Due to the current economic situation, Virtual Call Centers have become in tremendous demand. Virtual Call Centers are great recession busters mainly because they help companies save extensive amounts of money and also help employees by allowing them to work at home. But recently, Freedom TeleWork has further advanced a specific detail in Virtual Call Centers. They have simply put together a new online community of TeleWorkers, an exclusive term for Virtual Call Center agents. The way it works is by having these TeleWorkers sign up with Freedom TeleWork. They then go through extensive and meticulous testing and training. The goal of these tests and training is to ensure total quality assurance to the employers that hire out these TeleWorkers. After all the tests and training, the Virtual Call Center agents are now ready to work. Because this community of TeleWorkers is so personalized and customized, the employers now have a large selection of Virtual Call Center agents they can choose from. The preferences range tremendously in all categories. The employers can choose preferences that are more important to them, such as fluency, experience, time availability, competency, and other preferences. Obviously, all these preferences affect price, which in itself is also a unique preference. For example, if a certain company doesnt need the most fluent or intelligent TeleWorker for a very basic campaign, they can hire a Virtual Call Center agent for very little, possibly even as low as 1 or 2 dollars an hour. The TeleWorkers then work with their employers through a Hosted Call Center or a Virtual Call Center. They work with all the unique features that come with a Hosted Contact Center, such as Predictive Dialing, IVR (Interactive Voice Response), Voice Broadcasting and all the Hosted Call Center Supervisory tools. A Predictive Dialer helps TeleWorkers organize and save time by predicting the next call. Basically, the Predictive Dialer sorts out and filters the bad numbers and also moves the busy or unanswered calls to the bottom of the list to be called at a later time. The Predictive Dialer starts the next call at the end of the agents current call, consequently reducing any wait time for the TeleWorker. Predictive Dialing saves Virtual Call Center agents a lot of time. Interestingly enough, according to a 2002 survey, Virtual Call Center agents use almost 50 minutes of every hour working, as opposed to a regular agent not using a Predictive Dialer using only 20 minutes of every hour working. Predictive Dialing works extremely well with Voice Broadcasting and IVR for optimal results. Besides for the huge benefits that companies receive from Virtual Call Center agents and Hosted Call Centers, the TeleWorkers themselves gain much benefit as well. The Virtual Call Center agents have a major advantage in that they can work from home. This reduces many hassles such as preparing for work, waking up early to travel to work, traveling to work and getting in stuck in traffic, as well as not having to pay for gas. TeleWorkers can also possibly work when theyre sick since they work from home. Besides for all these advantages that TeleWorkers have, the pay they receive is just as good or if not, even better than that of traditional call center agents. Submitted by: Steve Cohen, VP of Sales, Freedom TeleWork