How to hire and train COD confirmation agents

Every cash-on-delivery store reaches the point where the founder can no longer call each customer personally. Orders pile up, calls go out a day late, and by then customers have forgotten what they bought. It is time to hire. The confirmation agent’s job looks easy — a phone and a list of orders — which is exactly why it is so often filled badly. A recruit who pushes for a “yes”, types half an address or rushes a customer costs far more than their salary in refused parcels.

This guide follows a hire from start to finish: defining the role, finding candidates, testing them, signing a contract that complies with Moroccan law, handling CNSS and data formalities, then onboarding and training the new agent until the end of the trial period. Pay and performance metrics have their own guide: paying confirmation agents: commission and KPIs.

Define the role before you advertise it

Start by writing down, on a single page, what the agent will actually do all day. A confirmation agent calls every new order, checks they are speaking to the person who ordered, reads back the product, size, colour and total amount, completes the address with a landmark, agrees on a delivery window, retries customers who did not pick up, answers WhatsApp messages and records a reason for every cancellation. Cancelling obviously fake orders is part of the job, not a failure.

The profile follows from that description:

• Your customers’ languages. Darija and French for Morocco, Modern Standard Arabic for Gulf customers; Amazigh is a real asset in some regions.
• A calm voice and genuine listening. Good agents ask questions and let the customer answer.
• Accuracy. One wrong digit in a phone number or a misspelt neighbourhood sinks the delivery, however good the call was.
• Honesty. The right person would rather cancel a doubtful order than squeeze out a yes.
• Comfort with a computer and clean written language for WhatsApp.

Settle the practical questions before the ad goes out too: working hours (do your customers pick up late morning or in the evening?), on-site or remote work, the equipment you provide, who the agent reports to and how pay is structured. Candidates who hear all of this up front know what they are signing up for; those who discover it after signing tend to leave within weeks.

Where to find good candidates

ANAPEC, Morocco’s public employment agency, collects job offers and puts employers in touch with registered job seekers. Posting a vacancy there takes little effort. The agency also runs IDMAJ insertion contracts, designed to help companies hire young graduates for a first job, with social-charge exemptions for the company; the terms change over time, so confirm the current ones with the agency before you count on them in your budget.

Other channels that work well for this role:

• Referrals. A well-regarded agent rarely recommends someone who would make them look bad. Pay a small bonus once the referred hire passes the trial period.
• Former call-centre staff. They are at ease on the phone; you may have to untrain the pushy scripts they learned.
• Students and recent graduates for evening or part-time shifts.
• Job boards and professional groups on social networks.

Write an honest ad: the real tasks, hours, location, required languages, contract type, trial period, and the fixed and variable pay explained in plain words. Avoid lines like “earn as much as you want per confirmed order” — they attract exactly the people who will confirm anything.

Selection: tests beat a plain interview

A standard interview shows how candidates talk about themselves, not how they talk to a hesitant customer. Four short exercises tell you far more:

The role-play is the one that decides. Pay most attention to how the candidate handles the customer who says they never ordered: someone who pushes to confirm anyway will cost you refused parcels. Finish with a reference call and one precise question: “would you let this person speak to your customers again?”

The contract: open-ended or fixed-term, trial period, hours and minimum wage

Agents hired as employees fall under the Labour Code, law 65-99. The first point many sellers get wrong: fixed-term contracts (CDD) are not a free choice. Under articles 16 and 17 of law 65-99, a fixed-term contract cannot durably fill a job tied to the normal activity of the business. Confirming orders is the permanent core of a COD store, so in principle the job calls for an open-ended contract (CDI). One case in the law matters to sellers who are starting out: opening a business or launching a new product for the first time allows fixed-term hiring for those jobs. Outside the listed cases a fixed-term contract is deemed open-ended, and a fixed-term employee cannot be paid less than an open-ended colleague doing the same work.

The trial period is governed by articles 13 and 14 of the Labour Code. For an open-ended contract, article 14 sets it at one and a half months for employees (three months for managers, fifteen days for manual workers), and it can be renewed only once. It is not automatic: it must be written into the employment contract or the engagement letter. That is the window in which the training plan below has to produce a clear verdict.

Working hours. Article 184 cut the working week from 48 to 44 hours, or 2288 hours a year, in non-agricultural activities. Plan your calling shifts within that limit.

