold more successful interviews with potential candidates later on.

Figure Out How Much to Pay

How much are you willing to pay a freelance customer service representative? This will be another thing you’ll need to decide on before you start interviewing potential candidates for the open position.

More often than not, you’re going to pay a freelance customer service representative by the hour. The average pay for a person in this position is typically somewhere between $15 and $19 per hour.

Consider how much you can afford to spend on a freelance customer service representative. You should also take the responsibilities you’ll be giving to this person into account when you’re coming up with a pay scale for them.

Decide Where to Look

There are so many different ways to look for a freelance customer service representative today. You can put up a job listing on one of the many freelance job sites, stick something about your open position on your company’s website, or even put out an open call for applications on social media.

But the best way to locate great freelance customer service representatives might be by relying on a service like FreeUp to assist you. To use FreeUp to search for freelance customer service representatives, all you’ll need to do is sign up for an account and request a candidate for this position.

You won’t have to worry about doing anything else after that. You’ll receive at least one pre-vetted option within just one business day. You’ll also be able to get additional options if that one doesn’t work out.

Conduct Interviews With Candidates

After you create an account on the FreeUp website and ask for a freelance customer service representative, you’ll be presented with an option. You can conduct a 15-minute interview with them to find out if they’d be a good fit for your company.

During this interview, you can lay out all your expectations for a customer service representative. You can also ask a candidate what qualifies them for the job and see if they have any questions they’d like to ask you.

At the end of an interview, you should be able to figure out whether or not this candidate would be the right person to work as a freelance customer service representative for your company. You can either pick them for the job or let FreeUp know you’d be interested in interviewing more candidates soon.

If you would like to interview more people before you make a decision on who to hire, FreeUp will work with you to find more candidates fast. It shouldn’t be too long before you’re able to find the right fit for your company.

Choose the Best Option

You might get lucky and love the first person you interview for a freelance customer service representative position. You might also have to conduct a handful of interviews before landing on the right person for the gig.

Try not to be in too much of a hurry to hire a freelance customer service representative. Your goal should always be to hire the best freelancer for the job.

The great thing about working with FreeUp is that they’re going to present you with the best options from the beginning. But even still, you might need to be patient and sift through half a dozen candidates prior to picking the person you’d like to hire.

Everyone you interview will have the customer service skills it’ll take to work for your company. But they might not always be a fantastic fit for your company culture.

Don’t be afraid to interview as many candidates for the job as you need to. It’ll eventually lead to you landing on one that’s going to check all the right boxes.

Carry Out Training

The freelance customer service representative you hire in the end is going to play an extremely important part in the success of your company. If they don’t do a wonderful job from the start, it could deter some of your customers from ever coming back to your company for anything.

For this reason, you’ll need to be ready to put a new freelance customer service representative through the wringer while training them. It’ll guarantee they know what to do as soon as they begin taking calls, emails, etc., and providing live customer service.

Some of the things you should train your freelance customer service representative on include:

• How you would like them to greet customers
• What you would like them to say to customers who have complaints
• Where they should direct customers who aren’t happy with what they have to say

A freelance customer service representative is going to be your first line of defense in many cases when it comes to dealing with unhappy customers. They’ll need to know how to respond to calls, emails, etc. from these customers so they don’t get caught off-guard at any point and say or do something that could come back to bite your business.

Track Hours for Billing Purposes

When you work with FreeUp while trying to hire a freelance customer service representative, we’ll help you do more than just find the right person for the job. We’ll also lend a hand when it’s time to start paying the person you hire.

You’ll be in charge of working with this person to track their hours through FreeUp. You’ll need to review the hours they bill your company each week and approve them so that they can get paid.

From there, you’ll need to work to pay your freelance customer service representative every Thursday. As long as you’re happy with the work they’re doing for your company, you’ll enjoy this arrangement.

It doesn’t matter if you’re on the hunt for a freelance customer service representative to help you for a few hours each day or several people who can handle 24/7 customer support for you. You’ll be able to locate the best people for your freelance customer service representative job through FreeUp.

It’ll be so much simpler than trying to post a job listing on a job site and work your way through applications and resumes. You’ll be more than satisfied with the person you hire, and you’ll find they’ll do great work for your company while leading the charge on customer service.

Let Us Help You Hire a Freelance Customer Service Representative

Are you struggling to find a freelance customer service representative on your own? FreeUp would love to assist you with your search and take the guesswork out of it for you.

We’ll only send the most qualified candidates for a freelance customer service representative position in your direction. You’ll feel better about the idea of hiring one from the start, and it won’t be too long before you have the right person working for your company.

Contact us today to discover more about how FreeUp can help with your company’s customer service needs.