Revolutionizing Customer Service: How Freelance Models Outshine Traditional Call Centers

Managing Quality And Consistent Branding Within A Freelance Customer Service Environment

A common criticism of the freelance customer service model is the idea that only full-time employees can safely represent a brand. If you want a consistent level of quality in brand messaging and quality management then you need to have your own internal customer service team or you need to outsource these processes to one of the major business process outsourcing giants.

But what was your last customer service encounter like? In 2024 Forrester Research suggested that the customer experience quality in the US is now the worst it has ever been.

The Forrester report said: “The data illustrates not only a broad erosion across various sectors but also the depth of the issue, with an unprecedented 39% of brands experiencing significant declines.”

The research summarizes three main reasons for this precipitous decline in the quality of the customer experience.

• Inadequate Omnichannel Experiences: expanding the available options, but failing to help customers to the most effective channel for their specific needs.
• High-Effort Digital/Self-Service Experiences: Many digital and self-service platforms place undue burdens on customers, requiring them to exert significant effort to accomplish tasks that could be streamlined.
• Scripted and Disempowered Agents: Customer service agents are often overly reliant on scripts, which can restrict their ability to empathetically and effectively engage with customers.

If this is the present CX status quo then surely most customer service executives should welcome some new ideas – unless a contact center full of disempowered and scripted agents sounds like a great solution.

Let’s consider the question around quality and consistent messaging in two ways. First, there is the infrastructure that a traditional contact center will apply around the contact with customers – to ensure a basic level of quality.

All this also exists in the freelance model too. Freelance agents also have team leaders and operations managers, community management, and QA tools all the way from onboarding to checking language skills and ongoing coaching. All this QA infrastructure still exists in the freelance model. It’s not missing or ignored because the agents are freelance.

But more importantly, there is a big difference in the motivation of the customer service agents and this has a major impact on service quality.

Think about the agent in a traditional customer service environment. They are paid a relatively low hourly wage – often around the legal minimum wage. They have to commute to a contact center to work a long shift. They usually don’t have much control over their work location or shift hours and they are not choosing which brands they are supporting – that’s just up to their boss.

Is it any surprise that some industry influencers have made statements such as ‘the worst job in corporate America is in a call center?’

Contrast this to the freelance model. The agents work flexibly – they choose their own working hours, they get paid each time they help a customer, and they choose which brands they want to work with. This often leads to people choosing to work with brands they really love – like gamers getting paid to support other players inside their favorite game.

The question about quality should really be directed back at the traditional customer service model. How do you drive up quality when agents are simply staring at the clock and waiting for a shift to end? Some contact centers are replacing 85% of the team each year because so many people quit.

Imagine hiring in that environment. How do you sell those jobs as opportunities?

The real question for managers concerned about brand consistency is how do you manage this when your customer service team is not enthused about representing your products and services? How can your support be consistently excellent when most of the agents just don’t care about your products – it’s just another shift?

Hire a team who love your brand and enable them with all the quality and support systems they would use in a traditional contact center, but give them the flexibility to keep on just enjoying their role – helping other customers.