NexRep is a popular online call center that I will give a complete overview. I will look at the types of opportunity they offer, the pay, some feedback from past and current workers and my personal opinion about them. My aim is to give you an understanding of whether or not this is a good opportunity, save you some time and potentially some heartache when dealing with NexRep. If you decide to move forward you will know how to do that.
They use a very common phrase that a lot of online call centers love to throw around, ‘Be Your Own Boss’ meaning “you are a 1099 contractor” which means you do get to schedule yourself.
Types of Opportunities
They offer customer service, inbound sales and outbound sales. They mention on their website that when you are doing the customer service opportunities you would be acting as Tier 1 and Tier 2 support although they don’t specify what that means. Typically Tier 1 and Tier 2 means that you would be handling customers who have grievances, need shipping information, doing returns, ideally very basic customer service.
For inbound sales you would be answering calls from radio, TV, direct mail and web advertising. Your role would be assisting customers who want to purchase a product; this is a sales position where you earn commissions and bonuses. They do have virtual receptionist opportunities too.
For outbound sales you would be following on sales leads. Similar to Inbound Sales where people call in for products that they saw in advertising, but in this case you would be calling the customer to get sales. You would also earn commissions from the sales.
Types of Industries
They cater for various industries which are; financial and lending institutions, consumer electronics, roadside assistance organizations, Insurance industry, direct response, nonprofit organizations, home food service delivery, branded retails, travel and hospitality.
Pay
You can earn $10 -$15 per hour, factoring in the commissions.
For the top sales reps you can earn $20-$25 per hour which is paid bi-weekly through direct deposit.
The pay for the majority of positions is ‘per minute per talk time’, but there are those that pay per hour though they have not mentioned which ones or which clients they are.
For example, you have scheduled yourself to work from 12 noon to 5 pm, but while you are there waiting and ready to start, the phone doesn’t ring until 15 minutes later. You will start getting paid when you pick up the phone and start talking. When you hang up, the pay stops until you pick it up again.
This means that you are not being compensated for your full amount of time but only your talk time. Essentially, if you don’t get any calls you won’t get paid, and that could mean that your hourly average could potentially decrease from $10. Therefore, if you are not in an hourly position, that money is not guaranteed per hour.
The hours can vary depending on the client and the minimum time that you have to schedule yourself for opportunities is 15-25 hours per week. Sometimes there are some more hours to grab and you might meet that minimum. According to some reviews from previous workers, they say that sometimes they over hire certain clients, and in that case they have to let people go or there won’t be enough hours to go around.
Pay is unpredictable since it’s not a guarantee how many hours of talk time you will get per week.
Job Status
You are not your own boss but a 1099 contractor. Being a 1099 contractor doesn’t come with benefits as you are not an employee but engaged in a business opportunity to service their clients.
They offer certifications at specific times, and when you want to become certified you will have to report at those times. You don’t have the ability to choose when you want to come in. Once certified, you will get the flexibility to set your own schedule, but within the hours that the client offers. Just a few clients offer 24/7 hours which could give you more flexibility, but the rest offer a varied number of hours.
As a 1099 contractor, you are responsible for your taxes. They don’t deduct taxes from the amount you have earned, but you will be responsible to pay taxes by yourself.
Application
It takes about 30 to 40 minutes to apply. The process starts with a video giving an explanation about the company, and then you begin the assessment test which is a mix of questions and video clips. The first set is situational types of questions followed by video and questions based on agent scenarios. You have to take it seriously because you will get matched to opportunities based on your results.
Fees
After you are done with the application and get matched with an opportunity, you are required to pay a $25 background check fee. This is an advantage because you don’t have to pay before you know there is something you can do. As a 1099 contractor, you will have to cater for any other fees that you might be required to pay, for example, if a client wants a drug test done.
Certification
This takes between 1-2 weeks. They have a virtual class environment that you will operate from, and after that you will start taking heavily monitored live calls. They will give you feedback and give you direction. Just because the certification is for a short time doesn’t mean that it will be easy, instead it will be packed with lots of information. You will be required to put a lot of input, and it’s best to use your time wisely to learn a lot and ask as many questions as you can.
If you get into the nesting period and your performance falls short, they will not waste their time on you since there are many other people waiting to get that opportunity. You could either go back to certification or get terminated.
Frequently Asked Questions
What’s the turnover rate?
They don’t really share that information, but generally in most call centers, they have a 30% to 45% turnover rate. These could be due to a lot of factors like one making many mistakes resulting in termination, losing interest after some time etc.
What happens if you get terminated?
You will get locked out most of the time, sometimes without warning. You will try to log into your servicing system only to find out that you no longer have access. If you try to email them, no one will bother to respond, and you just figure out that you have been terminated.
If you are interested in knowing other contractors’ experiences you can visit Indeed or Glassdoor. Looking at negative ratings will give you a true picture of why they left the company because when people are upset they tend to give a lot of details. The positive reviews will of course show you the other side of the company.
My Take
To avoid unrealistic expectations about the pay, I would prefer focusing on the lowest tier instead of the top tier pay per hour. In this case, my expectation would be $10 per hour, and then get pleasantly surprised if I exceeded that.
Opportunities like NexRep, Arise, LiveOps and Working Solutions are very similar in their structure in that, you work from home, you are a 1099 contractor, you are not eligible for benefits, and you lack employer protection. Therefore, in my opinion it isn’t something I would build a career on because they are very fickle. You have no control of any aspect of it, and therefore I wouldn’t take it as a long term opportunity.
My suggestion is to use them as an opportunity to make extra money and leverage the skills that you are developing to move on to other bigger opportunities.
Getting a strategy would be helpful especially if you lack experience in traditional jobs settings or if haven’t worked in a while. Use the opportunity for the skills and the money as you look to venture into other better paying ones. While I wouldn’t consider this as a full time job that I would do in the long term, I do recognize that there are people who have excelled in it while others have flopped badly. It’s your call to make the decision on how you would like to proceed based on your goals.