Contact Center Convictions

[#1]

We can’t put our agents at home because ___________________

Okay, I must admit I have had to bite my tongue many times when others have explained to me why they can’t have their contact center agents work at home.  I’m sure you have been there before.  Knowing something important that others can’t seem to comprehend.  “HEY… we shouldn’t use asbestos in this ceiling.”

I am not the kind of guy who likes to blatantly create conflict by saying to someone they are wrong.  But my new year’s resolution is to speak up and be heard.  So, I will now say to them… “Your excuses are no longer valid!” … and … “You don’t know what you’re missing!”

For some reason I am drawn to asking the agent at-home question.  I’m like a little kid who can’t help from wiggling in my chair.  I just have to do it, and so I do.  I am happy to report that in the last year more people have been answering my irritating questions with “yes” – they are considering (or have already) deployed agents at home.  But I am often disappointed when I’m given a list of reasons not to deploy agents at home.

Those of you out there who have deployed an at-home program usually get pretty excited and start telling me facts like the following:

• "We recognized huge benefits by having a flexible workforce”, or
• "We found at-home agents are happier and more productive”, or
• "We wanted to improve the customer experience”, or
• "We were looking for a more mature and more educated workforce”, or
• "We needed a better way to scale up and down based on seasonal demand”.

      Great answers!  Thank you!  Even the following list of answers, which I have heard, is pretty decent (won’t bring me to tears, but still keeps me from biting my tongue): 

• "We wanted to lower our attrition rate”
• “We wanted to tap into lower cost labor markets”
• “We wanted to decrease costs for the company and for our agents”
• “We needed a more comprehensive disaster recovery process”
• "We wanted to improve agent adherence and reduce absenteeism”
• "We wanted to reward our best agents” (a stretch)
• "We are a green company and wanted to lower our environmental impact” (respectable)

Several people I have spoken to have figured out a way to put agents in India, but for some reason could not figure out how to put agents on Homestead Circle.  They have their rationales which seem to center around three areas: 1) Productivity, 2) Quality, 3) and Security.  Pretty serious one-two-three punch list.  But I still say not considering at-home agents is ill-advised and a symptom of management insecurity.  If they keep this up the government may need to bail out their company. 

Okay, I admit, I may be overreacting here.  A little.  But I know the concerns, although completely valid, can now be overcome through technology.  The benefits of at-home agents are so compelling that the effort to figure it out far outweighs the roadblocks to achieving the reality of it.  Research indicates that productivity will increase, quality will increase, and surprisingly for many at-home naysayers, even the concerns about security can be overcome.

True story I heard just yesterday from an inContact customer regarding at-home staff:  They didn’t think they could, but then they somehow did anyway.  Results in the first year:  double-digit increase in customer satisfaction and at the same time the company saved a million dollars in their call center operation (even while handling increased call volumes).

In future weeks I plan to dive deeper into the productivity, quality, and security concerns, and I would like to (with your help) address at least ten compelling reasons to staff your contact center with at-home agents.  I promise to be reasonable and I recognize that there are real roadblocks to accomplishing at-home initiatives.  Let’s discuss and work through these.  If you are skeptical then let us know why and hopefully we can help and together we can change the world one agent at a time.

[#2]

Hey Drew.  When we recruit for at-home agents we get 2-3 times the number of qualified applications.  My guess is that if we advertised out of our local market that we would get even more.  For us this is a great way to find more qualified agents.

[#3]

What kind of management tools do you offer for remote agents?

[#4]

Greetings Drew:

 

I am the founder of a customer care software company who totally embraces the benefits of having company resources work from home.  In addition to all our staff working from home, we utilize several contact resources including our attorney, Web designers, accountant and supplemental development staff who all work from home. We have traditional office space for when face-time is needed by our development staff, but over 97% of the hours worked on behalf of Fuze is from home.

 

The quality of resources we have found by eliminating the boundaries of geographic proximity has allowed us to retain people with amazing skills from around the world for years.  Using this distributed staffing approach has also significantly improved the overall quality of the work completed while cutting our costs big-time. 

 

Through using phones, web cams, web conference and remote control solutions, we have developed business and personal relationships that have proven to be mutually beneficial and sustainable.  Web-based project management tools are used by staff and independent contractors alike to enable task coordination and provide our management with the metrics they need to ensure resources are aligned around common goals and effectively and efficiently complete their work. 

