Key Considerations for Developing Remote Agent Programs

February 9, 2012 — Maureen

At-home agent programs are still growing in popularity for domestic call centers. Not only do they reduce overhead costs of housing in-house agents, but they contribute to higher CSR job satisfaction and allow companies to hire employees with specialized skills that may not exist in their local market. There are even low-cost reporting solutions that make management of at-home agents more seamless.

However, there are certain things that a smart call center manager should keep in mind to ensure that the at-home agent program will be successful. I was recently reading Contact Center Pipeline, where industry expert Susan Hash had some great reminders of things to keep in mind for at-home agent management. She suggested creating a “virtual community,” that is, a way for your remote agents to feel connected to their coworkers, managers, and the company in general. The importance of this connection cannot be overlooked, not only for logistical reasons but also because feeling like part of a team is what makes your workforce successful.

Hash also discussed the importance of screening potential at-home workers for suitability to work in that environment. The type of employee that would be successful working at home may be different from those who succeed in an office environment. In addition, many managers aren’t experienced in supervising remote agents. Providing some targeted training sessions and equipping them with call center software tools to help them monitor remote agent activity will go a long way. Finally, Hash reminds us that remote agent employment brings with it a host of HR and legal considerations that should not be overlooked.

Many call centers are making remote agent programs a key part of their strategy in 2012. If handled correctly, it just might be the right way to cut costs and maintain productivity. What other considerations are important when developing such a program? How has it worked for your center?

Posted in At-home and remote agents, Call Center Management, Performance Management. No Comments »

Call Center Surveys Benefit All Parties

January 31, 2012 — Jackie

It can be exhausting opening email upon email only to find that someone else wants “five short minutes” of your time to complete a survey.  Obviously we have to pick and choose which ones we want to participate in, but I urge you to pay close attention to the ones that are directly related to your industry.  This research helps all of us figure out national trends, best practices, and tips for success.

One of my favorite reports from last year was The Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report that was researched and published by Dimension Data.  This report had representation from 546 contact centers located across 66 countries and five continents.

The report does a nice job outlining all of the key findings and summaries for the year.  For me, one of the most interesting bullet points was about turnover.

“Staff Turnover – a costly exercise.   This year’s results reflect an overall annual staff turnover of over a third, a significant deterioration since the last Report, and perhaps somewhat explained by industry-wide cutbacks over the period. For any contact centre finding itself in a growth period, the challenge of replacing over a third of its staff per year, as well as having to find new staff, can be serious and costly in terms of the loss of knowledge and experience.”

Have you seen a similar turnover rate in your contact center?  When budgets are cut, are employees the first to go?  This led to my curiosity about working from home.

“Homeworking growing in popularity. Homeworking is on the rise across every region. The US has the largest proportion of homeworkers, the number doubling since 2009, while Asia-Pacific has overtaken Australia and New Zealand, to occupy second place. The number of homeworking agents in Europe has tripled, while the number in Africa and Middle East has seen a small rise, perhaps an indicator of technology improvements and fewer bandwidth issues. The Technology sector uses the most homeworkers, while Consumer Goods and Retail and Financial Services use them the least.”

It’s nice to see the increase in organizations allowing their employees to work remotely.  I first heard of this becoming popular in the States when gas prices were soaring.  I knew several large organizations that only made it mandatory to be physically present in the office 3 days a week.  In many ways working from home is a wonderful way for organizations and employees to save on costs.  This might be worth thinking about before deciding to cut hours or workers.

Whether you’re interested in learning about the management best practices or the latest technology trends; surveys are great way to get and give vital information.  What are some of your favorites?

Posted in At-home and remote agents, Business, Call Center Management, Call Center Resources. No Comments »

Call center outsourcing debated in Washington

January 12, 2012 — Camille

In a post last month at the Destination CRM Blog, Leonard Klie discusses legislation introduced in Congress on December 7, 2011 called the U.S. Call Center and Consumer Protection Act.  This bill seeks to ban companies that outsource call center jobs overseas from receiving federal grants and loans for five years. Klie says the proposed bill would “require overseas call center employees to disclose their locations to U.S. consumers and give customers the right to be transferred to a U.S.-based call center upon request. It would further require companies to notify the U.S. Department of Labor 120 days prior to any proposed moves offshore and require the list of companies that offshore call center work to be made available to the U.S. public.”

