Alpine Access

After telecommuting for one of the local cable providers, when I left that company, I was hooked on working from home. The freedom to not have to keep office attire always at the ready… the 20 foot commute… the getting logged in 5 minutes before start time in my sweats and a t-​shirt and the person on the other end of the phone never knowing…
Alpine Access was the first telecommuting position I worked in my quest to become my own call center (2004). With opportunities in a variety of different customer service and technical support areas, great training and a fantastically flexible schedule, I figured I was going to fit right in. The environment taking customer calls from home… it is PRICELESS!
My first telecommuting job was working for the IRS to process calls for tax forms. Sometimes, the customer would call in and would ask us for the form that covers a certain situation, other times, as soon as we answered, the phone, the caller already had the form number. IRS wanted us to be efficient, so they supplied us with a spreadsheet to search by number or key word. Their goal was to have us end our calls in an average of 2 ½ minutes, which included getting address information and verifying it back. This job was perfect for me.
Starting in November, we trained for 3 weeks, though most of us were ready after 2. We went live and started receiving phone calls and the day would just fly by. We could schedule ourselves for up to 20 hours between 8 am to 8 pm Monday through Friday and 9 am to 2 pm Saturday. 24 hours after the available time would post, we could schedule any remaining hours as we wanted them. It was easy to stay at 30 hours a week, with the schedule gradually increasing to where it was possible to work 45 hours a week leading up to Tax Day.
After tax day, we were ramped down from our swollen pre-​tax ranks of 30 people down to 10 people for the remainder of the year. Unfortunately, I was one of the folks ramped down. That was the only project I am aware of that Callifornia residents could work on. Unfortunately, they do not have any current projects in Callifornia. I began my search for other telecommuting organizations and have had great success in my career.