CINCINNATI • An operator is standing by – at home.

Companies that supply customer service agents to businesses around the world say they are saving money and attracting better employees by letting them work from their homes.

Using Internet telephone technology, the operators are able to answer questions and hear out complaints as if they were working in a sprawling call center.

“It gives us access to some high-quality labor that wouldn’t work in a call center,” said Andrea Ayers, president for customer management for Convergys Corp., an outsourcing company that is ramping up the number of agents who work from home. “This gives us more staffing flexibility, and we can make it work with their lifestyle.”

Convergys and rival companies say they’re being swamped with applications. The first spike came a few months ago, when gas prices topped $4 a gallon. Now, they’re surging again as unemployment soars.

Home agents often start at $8 to $10 an hour, earning more depending on the skill and knowledge required for specific clients. Besides gas, home-based operators save on car maintenance and the cost of keeping up an office wardrobe.

Sharon Castor had never given much thought to working at a call center, and even less to going back to an early rising, traffic-fighting work life she had for nearly three decades before retiring. But she was getting antsy after five years off and needed some extra income.

“I said, ‘I need to do something, but I really don’t want to go back downtown every day again,'” Castor said.

After researching at-home work opportunities – “there are a lot out there who make all kinds of promises” – she came to Convergys. Soon, she had converted a bedroom into an office, where she helps customers with questions on behalf of a health care company.

It’s among many companies that don’t want their use of outsourced customer service made public.

The Cincinnati-based outsourcing company has about 1,200 home agents and expects to triple that next year.

Convergys’ home agents communicate through broadband Internet connections. Firewalls secure information. Managers can monitor agents’ work virtually.

At Alpine Access, which specializes in at-home agents, business is booming, said Christopher Carrington, chief executive. Applications are up 10 to 15 percent over a year ago. The Denver-based company started slowly, but the spread of high-speed communications has enabled it to grow from fewer than 1,000 agents in its second year to more than 7,500.

Carrington said many U.S. companies who outsource prefer to use U.S.-based employees – called “homeshoring” – instead of those in call centers in India or other countries.

“Our cost is minimal,” Carrington said. “We don’t have to build a building. We do all the training virtually.”

Sharon Castor, an at-home agent for Convergys Corp. of Cincinnati, turned an extra bedroom in her Florence, Ky. , home into an office. Photo by (AP Photo/David Kohl)