Contact center agents vs. Gig experts - What’s the difference?

The working models for contact center agents have become much more flexible in recent years. During the pandemic, many organizations sent employees to work from home out of necessity, and some continue to provide that flexibility to their agents.

Working from home certainly has some advantages for full- or part-time employees who want to skip the commute, but some of the limitations of contact centers persist.

GigCX is a new and different model altogether, and the gig experts who represent your brand can give you greater agility and provide a better customer experience.

Let’s break down the key differences between contact center agents and GigCX Experts.

Unlike agents who are hired in the areas surrounding a physical contact center or work remotely from home, GigCX Experts are from locations all around the world. This gives your business access to a much larger and more diverse pool of on-demand talent, with a variety of backgrounds, skills, and abilities.

Because they’re available on-demand, Experts can provide your customers with faster responses and resolutions to their inquiries.

Related: Watch how Zwift uses GigCX to scale and flex its customer support

Additionally, GigCX Experts are actual users of your products and services and can tap into their real-world knowledge and experience to help other customers. They bring a distinctive point of view that, as employees, agents don’t necessarily have.

They’ve walked in your customers’ shoes, which means they can exhibit more empathy, authenticity, and understanding for the situations your customers are in.

Despite what some believe, GigCX Experts can do anything contact center agents can do. By allowing experts access to the appropriate customer data in a secure and reliable way, experts can provide support beyond basic pre-sale questions and technical support.

For instance, by accessing a limited subset of customer data, GigCX Experts can help customers with inquiries relating to billing, orders, account-related questions, and more.

Here’s a quick overview of the differences between GigCX Experts and contact center agents:

Contact center agents

• Agents are full- or part-time employees that organizations pay an hourly wage or salary, including company benefits, to answer customer service queries.
• Agents work on fixed, scheduled working patterns and shifts with limited flexibility. 
• Agents require training, taking on average 6 months to reach competency with your brand, products or services.
• Agents’ languages, regions and time zones are limited to the area nearest a contact center.
• Because agents are paid hourly, agents typically have lots of unproductive time where they’re not doing any work but are being paid to be there.

GigCX Experts

• Experts are independent; they’re not employees and don’t receive company benefits
• Experts don’t have schedules or minimum commitments they must reach. Due to the flexible nature of GigCX, Experts have ultimate freedom to choose when they want to gig.
• Experts have a true passion for the brand they represent and, therefore, have deep product knowledge and experience. They don’t require training to be competent with your products or services.
• Experts live all over the world and speak a wide range of languages, allowing you to support customers in any time zone and any language.
• Experts are paid per successfully resolved case, which means you only pay for productive time.

Want to learn more about the GigCX model? Find out why your business should consider GigCX or contact our team to schedule a call.