Although a number of companies have begun to bring call center jobs back to the US, such as Delta, there are many companies still sending jobs overseas.  Politics aside, Klie points out several disasters that have impacted US companies with overseas call centers, including:

  • Typhoon in the Philippines
  • Military coup in Thailand
  • Terrorist bombings in Mumbai, India
  • Earthquakes in Chile
  • Swine flu epidemic in Mexico.

Klie suggests hiring work-at-home agents rather than outsourcing which results in large savings through real estate and infrastructure.

For more information on the U.S. Call Center and Consumer Protection Act, visit:

If this bill is passed, how do you think it will impact the call center industry?

Posted in At-home and remote agents, News and events. No Comments »

Hosted Contact Centers and Virtual Wallboards

June 15, 2011 — Tom

According to a recent DMG Consulting prediction, the hosted contact center market is expected to grow at a rate of 25% in 2011, 20% in 2012, and 18% in 2013.  At the end of 2009, DMG estimated that there were nearly 340,000 hosted contact center seats in the market, having grown nearly 21% from 2008.  The hosted contact center market indeed has strong momentum, and I concur with DMG that it will continue to move along at a rapid pace – especially as the IT sector continues to closely examine call center routing and queuing software costs.

But what of the humble wallboard?  Will it continue to have a place in brick-and-mortar contact centers, even as the ACD is being hosted in the cloud?

One of the benefits of hosted contact center infrastructures is the ability for small- and mid-sized contact centers to acquire core technology without large up-front investments.  I define “small” as 50 or fewer agent seats in one location.  The “Great Recession” has produced a multitude of centers like this – centers that are looking for routing technology, but lack the capital to invest in it.  Hosted contact center seats seem to fill the gap nicely.

Virtual wallboards, or dashboards, marry particularly well with hosted contact centers for two reasons:

  1. Virtual, or web-based, wallboards are available for viewing from any web-enabled device.  Smartphones are already ubiquitous; more and more floor supervisors are carrying tablets around their centers.  Imagine the convenience of viewing real-time and historical stats from the palm of your hand.  Virtual wallboards provide the most important call center operational KPIs from multiple data sources in one place for quick and easy visual comprehension.
  2. The trend toward at-home agents will continue to grow.  Agents working in non-traditional or home environments have the same needs as brick-and-mortar agents to view real-time KPIs for operational excellence.  Virtual wallboards – dashboards, essentially – make at-home agents feel more connected, which allows them to do their jobs more effectively and efficiently.  Real-time and historical web dashboards create instant awareness of call center operations and inspire informed action in all viewers – agents, managers, and executives.

What do you think?  Do hosted contact centers and virtual wallboards seem like an especially perfect match?

Posted in At-home and remote agents, Call Center Management, Customer service, Performance Management. No Comments »

Don’t Demolish the Call/Contact Center

May 5, 2011 — Tom

Brendan Read is a leading contact center industry journalist, with extensive experience covering site selection, outsourcing, teleworking, e-learning/e-training, and business continuity.  Most recently, though, he serves as TMCnet’s Senior Contributing Editor.  He writes extensively for TMCnet’s Customer Inter@ction Solutions, most prominently in his monthly column, Logout.  Brendan’s most recent article, titled “Demolish the Call/Contact Center?” was featured in the April 2011 issue.

After reading Brendan’s thought-stimulating article, I had a few comments:

Brendan’s argument that call centers should once again associate themselves with their parent departments, such as Sales and Service, holds water in my opinion.  In doing so, you “create more profitable customer experiences while providing career paths for exceptional performers.”  So far, we’re in agreement.  But even as telemarketing is in decline, due in part to “off-limits wireless devices,” and social media and collaboration are gathering steam, I believe that at least for the foreseeable future, we’ll continue to see dedicated call/contact centers appear, grow, and prosper.  Why?  Because of the enormous infrastructure investment already in place to support large-scale implementations.  I’m talking about IP networks, telephony equipment, reader boards, workforce management solutions, etc.  Sure, telephone headsets are re-usable, but what about the organization’s investment in workforce management?  Will companies continue to see positive return on investment if centers are demolished?  Brendan mentions that workforce management tools are becoming location-agnostic, but they’re not there yet.

