Home-based customer service and other agents are in demand as the economy begins to recover. Here’s a look at what home-based jobs are out there:

The offshoring movement saw many customer-service positions sent to India, the Philippines and other locations as American companies sought to cut costs. However, cultural and other differences soon sparked a customer backlash. Meanwhile, the spread of high-speed Internet and the growing demand for home-based work enabled companies to “homeshore” their customer-service jobs, and the home-based agent was born. 

Research firm IDC predicts that more than 300,000 agents will be home-based by the end of this year. Our own research shows that a number of employers are stepping up their hiring goals.

Homeshoring employers generally fall into two categories: companies who specialize in providing customer-support services to other firms, and companies who maintain their own customer-service staffs to support the larger corporate mission. We’ll focus on the first group, and cover the second group separately.

Alpine Access: Alpine Access has approximately 3,000 agents across the U.S. Agents are hired as employees rather than independent contractors, and handle calls for clients such as America Online and Office Depot. (When we interviewed Alpine Access for our new book on home-based jobs, Work at Home Now, the company estimated that it will hire 3,000 additional agents in 2010.) For details, see http://www.alpineaccess.com.

Arise Virtual Solutions: Arise, whose agents are known as certified professionals, expanded across the U.S., and into the U.K. and Ireland as well. Arise agents form their own micro-companies, and Arise contracts with the agent’s company for his or her services. Arise also hires technical-support personnel, Macintosh enthusiasts, and licensed insurance agents. For more, see http://www.arise.com.

LiveOps: LiveOps has more than 20,000 independent agents across the U.S. Depending on their specialty, agents may handle calls from infomercials or casual-dining vendors (pizza, for example), or bilingual commercial calls (Spanish-English or French-English). LiveOps also engages licensed insurance agents to handle in-bound calls from prospective insurance customers. For details, see http://www.liveops.com.

VIPdesk: VIPdesk hires agents to handle in-bound calls, email and chat on behalf of companies in the travel, retail and financial industries. “There is never any cold calling,” the company says. VIPdesk agents are known as brand ambassadors, and are hired as independent contractors. The company often holds virtual “open houses” to provide details on its positions. For more, see http://www.vipdesk.com. 

A number of other companies, such as Cloud 10, Convergys and N.E.W. Corp., hire home-based agents as well. For details on these and 80 additional employers of home-based agents, see our list here.

To find or start discussions about home-based customer-service agent positions, visit Military.com’s forums, or visit the Careers channel.