American Express is a credit card like no other. They pride themselves on excellent customer service, among other things, and have a solid reputation for being excellent service providers. They have a robust, 24-hour concierge service to help their members with trip planning, hard to find tickets, finding alternatives when plans fall through, and more.
What you may not realize about American Express is that these concierge services are just a few of the many roles that American Express hires for remote employees. And in addition to customer care, they will hire home staff to act as their travel agents.
If you’re looking for a new work-at-home job with a solid company that has a great reputation, you’ll love learning about this opportunity!
Remote customer service jobs with American Express
One of the two types of remote positions that American Express offers is their customer service jobs. The role is officially called American Express Customer Care Professional, and the job covers all kinds of general service issues for American Express members (aka credit card holders).
Customer care professionals take customer calls and answer any and all queries. Customer issues may be as simple as clarifying the website’s instructions for use or part of their membership agreement, but you may also have to deal with more in-depth issues.
Work at home as a travel agent with American Express
The official job title for American Express travel agents is American Express Travel Counselor. Travel agent positions are a fairly typical at-home travel agent position, but within the framework of American Express standards and structure.
The first thing you should specifically know about becoming an American Express travel counselor is that you must live in the Mountain, Pacific, or Hawaii time zones.
As an American Express Travel Counselor, your job is to take customer calls and help them create the travel experience of their dreams. You’ll be booking hotels, rentals, and flights, but you’ll also work one-on-one with each customer to help them plan the perfect vacation they might not be able to coordinate on their own.
Because American Express offers such high-end travel services to their members, their requirements to get started are not entry-level. You’ll need some travel work history to qualify — the preferred qualification is a minimum of two years of experience. Other qualifications include previous call center experience, sales experience and familiarity with programs such as Saber and GDS. You need to be able to connect with your callers and build rapport with them. It’s part of the brand!
This job is ideal for someone who loves to travel. If you have travel experience, love reading travel blogs and magazines, and are interested in going on your own trips as often as possible (however often that is), this job is practically made for you.
Everything you need to work at home for American Express
Not only will you need a home office setup, but a high level of professionalism and customer care abilities. American Express customers expect a certain level of support, and the more you’re able to satisfy them, the better you’ll do on the job. Your job is to be friendly, helpful and creative.
Working with American Express will require you to have a typical home office setup, with a dedicated landline and internet connection just for work. But don’t worry – they’ll cover these related costs too!
Benefits of AmEx’s Work from Home Program
Before you start working, you will complete 11 weeks of paid training. Once you complete your training, you will enter the name “Post Training” while you wait for the next scheduled shift bid.
One of the main benefits of working remotely for American Express – and it’s a big one – is that it’s an employee location, which gives you access to all kinds of great employee benefits. You will also have a competitive base salary, which means salary stability.
There are certain sales topics you’ll be asked, but American Express places strict parameters around what you do to keep any sales appropriate and relevant. You won’t have a sales quota to meet, but the customer has an incentive to motivate you to sell if they realize it.
You’ll also get access to performance-based bonuses, meaning the better you are at customer service, the more you’ll be rewarded. Everyone you talk to will be asked to take a survey and your results will be measured based on their responses.
Also, the company will pay for your phone line and internet. You just have to be sure that they are used only for work!
Because it may not be right for everyone
The primary reason that working for American Express will not work for you is if there is a geography requirement that you cannot meet. As with most employee positions, there are usually some state restrictions. That being said, each position may have different location or time zone requirements so please read through the list carefully.
If you are completely against any type of selling, you may hesitate to take this opportunity. You may have to meet certain metrics every week or month, so if you don’t like accountability, you won’t like this. (That said, if you don’t like accountability, you’ll have a hard time keeping a job at a traditional company.)
The trade-off of a great employee benefits package is that it’s a true full-time job. Schedule is fixed and you must have availability any time of the day including nights and weekends. Your schedule will be fixed until the next shift bid opens, at which point you may be able to land a shift that works better for you.
Another trade-off you have to make for working at home as a full-time employee is that you may end up working some weekends and holidays. After all, customers need support every day and American Express is committed to being there for them.
Your home office will be audited by American Express before you start working, so unless you’ve really created a suitable work area that’s free of distractions, this might not be the right job for you.
How to apply
The best way to apply is to go to American Express Virtual Career Site. There isn’t a search set up for only virtual jobs, so you’ll need to enter a few search terms to see what’s available I recommend starting with the search term “virtual” in the category field. This will give you a start, but it won’t necessarily attract all customer care positions, so you should also search for customer care. (Many of these will be overseas, so you may want to enter US in the Location field as well.)
One of the great things about the AmEx career page is that you can set up job alerts to receive an email notification when a new job pops up that matches your search terms. Set up alerts for any search term you’re interested in, and wait for jobs to come your way!
Another thing to note is that the best way to get hired at American Express is to refer someone who already works there. Ask around in all your circles to see if you can find someone willing to refer you, and you’ll have a leg up on your competition!
Just be aware that you may have to apply multiple times to get hired. Once you get in, it can be a fantastic fit!
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