How do I find another WFH role where I don't have to speak to anyone?

[jhftc]

Although my job at the moment is customer service based, it doesn't involve having to 'speak' to customers either verbally or in person as it's all done online.

I've been working from home, in the comfort of my own surroundings and it's been absolute bliss compared with every other job I've had. Previous to this I'd had a really tough couple of years, both personally and professionally so this has helped me immensely.

Unfortunately the dream is over - they're moving us all to a call-centre role instead, so I need to find another job.

The reason I applied for the role in the first place was the lack of direct customer contact. I can't work in the role they're offering, it's just not suitable for me and they're offering no alternatives.

I've been looking in all the usual places for around 8 weeks without any luck, my applications have been either ignored or rejected. Internal job applications are hopeless due to the number of other people from our department who will be applying, most of whom have more experience than I do.

I'm open to retraining, but would need to find free or funded courses due to our financial situation. I've looked at apprenticeships but can't afford the drop in pay.

I so badly want to keep working from home in the long term; I can't stand office politics and bickering anymore, I've just had enough of it all.

I'm not a confident person overall, I prefer to just kind of fade in to the background if I'm honest.

Is there anything I'm missing, that might be suitable?

Join the work from home hub page/group on Facebook. They post loads of roles. I saw one the other day which was for agents for Mr Q a gaming website - all online as an example. May still be available .

Neither. They’re outsourcing to India.

I always assume those are AI generated. They're normally rubbish!

Well I think you are great and best of luck OP

I think this as you mentioning Groundhog Day there, reminded me I recorded it days ago and not watched so Thank You for that.

Hopefully though, as you are in employment and have a good CV no doubt, it won't be too hard for You.

Sorry to pipe up on the live chat thing, but in at least two major industries I have knowledge of, live chats arent manned separately to phones, it's the same staff, they just rotate between phone queries, email queries and live chat queries - lots of live chats aim to do the intial triage by AI, then you get passed to a real person if the AI can't answer the query.
It is, in my experience unfortunately, very unusual to have a seperate live chat staff vs call centre staff, as they would be dealing with largely the same queries, it doesn't make sense from an operational/financial perspective to have separate teams in most cases. Sorry OP, not what you want to hear I know.

I'm going to agree with this largely to my knowledge this is the case.

A lot of tech roles would give you largely what you want. But sadly they're all years in the making in terms of career.

Yes I think we probably are with the same place looking at your replies! I've only applied for a couple of the internal roles so far and already had one rejection, but I'm not hopeful overall as I don't think I'll have enough experience compared with other internal applicants. It's a shame, it's been great working for them up until the changes were announced.

I've been signed off by the doctor for now, I definitely can't face the telephony move (think panic attack inducing anxiety). I don't even think I could complete the training, based on past experience.

I really don't understand the decision from a customer service perspective, it'd be interesting to know how the new chats are being rated by the customers.

You're right, almost everything I've found has been mixture of phones, emails and chats. I've resigned myself to finding something that isn't chat related, but even general admin jobs seem to require call handling so I'm just not sure what to look for as an alternative.

I was actually looking in to something in tech before I started this role, but I'm conscious of the costs involved for any training I'd need. I'd love to find something that offered on-the-job training, but haven't had any luck so far. I'd need something totally entry-level, if such a thing even existed.

Thank you, I actually applied for that through LinkedIn back in November, but wasn't sure it was legit based on some reviews I'd read. I had an email asking me to record a video about myself but didn't follow it up based on the reviews, so my application was rejected. To be honest, I wasn't in a great place at the time so I doubt the video would have worked in my favour!

Oh no. I know the site is legit! Maybe see if they have more openings and have another go?

I’ve seen coding courses which are free - with potential jobs at the end etc but you’d need the time to do them…

@jhftc

It’s such a shame this is happening to you, and I really hope you can find another role doing the same or similar. Please try and keep your chin up, I know how hard it is.

You mentioned before that you have slightly less experience than some others in your team, but try and view this and promote it in a positive way. You could be seen as being more mouldable or trainable by a company.

I was formally a Teacher, and as much as I loved some aspects of the role, I hated more about it than I loved and every single hour of every single day for years was a constant battle that really affected my mental health. A lot of this battle was concerning interactions with others and I found it overwhelming and unbearable standing at the front trying to get everyone’s respect and have them listen. I’m not a commanding person and I really lack presence.

if you’d consider civil service, there are roles like this. The ICO for example have online customer advisers.

