Will Call Center Agents Working From Home Be The Demise of the Call Center? Experts Say “No”
By Felix Serrano, Senior Vice President & General Manager, Work@Home Solutions , Sitel
615.301.7100
Felix.Serrano@Sitel.com
One of the biggest trends in the call center industry today is the transition of agents working in call centers to working from home. At-home agent adoption is expected to accelerate by as much as 25 percent annually in the foreseeable future. Work@Home customer care gives employees more flexibility and allows them to have a better work/life balance. It also delivers great efficiencies and high margins for call center companies while providing access to specialized skillsets that are often difficult to find.
With this new model of working on the upswing, some have started to wonder what will become of the call center. Will all call center agents eventually be working from home?
The trend toward supporting remote workers has also spawned innovations and new creative ways of working that have improved the industry’s thinking about managing call centers. The ways in which you hire, train, and manage are being rewritten with new best practices; the bar for security is being raised and the cost structure required to run a world class operation is being redefined. The proof is in the pudding – the call center industry is seeing an increased adoption of outsourcing from in-house centers that have not kept pace with these innovations and want to leverage company’s expertise and capital investments in the call center of today.
Attracting and developing the right talent that wants to stay with you
Another significant reason for the growing success of the work-at-home model is the ability to establish a geographical dispersion pool within the company. For example, if there is no call center facility within three hours of the agent’s residence, working at home enables the agent to provide the same service without having to relocate or travel an excessively long time to and from work every day. From an employer’s standpoint, allowing a part of the workforce to work remotely is a great retention strategy for employees who have already been trained and have proven to be effective but prefer to work remote.
Industries such as healthcare, travel, banking and insurance are all recruiting college-educated call center agents who have a working knowledge of their businesses and, oftentimes, prefer to work from home. Research has also shown that attrition rates for work-at-home agents are typically 35 to 50 percent lower than those working directly in the call center.
A multi-faceted approach to training provides home-based agents with the same skill sets and familiarity with client products and/or services that is received in a traditional call center. With web based e-learning and e-coaching tools for example, agents who work remotely can receive their training in a virtual classroom in which agents meet through integrated video and audio connections. Using these same capabilities, agents in the physical center can access self-paced computer-based training to keep their skills up to par. Ad hoc live mass training programs can also be conducted to address major issues of importance (e.g. product recall information).
More engaging management at the frontline
Agents who work from home are held to the same high standard of performance as their onsite counterparts; the only difference is their location. Once training is complete, there are also technologies and best practices developed for the work at home environment that can help call center managers effectively monitor and manage staff members - for both onsite and remote agents. Call center coaches and managers have capabilities to monitor record and evaluate the quality of customer interactions using standard dashboards. Pre-defined performance metrics can automatically alert a remote agent’s manager if his or her scores drop below a pre-defined threshold.
The most secure interactions have ever been
Availability of high-speed, high-quality Internet service, coupled with secure and powerful desktop technologies, make working at home as effective as in the traditional call center. And, in many cases, the added layer of computer-based security can make the home working environment even more secure than legacy in-house call centers. These capabilities, such as touchtone entry of payment information and use of PC cameras, are reducing security incidents while still allowing for the same efficient and effective technological capabilities of those agents working in-house.
Having a portion of agents work from their homes mitigates the loss of business that can occur in the event of unplanned weather events or other disturbances that impact the area where the physical center is located. Supplemental work from home agent population can quickly provide for solid business continuity in big events or even micro events that cause bursts in call volume.
So is work-at-home the future of customer service and will the call center simply become a distant memory in years to come? While the industry-wide swing towards the at-home call center is unquestionable – today, both are essential to a balanced strategy and each makes the other discipline stronger for the highest quality customer experience possible.