Home-based contact center agent programs are moving from the leading edge firms to mainstream organizations. One strong sign is their increasing popularity with global traditional employer-premise-based BPO firms, with double-digit growth in some cases.
Convergys experienced 20 percent growth in its home agent program in 2009 that jumped to 50 percent in 2010. The firm attributes this to several factors:
1. Quantifiable cost-savings via scheduling flexibility, occupancy, low attrition rates, quick program ramp times and expanded labor pools. Home agents deliver very high customer satisfaction scores, which results in increased sales rates and reduced customer churn. All of which it says leads to greater client acceptance of the home agent model.
2. Business continuity. Home agents play an important role in business continuity planning, which resonates very strongly with its clients who have a heightened awareness with recent storms in central Asia and the civil unrest in the Middle East. Convergys often recommends to clients that at least 10 percent of their programs utilize home agents, especially those operating from a single brick and mortar center. The time for business continuity planning it says is before an incident occurs, and not during or after when it may be too late and too costly.
3. International presence. Besides the U.S., Convergys operates home agents internationally in Canada and the United Kingdom, and is currently investigating expansion into other countries.
Sitel reports that on a proportional basis, employing home-based agents is a trend that is growing faster than it has seen in the traditional outsourcing space, especially in the past six months where it has been experiencing a rapid increase in the number of inquiries and requests. And it expects this acceleration to continue at about 12-15 percent over the next 3-5 years in the U.S.
“It’s at a point where we view the growth rate at a higher rate of acceleration compared to the base market,” reports Amit Shankardass, global chief marketing officer.
TeleTech has increased its TeleTech@Home operations by 50 percent in 2010, and anticipates that it will more than double the size of its TeleTech@Home agent (which it calls associates) population, into the thousands throughout 2011. It expects to see this type of growth over the next several years. It currently has home-based associates across the U.S. in 26 states, also in Spain and the U.K., with plans to also expand into other countries.
“The marketplace is beginning to understand the value of the virtual workforce service model and TeleTech@Home is ramping up our operations as we are seeing this heightened demand,” says P.J. Weyforth, TeleTech senior vice president of operations.
To ensure that the home agent program is a success, these companies are continually making improvements to them.
Convergys’s home agent platform has been certified PCI-DSS compliant. The firm also implemented an upgraded agent virtual desktop that provides additional sign-in security measures, and management and monitoring. It refined its virtual training by using a performance-based learning methodology that has shown better results than traditional knowledge-based learning.
Convergys also expanded the capability of its proprietary agent messaging tool. It incorporates SMS that allows supervisors to quickly inform agents of vital information even if they are not online. It also has one-button screen share and chat capability, enabling instant support from supervisors, as well as personal number concealment.
The BPO firm also increased home agent split shifts and part time staff. They improve handling of fluctuating call patterns and provide another level of business continuity for its clients, reports Rick Owens, senior director of home agent operations.
“Convergys has not made significant or wholesale changes to our home agent model as it was already built on a strong platform that addresses sourcing, training, performance management, communications, and security, areas other companies often find challenging when operating a home agent program.,” says Owens. “We do however continue to enhance our home agent infrastructure with technology and the addition of new features supporting our clients’ needs.”
Sitel implemented inContact’s eLearning and eCoaching solutions with its company’s home-based agents. In the first several months the firm increased agent training efficiency, reduced training costs and enhanced agent collaboration with their supervisors
TeleTech is streamlining its learning and training processes including collaboration between home agents.
“We are continually innovating our processes from screening, on-boarding, and training; as well as our operating practices,” says Weyforth.