It is painfully hard for agencies to hire good chatters and keep them. Hopefully in this post I will be able to clear the air and help you in your chatting management endeavours

Character

Don’t mistake the chatting job as a pseudo customer service job. It is much more complex. And this complexity requires a specific type of person for it to work.

It is not the job for a family man, or someone with normal expectations from life. You need to find a social outcast who is smart, but also can’t work normal jobs. This demographic is a great starting point to narrow down some candidates.

Culture

Most of your customers are westerners. Your chatters should have cultural relevance to the west. This doesn’t mean you should hire someone from a first world country. You could A/B test between Filipinas and Latinas to see how they differ in their chatting. It will be quite apparent to you that Filipinas are more “serving” type, they will almost try to sound like the fan’s mother. Their intimate talks will sound like a medical exam though. Latinas are more manipulative, so are the Slavs. This variable in your chatters will have an higher impact on your sales than some random empathy test.

Brains

They have to be smart. You must be thinking, “We tried IQ tests for our candidates and high IQ candidates still ended up being bad chatters”. I’m afraid to tell you that if all you require is a screenshot, there is a high chance that its fake. People don’t start looking for OF chatting jobs out of nowhere, they are brought in by their friends, who warns them about the requirements and may even help them with fake screenshots, and this is not just for the IQ test. You should watch them take the IQ test on a video call to be sure.

Just IQ smartness isn’t enough. They have to be street smart. Be flexible with their reactions and reading their environment. Them being smart is possibly the most time saving thing you can do for your chatting management. Because, if they are not, you will be giving them the same feedback over and over again and they will not learn. While, a smart chatter will take it and implement it instantly. They will actually train themselves, recognize the patterns that lead to more sales and adjust themselves accordingly.

Benefits

Because good chatters are in high demand, you will have to keep their pay and other benefits satisfactory. You could have the best models, get thousands of paid subscribers every day but you won’t get any good chatters if all you offer is $2 + 2%.

If you have your traffic sorted, I suggest you go the commission only route to encourage working hard. If, no matter what they do, bulk of their income comes from their hourly, they will have no reason to put in their best work.

Other benefits you can offer will be highly chatter specific. Talk to them, get to know them and then they will let you know what they would appreciate. This could be less supervision. If you chatter is doing an amazing job, don’t waste his time, breathing on his shoulder. Some chatters really hate this and it can be the last straw that could make them seek other agencies.

Red flags

Here are some things to look out for when interviewing candidates or evaluating your existing chatters. This section is from my personal experience, so take it with a grain of salt.

1. Kindness

Kindness is a weakness for the chatters. They have to be manipulative and if your candidate is too kind, that might be a red flag.

Fans come in different shapes and sizes and if your chatter is talking to them as if she’s a sweet old corner shop owner, it won’t work. Think of the people you fell in love with when you were in your younger years and think to yourself, were they just kind or utilized a handful of emotions to drag you all around.

2. Yes man

This comes hand in hand with kindness and it is very common. You need to find yourself an a**hole chatter. Someone who has an a bit of edge to them. They can not take everything that is given to them at face value, accept every criticism, say yes to everything you say.

This is important because, they will have to be quite flexible while chatting and try new things. If they live by the rules and only thing they worry about is if you get angry with them, they won’t improve besides consistent and tiresome feedbacks.