Remote customer service jobs sound like a great way to make money without leaving the house — until your phone rings, your kids start yelling, the dog starts barking, and the neighbor decides that it’s a great time to mow the lawn.
Luckily, several companies now offer work from home chat jobs, where you provide customer support without having to take a phone call. If this type of job sounds like it would be a good fit for you, read on for our list of the best companies to work for.
The 14 Best Work From Home Chat Jobs
It’s important to note that there is some crossover between traditional customer service jobs and work from home chat jobs. For the purposes of this article, we’re only including companies that offer primarily chat-based work and that regularly hire chat agents.
In some cases, these positions do require employees to perform at least some over-the-phone customer support. We’ve noted whether that’s the case for each option below, and we’ve omitted options where phone support is a main aspect of the position. If you’re interested in those types of roles, you check out our list of the best work from home customer service jobs.
The factors we considered when ranking the chat jobs below include whether they hire U.S.-based agents, whether the company has a reputation of being good to work for based on employee reviews, and the pay/benefits package offered. Note that pay data is taken from employee self-reporting on various platforms like Reddit, Indeed and Glassdoor.
#1. Smith.AI
| Type of work: | Answering calls, chats and emails on behalf of law firms, tech/software companies, e-commerce companies and more. |
| Expected pay: | $15 per hour for U.S.-based operators ($16 if you’re bilingual). $11 per hour for operators based outside the U.S. |
| Employee reviews: | The employee reviews for Smith.Ai are overwhelmingly positive, citing employee-centered company culture and fair pay. |
| How to apply: | Visit Smith.AI’s careers page. |
Smith.AI works with small to mid-sized businesses, helping them manage customer contacts (both on the phone and via the web) that the company’s own in-house support staff is too busy to handle. Smith.AI hires full-time and part-time virtual receptionists to take calls and reply to chat and email messages, and these full-time employees are eligible for healthcare benefits.
This is more a virtual assistant position than some of the pure live chat agents on jobs listed below, but we’ve ranked it #1 because of the company’s stellar reputation.
#2. Zapier
| Type of work: | You provide technical customer support to Zapier’s software users via email and chat. |
| Expected pay: | Around $45,000 per year for a Customer Champion; more for a Senior Customer Champion. |
| Employee reviews: | Employee reviews for Zapier are overwhelmingly positive, particularly about the work-life balance and upward mobility. |
| How to apply: | Submit Zapier’s general interest form for prospective employees. |
Zapier stands apart from other options on this list by offering its customer service employees a generous benefits package, paid time off, and a supportive company culture. It’s no wonder that they have a lot of happy employees — and very few openings. Zapier seldom hires Customer Champions, and when they do it’s quite competitive.
#3. Apple
| Type of work: | You’ll provide first-line customer support for various Apple products and apps. |
| Expected pay: | Around $20 per hour. |
| Employee reviews: | Apple’s live chat agents appreciate the culture of Apple, as well as the decent pay rates. Employees also have a stock program and insurance. |
| How to apply: | Visit Apple’s support and service careers page. |
If you’re looking for a full-time chat support job that comes with benefits, becoming an Apple At-Home Support Advisor (i.e., a chat support specialist) may be a good move. However, if you’re looking to get your foot in the door with Apple in order to move up the company ranks, it likely won’t happen; several reviews note that upward mobility within the company is limited for customer support employees.
#4. Amazon
| Type of work: | Provide customer support for Amazon purchases and services. You help with returns, technical support, connecting devices, and so on. |
| Expected pay: | $15 per hour. |
| Employee reviews: | Employees say that Amazon has high expectations of performance, but they offer great training and a good company culture. |
| How to apply: | Visit Amazon’s customer service associates career page, and learn about the different positions available in our Amazon work-from-home jobs guide. |
Amazon hires chat agents in multiple countries in over a dozen languages. They also provide you with computer equipment, so if you don’t have a great tech setup, this could still be an option — just make sure you can have a wired internet connection with the required internet speeds. You’ll likely have to answer some customer service phone calls as well.
#5. outPlex
| Type of work: | OutPlex provides call and chat support for a variety of industries, such as healthcare, retail, financial, travel, broadband and more. |
| Expected pay: | $12.50 per hour. |
| Employee reviews: | Employees enjoy the laid back atmosphere and flexibility with breaks, though the customer service aspect can be stressful. |
| How to apply: | Visit outPlex’s careers site. |
OutPlex uses chat support agents in a variety of industries. They also hire bilingual support agents, and the typing requirements are a little more relaxed if you speak both English and Spanish. To be an agent for outPlex, you must use a computer with Windows (sorry, Apple users).
#6. LiveWorld
| Type of work: | LiveWorld chat agents connect via social media with the customers of major corporations, such as Walmart. |
| Expected pay: | $10 to $12 per hour. |
| Employee reviews: | Agents at LiveWorld love the work-from-home aspect of the job, but lament the lack of hours and benefits. |
| How to apply: | Visit LiveWorld’s human resources page. |
At LiveWorld, you’ll be the face of major companies in their direct messages on social media. You’ll engage with customers, escalate problems, reject or approve posts and more. Because it’s based on social media platforms, you’ll need prior experience engaging in a social channel.