What of the coveted service level metric?  How will call center KPI measurement be administered in this new world of center-less organizations?  According to Brendan, “Feature-rich, highly and affordably scalable multichannel routers and dialers can route and connect calls to and from anyone, anywhere, in any department on any device, wired or wireless.  Customer-directed routing, such as specific departments or individuals and callbacks, make traditional call distribution obsolete.”  Is this a dark day for the traditional ACD?  Indeed, ACD vendors will need to adapt to multichannel behavior, but isn’t that where Avaya and Cisco are already headed?  Their visions of the contact center differ slightly from Brendan’s, but I doubt they’re contemplating obsolescence.

Overall, a thought-provoking article.  I agree with Brendan’s primary claim that we’ll need to “create more effective organizations that will provide higher quality service for less.”  I disagree with his claim that that won’t happen in traditional brick-and-mortar (and work-at-home) contact centers.  At least for the foreseeable future.  What do you think?  I encourage you to leave a comment with your thoughts on this topic.

Posted in At-home and remote agents, Call Center Management, Technology. No Comments »

How to inspire culture change in the contact center

May 2, 2011 — Tom

“Organizational culture is an idea in the field of organizational studies and management which describes the psychology, attitudes, experiences, beliefs and values (personal and cultural values) of an organization. It has been defined as ‘the specific collection of values and norms that are shared by people and groups in an organization and that control the way they interact with each other and with stakeholders outside the organization.’”

– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizational_culture

First, let me point out that culture change in any organization – whether it is an entire company, a department, or a group of people standing around the water cooler – is difficult to inspire.  But, it can be done.  In this blog post, I intend to describe a distinct method for inspiring culture change in the contact center.  There’s no panacea for weak culture, but by following these steps, you’ll plant the seeds of change that will ultimately blossom into full-grown culture. Enough wordplay – let’s focus.

  1. Focus on actions.  Start small by incentivizing actions.  What actions will drive culture change in your organization?  Start with quick wins.  For example, if one of your center’s goals is agent retention, incentivize customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores.  Encourage your agents to become frontline advocates for the organization, not disenfranchised CSRs.  What other actions can be incentivized, that will later become common behaviors?
  2. Actions become behaviors.  Over time, small repeated actions will become learned behaviors.  You’ll know you’ve reached this step when your incentive program is no longer needed.  Be aware, though, it can take time to reach the “behaviors” phase of culture change.  Behaviors don’t appear overnight.  What behaviors already exist in your center?  How did they come to be?  Are they based on core repeated actions?
  3. Behaviors develop into culture.  Once behaviors become ingrained in your best frontline agents, they’ll become advocates for change.  Others will look upon them with wonder and awe!  Before you know it, you’ll have inspired change within your organization.

Culture change doesn’t happen overnight, but with this progression of actions into behaviors into culture, you’ll have the makings of culture change in your contact center in no time.

 

Posted in At-home and remote agents, Call Center Management, Customer service, Human resources. No Comments »

2011 Contact Center Trends

January 11, 2011 — Maureen

‘Tis the season for both New Year’s Resolutions and miscellaneous punditry about forecasts, trends, and random guesses about every imaginable topic. So I decided to throw my hat in the ring and share musings from my crystal-ball-gazing into 2011 contact center and customer service trends. Here’s what I expect to see in the coming year:

