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American Express is a credit card unlike no other. They pride themselves on fantastic customer service, among other things, and they have a solid reputation for being excellent service providers. They have a robust, 24-hour concierge service for their members to help with things like trip planning, getting hard-to-get tickets, finding alternatives when plans fall through, and more.
What you might not realize about American Express is that these concierge services are some of the many roles that American Express hires out to remote employees. And in addition to customer care, they’ll hire at-home workers to work in their Travel Agent roles.
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 job. The role is officially called the American Express Customer Care Professional, and the job entails all kinds of typical service issues for American Express members (aka credit card holders).
The Customer Care Professional takes customer calls and answers any and all inquiries. Customer issues may be as simple as instructions to use the website or clarifying part of their membership agreement, but you may also have to tackle in-depth issues as well.
Work at Home as a Travel Agent with American Express
Officially the job title for American Express travel agents is the American Express Travel Counselor. The travel agent positions are a fairly typical at-home travel agent position, but within the framework of American Express’s standards and structure.
The first thing you should know about being an American Express Travel Counselor specifically is that you’ll be required to 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 their dream travel experiences. You’ll be booking hotels, rentals, and flights, but you’ll also be working one-on-one with each customer to help them make fantastic vacation plans that they might not be able to coordinate themselves.
Because American Express offers such high-end travel services to their members, their requirements for getting started aren’t entry-level. You’ll need some travel work history to qualify — the preferred qualification is two years of experience, minimum. Other qualifications include previous call center experience, sales experience, and familiarity with programs like Sabre and GDS. You’ll also 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 travel. If you have travel experience, love reading travel blogs and magazines, and are interested in being able to take your own trips as often as possible (however often that is), this job is practically made for you.
What You’ll Need to Work at Home for American Express
You’ll need not only a home office setup, but high levels 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 at the job. Your job is to be friendly, helpful, and creative.
You’ll need the typical home office setup to work with American Express, including a dedicated landline and Internet connection just for work. But don’t worry — they’ll also cover the costs related to these!
Pros of AmEx’s Work from Home Program
Before you start working, you’ll complete 11 weeks of paid training. Once you complete your training, you’ll enter what’s called “post training” while you wait for the next schedule 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 position, which gives you access to all kinds of great employee benefits. You’ll also have a competitive base pay, which means salary stability.
There’s a bit of selling that will be asked of you, but American Express puts solid parameters around any selling you’ll do to keep it appropriate and relevant. You won’t have sales quotas to meet, but there are incentives in place to motivate you to sell when it makes sense with a customer.
You’ll also have access to performance-based bonuses, which means that the better you are at customer service, the more highly you’ll be rewarded. Each person you speak with will be asked to take a survey, and your results are measured based on their responses.
Plus, the company will pay for your phone line and internet. You just need to be sure they’re used only for work!
Reasons Why It Might Not Be Right for Everyone
The primary reason why working for American Express might not work for you is if there’s a geography requirement that you can’t 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 listings carefully.
If you’re absolutely opposed to sales of any sort, you may hesitate at this opportunity. You may also be required to meet specific metrics each week or month, so if you don’t like accountability, you might not like this. (That said, if you don’t like accountability you’ll have a hard time keeping a job with any traditional company.)
The trade-off of the great employee benefits package is that this is a true full-time job. Schedules are fixed and you’ll need to have availability at any time of day, including nights and weekends. Your schedule will be fixed until the next shift bid opens, at which time you may be able to land a shift that works better for you.
The other trade-off you’ll need to make for working at home as a full-time employee is that you may end up working some weekends and holidays. Customers need assistance every day, after all, and American Express is committed to being there for them.
Your home office will be audited by American Express before you can begin working, so if you truly aren’t set up with an appropriate work area that can be distraction-free, this won’t be the right job for you.
How to Apply
The best way to apply is to go to the American Express Virtual Careers site. There isn’t a search set up just for 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 pull up all the customer care positions, so you should also search for Customer Care. (Many of these will be abroad, so you may want to enter United States in the location field as well.)
One great thing about the AmEx careers page is that you can set up job alerts to receive an email notification when a new job matching your search term pops up. Set up notifications for any search term you’re interested in, and wait for the job to come to you!
Another thing to note is that the best way to get hired at American Express is to be referred by someone who already works there. Ask around in all of your circles to see if you can find someone who’d be willing to refer you, and you’ll get a leg up on your competition!
Just know that you may need to apply more than once to get hired. Once you’re in, it can be a fantastic fit!
