The last couple of years have seen an increase in the number of Home Based Virtual Contact Centers leveraged by the huge traction that the Work at Home agent’s business model is receiving from the industry. Work at Home agents is not a new idea, in fact; companies have tried to implement this model for several years. What is changing? What are the drivers pushing this business model?
The question does not have an easy answer as each contact center will privilege the specific characteristics relevant to its business context. Nevertheless, there are some business drivers that can help describe why Work at Home agents is becoming such a prominent and strong reality.
1. Bring back off shoring positions and improve customer satisfaction
To remain competitive while keeping costs down, many organizations, from outsources to big corporations, have moved their contact center operations abroad to cheaper countries, such as India or the Philippines. The Work at Home agents business model is becoming very successful because agents are much cheaper, in some cases between 20% to 25% than brick and mortar agents. Work at Home agents also share the same cultural values and a similar mindset, highly appreciated by customers, that result in a better experience and overall satisfaction with the service provided.
2. Use the available technology
Broadband availability and connectivity have been a significant drawback to support Work at Home agents, but today this is no longer the case, especially in North America. IP Contact Centers allow the replication of functionality and availability in the traditional switch based contact center in an IP infrastructure without the associated costs and in a much smaller implementation timeframe, giving contact centers that adopt this model an advantage over competitors and ability to provide a more efficient service to customers.
3. Lower overhead costs
Facilities alone can represent, in many cases, up to 15% of the total cost of agents. If you add the costs associated with IT and connectivity, Work at Home agents can represent important savings. Work at Home agents give the contact center the flexibility to quickly and easily scale staff to meet changing call patterns or seasonal demands without the associated costs of hiring people and required infrastructure.
4. Easily cover more time zones
To provide a better service to customers, companies and contact centers support 24×7 customer assistance, but it is difficult and very expensive if all agents are based on the same geographic location. Therefore, Work at Home agents provide the necessary flexibility for companies to hire “from coast to coast”, attracting agents from a boarder geographical area without the associated relocation costs.
5. Implement “Pay per Results “remuneration framework
A universal rule to address this problem does not exist; however, recent studies have shown that Work at Home agents are willing to accept a remuneration package based on attained results. This attitude results in stronger agent commitment and thus better results, especially in sales related campaigns. It also provides added flexibility to manage the contact center workforce.
6. Leverage Work at Home agents entrepreneur attitude
The typical profile of the Work at Home agents is different from the traditional agents in the brick and mortar contact center. The Home Based Virtual Contact Centers has tapped to a all new talent of resources that previously were not available to work on a contact center for many reasons, such as not willing to commute to work, mobility constrains, difficulty to adapt to shift schedules, and so on.
Work at Home agents have also shown a more entrepreneurial attitude regarding their jobs and many even work in an independent contract model taking full responsibility for income tax and social security deductions. Since agents do not see this as a temporary job, their churn rate is lower providing a longer return on time and resources invested and a stronger commitment that translates into better service.
7. Disaster backup/”No single point of failure”
Recent events have demonstrated that organizations are not immune to outside events that can quickly cripple their operations. Adverse weather conditions, technical problems, or terrorist acts are unpredicted events that require a quick and effective answer. Work at Home agents enable contact centers to replicate the availability of resources without duplicating the infrastructure thus, building another layer of redundancy and preventing service disruption.
In conclusion, we expect that in the short term Work at Home agents will play an important role in the growth of the contact center industry.
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