  1. We’ve been hearing a lot about at-home call center agents, and I think the trend will really pick up in 2011. Remote agent programs allow employers to hire the best and the brightest with knowledge in specialty areas, and allows employees more flexibility that may lead to job satisfaction and lower attrition rates. Win-win. But employers must equip remote agents with all the tools necessary to deliver superb customer service, including access to real-time queue stats and messaging available to in-house agents. A tool like Desktop Presenter from Inova Solutions may fit the bill quite nicely.
  2. The next trend I’ve noticed in contact centers is a commitment to “going green” and adopting environmentally-friendly policies. This actually fits in nicely with the first trend on this list, because Donna Fluss recently listed a remote agent program as one way companies can reduce their carbon footprint. If your employees aren’t polluting the air and guzzling gas on their commutes to and from work, the earth will thank them. Fluss listed other ways to reduce energy consumption for companies with in-house employees, such as regulating building temperatures, turning off computers when not in use, and refraining from printing unnecessary reports.
  3. Social media has grown tremendously in recent years and the experts expect this trend to continue in 2011. Contact centers need to stay up-to-date on the way their customers are communicating, so I predict an increased utilization of text mining software for the purpose of monitoring and responding to social media. For example, when a customer blogs or tweets about your company, this type of software extracts relevant data and gives your agents the opportunity to reach out and proactively engage that customer in a conversation. The potential of this type of software is huge, but contact centers may be unsure at first how to build it into their workflow.
  4. I expect 2011 will bring a renewed focus on “going the extra mile” for the customer. An article I recently read in CRM magazine cited an example of a customer who forgot to send roses to his wife for their anniversary the previous day. He called a flower shop in a panic to have them ship roses immediately, and the CSR suggested they send roses with a note from the company apologizing for sending them to the wrong address the day before. That is more than the man expected and he will surely return for future purchases. Agents at Zappos are well known for their willingness to do whatever it takes to meet a customer need, including searching the web for competitive products if an item is sold out. There are always opportunities to “wow” your customers, but you need to be willing to relinquish some control and let agents be autonomous and creative in finding solutions.
  5. 2011 may be the year that many contact centers turn to a hosted provider. Hosting some or all of your infrastructure “in the cloud” may offer certain advantages, especially for companies with limited IT resources and those that need to get up and running quickly. Of course, you do have to sacrifice some functionality, but many smaller centers don’t have complex needs and can operate quite well in the cloud.

What do you think 2011 will bring for the contact center industry?

Posted in At-home and remote agents, Customer service, Performance Management, Social media, Technology. No Comments »

Supervisors: Prepare for Winter Weather!

January 10, 2011 — Kelly

Although the holidays are over, we’re only just beginning the winter season.  Inclement weather can be a challenge all year, but seems to have the most impact in the winter months.  Supervisors can take some proactive steps to ensure that your workplace is prepared to manage winter weather.

Ensure workplace safety.  Make sure that all walkways are cleared of ice and snow and that the parking lot is navigable.  If your employees brave the snow and ice to get to work, you should take steps to keep them safe on the workplace premises!

Develop and communicate your policy. It is critical that all employees be aware of your company’s policies for inclement weather.  Most call centers are unlikely to close, but what is expected of employees?  Will they be able to use paid time off without prior approval in cases of inclement weather?  Be sure to include consequences for late arrival or use of unapproved leave.

Establish a hotline or other efficient method for keeping employees updated about critical information including closures, delays, or even road conditions.  Even if your work location does not close, employees may find it helpful to have a central location where they can obtain all information.

Consider ways you can assist employees.  Since your employees are likely required to work through inclement weather, think of ways you can help them.  If you have a day care onsite, can you staff up to provide a program for school-aged children whose schools have closed?  Can you adjust schedules so employees can work longer shifts, to reduce their number of commutes?  Or, can employees arrive late or leave early, to avoid the worst weather?

Create and distribute a business continuity plan.  Include phone numbers for key personnel, contact information for utility and other vendors, contact numbers of emergency service providers, addresses and directions to a local hospital or emergency shelter, as well as evacuation and closure plans.  Providing this document to supervisors can ensure that your business can continue to operate through all kinds of weather or other challenges.

Finally, while the time to implement options for telecommuting is not when the forecast announces an impending blizzard, winter weather offers a compelling reason to develop options for employees to work remotely.  Whether it is snow storms, icy roads, or even contagious illness, winter seems to throw all sorts of curveballs at the work place.  Offering your employees the option to telecommute will not only earn you some goodwill, it will help keep your employees safe and healthy.