Thank you, and to you too. Fingers crossed there is something out there!

Thank you for the suggestion, I have looked and only found one suitable role so far which I wasn't shortlisted for unfortunately! But I will keep trying 🙂

Thank you, will take a look 🙂

Just a thought OP, you could sign up for a freelance website like Peopleperhour and offer admin/writing/typing services. It will take a while to build your clients and profile up, but at least you can WFH and choose only non-speaking jobs.

Have you considered being a chat moderator for one of the bingo sites? There is absolutely no talking involved in that.

I really hope you manage to find something suitable 🙂

I think exclusive remote roles are becoming very difficult to find these days. The competition is fierce for these roles though as there are so few.

I work for the NHS in a remote role, although we do quarterly team meeting days. Also we have a lot of meetings and team calls throughout the day as it’s crucial to our work. Our whole department is remote even the lower bands which I’d say is very unusual. Most corporate admin will offer some hybrid if that’s an option for you? It depends on the trust though. Also the pay can be low compared to private sector roles. Eg I could be paid double what I am now in a private sector equivalent role, but my NHS role is fully remote with amazing flexibility.

I work for Data Annotation, have been for over a year now. You've probably seen their ads all over Indeed. I was nervous it was a scam at first - and the application process is LONG and arduous. But it's been a godsend. I'm earning about £30 an hour now, and it's totally flexible. Only thing is, I wouldn't rely on it as your only source of income as technically you're freelance, so they can drop you instantly at any time. But worth looking into!

Any of these any good for you OP? This is the company I work for (really good company btw) and most of us WFH.

https://www.teleperformance.com/en-us/careers/job-opportunities/

I would say be careful with coding. It comes up as an answer to these kinds of queries a lot but I don't think there's many coding roles anymore that fit the "don't have to talk to anyone" brief.

For teams that work in an "agile" way (which seems to be almost everywhere now) you're likely to meet every day with your team to each update everyone on where you're up to.

For each 2-week block of work you also have meetings to plan the next block of work, estimate the complexity of each piece of work, demonstrate what you've done so far to business stakeholders (and that's the developers doing the demonstrating ie you) and meet to discuss what went well within the team and anything that needs changing.

Then extra meetings on top with your team, with testers, with adjacent teams, external people etc.

I usually have probably ten hours of meetings per week at least. So not packed with meetings but not existing in isolation either. Engagement is required and I'm often expected to explain things eg explain a piece of work that needs doing and what will be involved, or justify why I estimate it to be a certain complexity or explain a problem that's come up.

It's definitely less social than my very sociable previous jobs but it's absolutely not the sit alone by yourself all day just coding that it's often sold as.

Personally for me what I most wanted was a job where I didn't have to talk to customers or talk on the phone. I don't mind talking to colleagues and Teams meetings don't feel like the phone to me, so it's perfect

There's also the fact that as you'd be career changing and probably joining teams with people of 20 years experience. There's a lot of asking for help involved especially for things that are company specific and can't be googled easily. Because people are often introverted and prefer working alone, they are not always the most forthcoming with help and in the early days it's a lot of sniffing around for scraps of help unless you're lucky to have colleagues who really know how to support you and remember what it was like to know nothing.

If anything the more experienced you get the more you can work alone but while you're learning it is a lot of putting yourself out there.

In my first month I had to do a "casual" presentation about my route into the job and my experience in front of 80 colleagues and one of the higher up bosses. That's obviously not a normal day to day thing but it also was something I was expected to be able to do. I was thrown into meeting with business stakeholders and expected to talk through things that I was not at all confident in.

I'm not trying to put you off. It's a great career and I've never been happier. There are various routes in that wouldn't necessarily involve paying loads of money. If you think you might like it I'd definitely do an online course and try it out.

I'm just saying I wouldn't do it with the assumption it'll 100% be a job where you turn on your computer, code and leave.

Transcribing is an option but one that I think is rapidly declining as AI improves. A lot of the work is freelance and may not be enough money. I believe medical transcription would be your best bet but it seems hard to get into without already having experience.

I wish you luck in finding something.

Your world will get smaller and smaller unless you step out of your comfort zone slightly.

Why do you want to fade into the background? That's not good for the CV!