The Real Life of Home-Based Agents
1 Mar, 2007
By: Vince WeseliSally, is that you?
The next time you call for customer service, your neighbor may be answering the phone as a customer care agent working from home.
According to a recent report by industry analyst firm IDC, about 112,000 agents in the United States worked from their homes in 2005, and that number is expected to exceed 300,000 by the end of 2010.
While this is still a small percentage of the approximately 4 million U.S. contact center employees, home agents are a growing and important phenomenon in customer care.
Why are Agents Homeward Bound?
While, home agents, home shoring, home sourcing, telecommuting and other similar terms have been around for years, recent advances in technology have made the use of home agents a more feasible option today than ever before.
Specifically, the use of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) to route calls and allow remote agents to log into the contact center reduces traditional telephony costs. VoIP is a key technological driver that allows anyone with a high-speed Internet connection to become a candidate for home agent.
Along with advances in technology, changes in the workforce, the economy and worker preferences and special circumstances are driving agents to work from home.
The United States and other countries such as Japan are facing the impending retirement of a large percentage of their workforces. As baby boomers retire from traditional jobs, the home agent alternative will open up this new retiree base for recruitment for those companies savvy enough to tap into them.
Another trend in the U.S. economy is the shift from manufacturing to an information-based economy. This labor shift is creating an additional new pool of workers with high-tech skills who perform well as home agents.
Many workers prefer little to no commuting and reducing their work-related expenses as much as possible, including clothing, meals and travel costs. These work-related expenses can add up and negatively impact a worker’s perception of the value of the job. Working from home changes this. Instead of spending money to go to work, agents working from home are saving money for use elsewhere.
Another contributor to the rise in home agents is how well the job can meet the needs of those who need to work from home, such as parents with child- or adult-care responsibilities, and individuals with physical disabilities. These individuals often have to deal with transportation problems and the lack of properly tailored workspaces. By leveraging the home work space already tailored specifically to the individual with disabilities, the home agent has a comfortable work environment and, of course, no transportation needs.
How Do Employers and Agents Benefit?
A home agent program is attractive to both the employer and the home agents themselves.
A broader, experience-rich talent pool: Removing the restriction with which agents have to work in the contact center can greatly increase the pool of talent for home agent recruitment, leading to a more highly educated agent workforce for the employer. Generally speaking, the option of working from home attracts higher numbers of college-educated applicants. These agents are generally more mature with professional experiences that can ultimately translate to better customer service and higher first call resolution rates.
Reaching a higher-caliber employee base can result in another benefit besides improved client satisfaction. Access to specific skill sets or educational disciplines allows a company to diversify its type or level of support. Hiring from a broader geographic area provides access to a much deeper pool of talent suitable for cost-effectively supporting even the most complex call types. Cutting-edge companies are building the sophisticated remote hiring, training and management systems needed to successfully administer complex projects serviced by highly skilled and geographically dispersed agents.
Greater employee satisfaction and lower attrition: Eliminating the commute to work allows home agents to spend significantly less money on work-related travel, whether by personal car or public transportation. They like the expense and time savings, as well as reducing the stress associated with heavy traffic and crowded public transportation that they encounter at the beginning and end of every work day. Many agents working from home have commented on the added personal time they now have to spend with families and friends, or to pursue educational opportunities, simply from the time saved by eliminating the daily commute to and from the contact center.
Working from home provides employees with more flexible work schedules, allowing them to better balance family life with work. This scheduling flexibility also translates into better customer service, as the employer can now better schedule customer support to better meet customer needs and preferences on when the customer wants to receive support.
Working from home provides the agent with comfortable working environment. A seat is always available, and the temperature and noise level of the room is individually controlled. They can go to the kitchen for food, saving on the cost of meals they might otherwise end up buying outside the home if working in a contact center.
It is no secret within the contact center business that attrition is one of the leading challenges in providing cost-efficient and quality customer care. Studies show that turnover rates for home agents can be reduced by 50 percent or more versus bricks and mortar agents. Using the work at home option as an incentive for high achievers in a brick and mortar location can also have an overall positive effect on retention within the call center.
Firms able to reduce attrition by just a few percentage points can realize millions of dollars in cost savings. Lower attrition translates to improvements in the overall customer experience, increased customer retention, and better sales conversion rates ¯ all of which contribute to the bottom line.
Improved flexibility: A pool of home agents provides additional response options when call spikes do occur, as agents can be put into production faster and more efficiently than agents located in the contact center. Agents are much more willing and able to work for a couple hours on short notice if they can do this work from home. So, when a center receives an unexpected increase in call volumes, a message can be broadcast out to the home agent pool to identify personnel to meet the demands. This can be used to meet demands both from increases in customer activity and more important in times of emergency, such as bad weather.
One potential catastrophic event that has seen its fair share of media coverage is the Avian or bird flu. Contagious illness outbreaks could quickly render a “brick and mortar” location useless. Agents working from home do not have to worry about catching a contagious illness from co-workers. In the event of a pandemic, a workforce of geographically dispersed home agents is a viable option to maintain customer service when staffing of the physical contact center is not possible.