Minimum wage. Since 2026 the statutory minimum wage reaches 17.92 dirhams per hour in non-agricultural activities. An agent’s fixed pay must at least meet that floor for the hours worked; commission comes on top and never replaces it.

The written contract should state the role, hours, place of work or remote-work rules, pay and how it is calculated, the trial period, the equipment provided and a confidentiality clause covering customer data. Some sellers use independent agents registered as auto-entrepreneurs, a status capped at 200,000 MAD of annual revenue for services; it has to reflect real independence, not an employee who keeps your hours under your instructions. Have an accountant or lawyer check your choices: this section is a summary, not legal advice.

CNSS and customer data: formalities from day one

The employer registers with the CNSS and enrols each employee. Monthly employee declarations through DAMANCOM are mandatory under law 84.17. Do not let a new hire’s registration slip: when an inspection finds a late declaration, the CNSS applies a penalty of 100% of the contribution due for each employee regularised. If payroll eats your time, the CNSS lets you delegate DAMANCOM to an accounting firm.

A confirmation agent handles names, phone numbers and addresses all day long, so Morocco’s data-protection law 09-08 applies. The CNDP states that every processing of personal data must be declared beforehand, apart from listed exceptions, and it issues the receipt within 24 hours. Inside the team, set simple rules during onboarding: one personal login per agent, no screenshots or customer files on personal phones, no contact with a customer outside the order, and access closed on the day an agent leaves.

Onboarding: the first week

The first week usually decides how the rest goes. A written plan removes the temptation to put the recruit straight on the phones on the first morning.

Hand over a written kit on day one: one sheet per product (price, sizes, lead times, frequent questions), the delivery and exchange policy, the list of cancellation reasons and the script. For the script itself, start from our Darija call scripts for COD order confirmation.

What the training has to cover

After the first week, training follows a stable curriculum that you extend every time you spot a new mistake:

1. The product. An agent who cannot answer “does it hold up in the heat?” either loses the order or makes something up.
2. The call flow. Greet, check identity, read back the order and total amount, validate the address, give an honest lead time. The full method is in our guide to COD order confirmation in Morocco.
3. The address. Neighbourhood, street, landmark, a second number: this is where failed deliveries are decided.
4. Doubtful orders. Duplicates, invalid numbers, a customer who remembers nothing: when to cancel and when to hold.
5. Objections. Answering on price, lead time and distrust without promising anything that is not authorised.
6. Writing on WhatsApp. Short, polite, error-free messages with a clear summary of the order.
7. Upselling, offered only when it genuinely helps the customer.
8. Data entry: a status and a reason for every order, without exception.

Short, regular sessions beat long training days: a weekly call review, an update for each new product, a one-page refresher sheet. Once the team grows and you bring in a training provider, look at the OFPPT’s special training contracts (CSF), a scheme supporting training for people already in the job. The access request for year N can be filed from October of year N-1, and reimbursement files must be lodged by 31 December of year N+1.

The first three months: follow up, decide, retain

During the trial period, hold a weekly check-in built on reviewed calls and the agent’s own numbers. Before the period ends, make an explicit decision based on the quality grid and the metrics set out in our commission and KPI guide, instead of letting the period lapse by default.

A trained agent who leaves takes weeks of investment with them. What keeps good agents is rarely dramatic:

• stable hours known in advance, with real breaks between calling blocks;
• decent equipment — a comfortable headset, a computer that does not freeze;
• clear pay rules, calculated as announced, paid on time and declared;
• concrete feedback rather than blame, and recognition for calls handled well;
• a path forward: trainer for new recruits, then team lead.

Finally, write things down. Every mistake a recruit makes becomes a line in the training sheet, and every good answer heard in a call review becomes an example for the next intake.

Running the confirmation team in Cashod

Cashod includes a call center where agents confirm COD orders by phone, so recruits learn on the same screen they will work on afterwards. Cashod can also confirm orders over WhatsApp, including with an AI agent, which helps absorb volume while new hires ramp up. And one Cashod account can manage several stores, a common set-up for teams that confirm for more than one seller; see our page for call centers.

No tool replaces careful hiring or steady training. But when the role is well defined, the contract compliant and the training written down, each new agent becomes productive sooner and stays longer.