Posted in At-home and remote agents, Business, Call Center Management, Miscellaneous. No Comments »

Working Remotely: Keys to Success

September 3, 2010 — Jay

Working remotely has emerged as a popular trend as companies look for ways to cut costs, incentivize employees and become more flexible. If you have ever considered working remotely but questioned or doubted your ability to remain productive review the following tips which have helped me personally remain active and engaged while situated almost 2500 miles away from Inova’s corporate office.

  • Pretend you still commute to the office every day: Just because your daily commute now consists of walking down the hall, doesn’t mean your daily preparation for work should change drastically. Set a schedule and stick to it. Wake up with enough time to get ready, eat breakfast and take care of whatever would normally be required before work.  If your day begins at 8 am I can guarantee a wake up time of 7:55am will not be a successful routine.
  • Dress for Success: Yes, your work attire is now probably a lot more relaxed, but that doesn’t mean you should take pride in the fact that you wore a robe until quitting time. My suggestion is to maintain a balance, never become so relaxed that you subconsciously lull yourself into a state of complacency.  Be comfortable, but maintain a level of personal professionalism.
  • Stay Engaged with your Coworkers: A major drawback to working remotely is the loss of the daily face to face interaction with coworkers (some people may argue the opposite). Stay connected, use chat, email or even call your coworkers when you need a quick break.  Just because you are sitting in your office alone doesn’t mean you are alone. Create your own virtual water cooler.
  • Separate your work space and your personal space: If you are working from a home office, make sure that office has a door or some form of separation from the million other things going on in your life. Pretend you aren’t home, close the door, ignore the doorbell and any other distractions you wouldn’t encounter if you were actually at the office.  This advice will also enable you to reject any of your spouse’s requests to perform household chores during the workday.
  • Take Breaks: It’s counterproductive to force yourself into a non-stop work cycle. If you need a lunch, take it. You’d take a quick break at the office, refill your coffee or stop by someone’s cube for a quick chat, don’t chain yourself to your desk.
  • There is an adjustment phase: It may feel strange at first and you may need some time to adapt but you will figure out a routine that works best for you. Give it time.

Of course these steps are not foolproof; working remotely is just not an option for some of us. For everyone else the above mentioned tips should be a nice starting point. A remote workforce is a prevailing trend nationally and if you are fortunate enough to have the option…consider it.

Posted in At-home and remote agents, Human resources. No Comments »

Keeping Home Agents Engaged

August 2, 2010 — Camille

I came across Greg Levin’s recent blog post about making home agents feel at work and really enjoyed his satirical take on engaging home agents.  His suggestions included things like removing all lamps and light fixtures and replacing them with overhead fluorescent lights, removing all windows and supervisor/agent sleepovers complete with pillow fights and ghost stories.

Greg’s blog post is hilarious and it inspired me to come up with a few satirical suggestions of my own:

 1.  Celebrate their birthdays- If your call center celebrates birthdays, include your home agents in the celebration.  At the least you can make them salivate over an emailed photo of a cake or you can send them one of those recordable cards filled with sounds of the contact center.  If you really want to go all out you can always send them cookies through the mail.

2.  Encourage them to “commute”- I think I’m making a safe assumption when I say everyone in your contact center has to commute from home to work; whether it’s by car, bus, bike, subway or another form of transportation.  Home agents just walk from one area of their home to another.  So let them know they’re free to wake up an extra hour early and sit in their parked car, wait at a bus station, watch “real commuters” get on and off subway cars; you get the point.  Then they can do it all over again at the end of the day.  This should go a long way toward helping them feel like part of the in-office crowd.

3.  Instead of a raise or a bonus, send them a set of cubicle walls for their home.  Nothing says “we appreciate your hard work” like your very own cubicle walls.

In all seriousness, many contact centers have found home agents to be extremely successful.  Keeping these agents engaged and enjoying their work is crucial to their success and yours.  Doing simple things like having a conversation to get to know them and keeping them filled in on what’s happening in the office can go a long way to keep them from feeling isolated from the in-office group. 

What ways have you found to keep your home agents engaged? 

Read our white paper (free, no registration required) to learn more about communicating with home agents.

Posted in At-home and remote agents. No Comments »
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