Greater security: We have already examined numerous organizational advantages of using home agents, but some believe the use of home agents raises data security risk. However, this is a misconception. In practice, the use of home agents is no less secure than the call center environment.
Most security breaches are the result of authorized people either accessing the data for dishonest purposes, or intentionally or unintentionally providing network access to the data to unscrupulous outsiders.
In today’s contact center and home agent environments, companies have the option to use VPN technology and sophisticated security software to prevent non-authorized network access and desktop use. In addition, the agent’s desktop can be restricted to allow use only as a workstation; printing, copying, and downloading can all be prohibited, which limits data fraud. There is also an audit trail available to help identify and correct fraudulent transactions.
Further, because home agents provide companies the ability to be more selective in hiring those who will have access to confidential data, the likelihood of a security breach is reduced. Screening tools like background checks are common, and will identify many of the applicants who previously committed fraud. Another consideration is the fact that work at home jobs are highly desirable for many people, and they are the least likely to want to jeopardize their position by abusing their access to sensitive data.
How Can You Use Home Agents Successfully?
You can see that the use of home agents provides significant benefits to both the employer and the agent. However, when establishing a home agent program, it is important to have the consultation of experienced experts that have actually set-up, operated and executed successful home agent programs.
Expertise in agent recruiting, screening and hiring techniques is of utmost importance when establishing a home agent program. For your home agent program to achieve the desired benefits, each of these processes will need to be modified. Agents must be identified who have the right aptitude in terms of self-discipline, organizational skills, and ability to work in isolation. Increased technical skills also will be important as the agents will bear some responsibility to assist in the troubleshooting of technical issues with the computer, Internet connection, etc. Also, the home agent must have a suitable environment for work without interruptions such as dogs, kids, TV and other distractions.
Deploying the appropriate technical infrastructure is very important. You must make sure that you have reliable connectivity to deliver the data and voice to the agent’s home without any latency. The agents will need to be able to access all of the same systems that they would when work in the contact center. The agent desktops have to be maintained with all of the appropriate patches and security updates and be kept free from viruses in order to work reliably. An appropriate security infrastructure will have to be established to ensure home agents cannot print out or download confidential, proprietary client information. Also, communication tools, such as an enterprise messenger system, will need to be deployed to enable the home agents to communicate with each other and with personnel back in the contact center to address questions and call escalation issues. Companies that have deployed and consulted on numerous customer care projects can recommend proven techniques, processes and tools to address these issues.
Employee development and performance management processes are a crucial component of building a successful home agent program. These processes include agent performance evaluation, training and quality monitoring. Since the home agent will not have the face-to-face interaction a traditional agent might receive, these processes will need to be managed in a new way. Toolsets will need to be implemented or better utilized to enable recording and joint reviewing of agent calls by the remote (home) agent and his or her supervisor. Decisions will need to be made about how training will be handled, in the contact center or remotely. Many other changes will also need to be taken into consideration and, again, this is where working with a company with previous experience with the home agent model would be beneficial.
Today, there are two primary models being utilized for home agent programs: the Independent Contractor Agents model and the Telecommuting Agents model.
The one that is most frequently spoken of is the Independent Contractor Agents model (ICA). As implied by the name, ICA agents are not employees of the company, but instead are independent contractors. These home agents provide their own computer and high-speed data connection. These agents are paid only for time spent answering calls and are not paid for wait time or training time. This model works well for handling high volumes and/or with call types that do not require training or hiring to be conducted in person. This model is most prevalently used in the direct response, travel and retailing industries. It is worth noting that almost all independent contractor agents are employed today by companies that provide outsourced customer care services with very little, if any, direct use by in-house contact centers themselves.
The Telecommuting Agents (TCA) model is the model many in-house contact centers and some outsource customer care service providers are deploying. In this model, either new or existing contact center employees are hired to work in their homes as agents. These agents are treated as employees of the company. They receive benefits and access to campus sites for training, skill certification and skill refreshment. These agents are trained on self-supervision and how to work remotely as a home agent. Generally, these agents are treated the same as those in a contact center – they are managed by a team leader and evaluated to the same performance standards. This model is used today across numerous industries and across both simple and complicated call types. The training and hiring required to support this model is conducted personally within the local market where the agents are being hired.
One company’s home agent program showed that home agents can responsibly deliver results from their homes. Using the TCA model, its program results included shorter hold times (as much as 46 percent shorter), lower average call handle times (as much as 20 percent less), higher productivity (up almost 5 percent), and lower attrition rates (by as much as 30 percent) among the TCA agents.
Final Thoughts
Even though advanced technology enables the use of home agents, we should keep in mind that this resource is not intended to completely replace the brick and mortar contact center. Rather, the use of home agents is part of a coordinated customer care strategy to address client preferences and demands ¯ just as IVR, self-service, and off-shoring are as well. A pool of home agents that supplements your current bricks and mortar contact centers can improve your performance, mitigate risks and increase the satisfaction of your employees.
So, when your neighbor, Sally, answers your next customer service call to your mobile service provider or credit card company, do not be surprised that Sally is right next store, working from her home.
