6 Reasons Why Online Gamers Make Ideal Call-Center Live-Chat Reps

For many catalog/multichannel operations directors, call-center positions are fairly straightforward. You want people who can speak comfortably on the phone, have patience with difficult or complaining customers, can upsell seamlessly, and so forth. It isn’t so simple to find people who are as well-versed when it comes to designating call-center staffers to handling live chat, however.

But Philip Bennett, executive vice president/customer service for optionsXpress, an online options, stock and futures brokerage, offered a best-kept secret to the largely catalog/multichannel audience in a session during last week’s National Conference on Operations & Fulfillment in Orlando, Fla. He played up the benefits of finding live-chat reps who are not only good multitaskers, but also have had extensive online gaming experience — the latter of which perhaps best prepares them for live-chat positions. Below are six advantages to hiring live-chat reps with online gaming experience.

1. Most online gamers manage resources and learn and understand an in-game economy, all while holding multiple conversations with friends and teammates that are playing online with them.

2. Most games offer multiple chat channels so gamers can hold more than one conversation at a time.

3. Most “veterans” will eagerly teach new players, and some will end up working as moderators for the game.

4. Gamers tend to pick up the “rules” of this new “game” very quickly and are very good at handling the many different things that need to be done.

5. They also tend to be naturally driven to succeed, accustomed as they are to excelling in a gaming environment.

6. During down times, they can answer e-mails.