#7. SiteStaff Chat
| Type of work: | SiteStaff works with industries like senior living, legal, finance, home care and more. |
| Expected pay: | There is sparse and conflicting data about SiteStaff pay. One blog says $10 per hour (but gives no source for the information) and Indeed only has points of salary data of about $40K – $45k per year, which would be double that amount. |
| Employee reviews: | Not enough employee reviews were available for us to provide a summary. |
| How to apply: | Visit SiteStaff’s careers page. |
SiteStaff purports to be a top-notch chat service, advertising that their chat operators are fluent in English and college educated. Chat operators also need to be compassionate, as SiteStaff works in sensitive industries, such as senior care. They also offer a few on-site positions in their Denver office.
#8. Arise
| Type of work: | As an independent contractor on the Arise platform, you choose your own clients, which can be in any industry. |
| Expected pay: | $10 to $21 per hour (varies by client). |
| Employee reviews: | Reviews for Arise are a mixed bag. Some agents like the flexibility of setting their own hours, while others complain of technical problems and unpaid, inadequate training. |
| How to apply: | Sign up for the Arise platform to begin looking for clients. |
Arise works a little differently than other work-from-home chat support companies: they offer a chat support platform that’s used by several different customer service companies. You register with Arise and create your own mini call center right from your own home.
As an independent contractor, you must pay $39.95 per to use their platform and, unfortunately, there is no trial period. Arise posts a board full of client opportunities so you can connect with companies that need your chat support services. It’s similar to Upwork’s model for freelancers.
#9. Site123
| Type of work: | As a Sales Chat Specialist, you’ll build relationships with customers, help them with technical questions and increase sales. |
| Expected pay: | We couldn’t find enough data to report an estimated salary for a Sales Chat Specialist. |
| Employee reviews: | Not enough employee reviews were available for us to provide a summary. |
| How to apply: | Visit Site123’s jobs page. |
Site123 is a website-building platform company based in Israel. As a Sales Chat Specialist, you’ll help customers that have questions about building their websites, so you’ll need some background in the web development field for this position. It also helps to know other languages (both spoken and computer languages). Although this is a global company, you’ll be operating during the standard U.S. workday.
#10. ModSquad
| Type of work: | The ModSquad does content moderation on Discord streams, video games, virtual worlds and the metaverse. |
| Expected pay: | Around $8 to $9 per hour, and you’re considered an independent contractor. |
| Employee reviews: | There are several complaints that ModSquad doesn’t pay as well as a typical call center job and that employees have to fight to get enough hours. |
| How to apply: | Visit ModSquad’s careers page. |
A remote company since 2007, you won’t have to worry that ModSquad will change your chat job to an office-based role — a surprisingly common occurrence in this field.
ModSquad agents moderate all sorts of web content, including social media platforms, web forums, message boards and more. Pay varies based on what project you choose, but it’s lower than many other chat-based jobs.
#11. Ginger
| Type of work: | Chat with users of the Ginger app to do mental health coaching. |
| Expected pay: | $25 to $27 per hour. |
| Employee reviews: | Ginger coaches are fairly happy with their jobs, though some report frustration with poor management or unrealistic job expectations. |
| How to apply: | Visit the Ginger application page. |
The meditation app Headspace recently teamed up with Ginger to provide chat-based mental health care. This encompasses everything from teaching stress-management strategies to psychological therapy, so this remote chat-based job is only available to trained and licensed mental health professionals.
#12. The Chat Shop
| Type of work: | You’ll be answering chat questions for multiple companies and maintaining up to three chat sessions at a time. |
| Expected pay: | $10 to $12 per hour. |
| Employee reviews: | Employees generally have a good opinion of The Chat Shop. Most complaints come from high workloads and marginal pay. |
| How to apply: | You can check for jobs here. |
The Chat Shop is a UK-based company, but they do hire representatives from Florida, Georgia, Tennessee and Texas. Their standards for typing are quite high, as they expect you to be able to type 65 words per minute with 97% accuracy. Plus, they also expect that number to jump to 80 words per minute after training.
#13. CrowdChat
| Type of work: | One-on-one customer chats in industries like tourism, car dealerships and law. |
| Expected pay: | $27,000 to $32,000 per year. |
| Employee reviews: | A few online reviews note that CrowdChat sometimes struggles to pay its employees on time. |
| How to apply: | Fill out the CrowdChat agent application form. |
Based in Quebec, CrowdChat hires people to chat in both French and English. CrowdChat emphasizes turning their chat conversations into converting sales, so as a chat operator, you may not just be answering support questions but also educating people about a product or service, as well as trying to close the sale.
