The experts: diverse, knowledgeable & passionate
We’ve always known that there’s something different about the on-demand experts who use Directly to help solve problems for people using the brands they love — Pinterest, Lyft, Republic Wireless and more.
So two weeks ago, Directly conducted a poll of experts. The goal was to get a quantitative look at a few factors that might make them different.
Hundreds of experts responded to the survey. Here are a few highlights:
Where in the world are the experts?
Nearly half of the experts – 46% — live outside of the United States distributed across every time zone, which helps explain why they answer questions so quickly, no matter what time of day it is in the U.S. The top countries outside of the US are:
- Italy
- Brazil
- Canada
- Germany
- Spain
64% of the experts live in the US and the majority live west of the Mississippi. The states with the most experts are:
- California
- Washington
- North Carolina
- Maryland
- Michigan
- Tennessee
- Texas
Experts are educated
A whopping 71% of respondents reported having a college degree or higher and almost 30% have a graduate degree.
This points to a trend: with on-demand customer service work, you’re attracting a much higher level of education and skill than usually found in the contact center, probably because the experts’ primary motivations are love for the brand and for helping people.
What are they doing when not answering questions?
Almost 40% of respondents are also in the traditional 9-5, full time world of employment. In their roles as experts, they are not working defined shifts and they can choose the tickets they want to handle, yet, as you can see from the constantly updated stats on the Directly home page, the network delivers median first response time of less than 4 minutes and upwards of 92% customer satisfaction ratings.
We’ll keep updating this survey periodically. In the meantime, to get a deeper look at the background of one top expert, please read my colleague Andrew Ciaccia’s interview with Mark Grossman, a fascinating man who made a dramatic career shift and now is a prime example of the new knowledge worker, choosing when, how, and what he works on.
Meet the expert: Mark Grossman