 

I write this blog post today from my home office where my commute and family are seconds away and my Fuze team are just as close with the push of a few buttons. 

 

Using our qualitative and quantitative metrics for assessment, I would put the productivity, quality and efficiency of our distributive team up against anyone.  In fact, this approach has enabled Fuze to effectively compete with companies over 100 times our size.   

 

Drew: Keep on pushing the doubters.  Working from home is good for people and for our planet.

Chuck Van Court

President and founder of Fuze Digital Solutions

www.fuze.com

[#5]

Hi VTA.  Thanks for the question... "What kind of management tools do you offer for remote agents?"

Here are some of the management tools we offer to aid in deploying remote agents:

> Live monitoring of calls and ability to record for any remote agent

> Workforce management, with an agent portal so they can participate and collaborate in scheduling with the manager and other agents

> eLearning, with the ability to dynamically deliver custom content to agents when call volumes are light

> Customer survey tool that reports the results directly back to the agent and let's them know where they stand in comparison with other agents (they can even listen to the customer recorded comments.)

> The agent can also see the queues and other indicators of how the contact center is performing

Message Edited by DrewJ on 02-18-2009 01:48 PM

[#6]

Great article Drew.  It is interesting that people would list productivity as a concern.  My experience has been that centers employing at home agents are generally MORE productive.  The employee is also more productive with their time.  The employee does not waste time commuting.  The dress standard is more lax.  They can eat lunch in their own kitchen.  The at home employee gets the benefit of a significant time savings.  This frees them to do things with that time that they might be doing at work in a traditional environment.

I have no data on this point, but I also suspect that the pool of quality at home employees is deeper (in more ways than one) than the pool of traditional employees.  I also suspect that a good at home program experiences significantly lower turnover than a traditional program.

The biggest hurdle has always been the technology.  With the availability of the technology, it should be an easy decision for many traditional centers to convert.

[#7]

Well put Drew. 

One of the arguments I commonly hear against at home agents is the sense of detachment.  The agents never feel like they are a part of the company.  They report to work and have little to no interaction with their peers or supervisors.  I suggest that inContact add a virtual water cooler to its repertoire of call center applications.  I feel that this would further reduce some of the arguments given by the naysayers.

Jason Lasure

[#8]

Hi Drew,

I’ve spent my career working with BPO companies with large outsourcing operations.  I found your comment, “Several people I have spoken to have figured out a way to put agents in India, but for some reason could not figure out how to put agents on Homestead Circle”, very entertaining.

 

As the CEO of a consulting company that primarily works with the internal HR function of large organizations, I’ve seen a shift over the last few years in the way business leaders think about outsourcing their workforce overseas.

 

It often takes dramatic external circumstances to move large organizations from their long standing traditions and paradigms.  With the downturn in the economy, the last few years have been eye-opening as some of the BPO companies that we work with have scrambled to move customer service and process oriented work offshore.

 

I’m not going to say that moving work offshore is all bad.  There are good business reasons to do it.  In many cases, companies that require a global presence and/or 24/7 operations are good candidates.  There are many success stories out there.

 

However, some business leaders I’ve spoken with that jumped on the off-shoring bandwagon ONLY due to perceived cost savings, have reaped a reward of a drop in customer satisfaction and productivity.  Bottom line, the net ROI isn’t as dramatic as some would have hoped.

 

In today’s economy I think you’re well positioned to help companies realize a win-win scenario.  I wish you great success in helping companies reduce cost, attract and retain qualified employees, safeguard our employee and customer data, all while brining jobs back to the US!

 

Best of luck,

 

Rob Wallis

CEO – Wallis Consulting Group

www.wallisconsulting.com

[#9]

Very well worded, Drew. After making the switch from a brick and mortar contact center 8 years ago, to placing our staff in home, the results have been impressive and I couldn't imagine reverting back to the traditional call center environment.

In addition, with so many companies offering a 'work from home' solution, traditional contact centers are competing and will soon be out of resources for quality contact center professionals. I feel, given the option, most call center employees are likely to opt to work from home, saving them time and money.

Jodi Smith

eCallogy Inc.