#14. Support.com
| Type of work: | Provide customer service, tech support, and content moderation across a variety of industries. |
| Expected pay: | $9 to $12 per hour. |
| Employee reviews: | Most customer service representatives of Support.com are not happy with their jobs. They feel overworked (both in stress and hours) and underpaid. |
| How to apply: | Visit Support.com’s careers page. |
Support.com offers customer and technical support via their network of remote chat agents. They’ve been around since 1997, so their reach is broad and deep. The company operates in a slew of industries, such as healthcare, games and entertainment, fintech, government and more. They do technical support, lead generation, in-game moderation and customer retention — and they need chat agents for all of it.
How to Find Chat Agent Jobs on Job Search Sites
This can be a little tricky, as each company calls their chat agent jobs something different. You may be looking for positions called home chat agent, customer success specialist, customer champion, or simply customer service representative — just to name a few. (See our list of recommended search terms here).
Here are a few tips for honing in on chat-based jobs that allow you to work remotely.
Tip #1: Add “remote” to the location when searching
Most sites will allow you to select “remote” as a location or filter by work-from-home opportunities. If the website doesn’t have a remote jobs filter, be sure to add it as a search term.
Tip #2: Search in the full job description
Many customer service jobs are chat only, but not all of them will state that in the job title, which may be something generic like Customer Service Representative. This is complicated by the fact that many chat jobs require you to help customers via phone and email as well as by chat.
So, if you’re looking for a chat-only job, use CTRL + F to quickly search the job listing (or COMMAND + F if you’re on a Mac) for the word “chat” (and “phone,” if talking on the phone is what you want to avoid).
Tip #3: Use the right job listing sites
Not all job boards focus on remote work opportunities. The three best sites to try when you’re looking for a remote chat job are:
- FlexJobs: This site specializes in remote work. Each of the job ads on the site is hand-screened to ensure there are only legit opportunities. It’s a paid side with a monthly fee, and while you can search the job ads for free you can only see the application details after signing up. Learn more and get a discount code in our FlexJobs review.
- Indeed: One of the biggest job aggregation sites on the web, Indeed will supply you with an ample number of remote chat job opportunities. Although, because of the sheer size of the site, you’ll have to do quite a bit of sifting. Indeed is a great place to find chat jobs that work directly for one company, rather than an agency that farms out their operators to multiple clients.
- LinkedIn: LinkedIn is half social media site and half job search site. To truly utilize the features that LinkedIn offers, you’ll need to create a profile, which can take some time. Once you do, you can apply to multiple jobs with just a few clicks. You can also set an alert to receive a notification when a new job that meets your criteria is posted. While most people think of LinkedIn as a site for career-track professionals, there are a significant number of remote work job listings on the platform.
Tip #4: Use the right search terms
Not all online chat jobs are called the same thing. Here is an alphabetized list of common terms you can use to broaden your results and make sure you’re not missing any open positions:
- Chat agent
- Chat jobs
- Chat moderator
- Chat support agent
- Customer service
- Customer support
- Home chat agent
- Live chat agent (or just chat agent)
- Live chat operator
- Online support specialist
- Work from home chat jobs
Work-From-Home Chat Jobs FAQs
Chat support jobs come in many flavors, but the most common include technical support/troubleshooting, sales, content moderation (social media, gaming, forums) and customer service. There is often overlap between these types, and you’ll likely do more than one type of work in any given chat job.
Technical requirements vary with each position, but you can expect to need a wired (ethernet) internet connection (even good Wi-Fi is generally too unreliable) and a computer that can run a modern operating system. If phone support is part of the job, you’ll also need a decent headset. In some cases, these tools are provided for you. But in most cases, you’ll need to provide your own equipment.
While there are legitimate work-from-home chat jobs, there are also plenty of shady operations out there. Before you sign up with a company, scout it out on Indeed, Glassdoor, Facebook, Reddit and wherever else you can find honest reviews. Know the warning signs of a potential scam. If it sounds too good to be true, it nearly always is.
There are straight-up scam artists on the internet, and there are also a few companies that masquerade as legitimate organizations but don’t deliver on their promises (or are just awful places to work). Based on our research, here are a few companies with recognized names that have problems you’ll want to avoid.
– ECS Virtual Support. There have been at least a dozen reports of employees simply not getting paid.
– Concentrix. A chorus of Redditors report a broad range of bad experiences working for the company, and there’s a class-action lawsuit against the firm for withholding overtime pay. It’s also unclear whether Concentrix offers any exclusively chat-based customer service jobs (most of them require some phone interactions).
– CloudWorkers. This company pays by the message for chat operators to engage with customers on dating sites so they keep using the platform. It’s basically paid catfishing.
– E-Moderators. An adult chat site that has a sketchy rating on Scam Advisor. Our research didn’t reveal any data from employees (reviews or salaries), so it may be best to steer clear of this one.
Work-From-Home Chat Jobs: Final Thoughts
Online chat has become customers’ most preferred online contact method, so the demand for chat-based jobs is only going to rise. If you’re looking for a chat agent job you can do from home, the good news is that there are many full- and part-time positions that are hiring.
It may take some time to find the right position and company, but online chat is a field you can build a career in — without commuting, shaving, talking on the phone, or even changing out of pajamas.
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