Transform Your Call
Center Using Remote Home Agents BY ALPESH
FADIA, ACCENTURE
Retaining contact center representatives in today's
agent-centric world may seem like an almost impossible
task. It is, however, one of the most important
elements and should not be underestimated. Agent
retention is a key issue for the industry and is
estimated to cost companies millions of dollars
annually. Couple this high cost with the burden of a
tight labor market and a shortage of qualified contact
center agents, and the task seems even more daunting.
Agents may leave for a number of reasons, including
dissatisfaction with their work, absence of career
development plans, inadequate compensation and
incentives and a lack of access to advanced tools and
applications that facilitate quick solutions for
customers. Using remote home agents can reverse this
trend and help you attract, recruit and retain the
best and brightest talent to increase your bottom
line. Simply put, using remote home agents is a
progressive approach that provides the flexibility in
the work schedule of top-line contact center
personnel, resulting in higher employee morale and
increased productivity. First, we'll look at some
background on the evolution of the call center.
My explanation will begin with the call center
evolution model and how it ties into agent retention.
Call centers have evolved beyond the cost-centric and
service-centric focus to the agent-centric approach we
use today. Traditionally, call centers aimed to be
efficient by answering as many calls as possible in a
given day (cost-centric). It mattered less if the
customers' calls were directed to the appropriate
agents with the correct skill sets. Consequently,
customer satisfaction was measured in achieving
efficiency, not effectiveness (first-call resolution,
low number of complaints to total call ratio). The
call center model subsequently evolved to the customer
segmentation strategy (service-centric) while
retaining the cost-centric part of the model. The
customer segmentation strategy enabled organizations
to divide their customer bases to determine the value
each customer brought to their companies. Based on
this information, companies designed customer service
strategies tailored to specific customer groups (i.e.,
the airline industry's introduction of the bronze,
silver, gold and platinum levels offering different
treatment and benefits to their frequent flyer
members).
Contact centers have now arrived at the
agent-centric stage of the process. The nature of the
labor force has changed dramatically since the
inception of contact centers. Traditionally, the agent
turnover rate has been high because of the intense
pressure representatives experience on a daily basis,
leading to frustration and burnout. Today, the agent
turnover rate continues to be high. The bigger culprit
this time, however, appears to be other companies "stealing"
resources to win the war for talent. These alternative
companies offer abundant opportunities, from providing
access to advanced tools and technologies to more
training, promotion, child care and higher pay.
Contact centers continue to compete fiercely for
people with relevant experience to fulfill customers'
expectations as well as their own internal goals.
Incidentally, contact centers are noticing that
people, not superior processes or technologies, will
enable them to ultimately achieve their customer
service strategy goals.
An agent-centric view emphasizes managing contact
center agent development that begins with the process
of acquiring, developing and retaining these
resources. The process of acquiring agents includes
screening, interviewing and selecting qualified
candidates. Retention, on the other hand, is based
upon protecting and receiving value on the enormous
investments made in agents. Some very successful
organizations have used monetary and/or nonmonetary
incentives. Cash, vacations, time off, and now an
opportunity to work from home, a concept known as "remote
home agent," are powerful incentives. The remote
home agent idea essentially gives a contact center's
agents more flexibility in their work arrangements.
Figure
1. |
Benefits
of Remote-Home-Agent |
- Helps retain
specialized, senior and the most
productive agents.
- Improves
work-life balance
(saving commute time).
- Saves
recruiting time and cost.
- Improves
agent morale.
- Increases
agent productivity and
efficiency.
- Enables
agents to deliver higher-
quality solutions to customers; thus
strengthening relationships between an
organization and its customers.
- Saves real
estate cost.
- Provides
specialized/senior and the most productive
agents an opportunity to serve as leaders
and role models for other representatives.
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However, the remote home agent idea is ideally
applicable for a specific group of agents. Those
representatives who are ranked as the most productive
agents, senior agents, sophisticated/specialized
agents and women agents on maternity leave. These
resources are invaluable to a contact center and it
makes sense then to make all efforts to hold onto
these specialists. Specialized agents offer expertise
in a specific area. They are often the highest paid,
and sometimes require more training to get started.
Agents in the brokerage industry, for example, usually
need extensive training and multiple certifications to
advise their clients online about investment
strategies. Hence, companies must make significant
financial investments in training these employees.
Women on maternity leave and with small children,
another critical resource, usually face a vital
decision to return to or leave work. Offering some
women an opportunity to work from home (part-time or
full-time) may motivate them to stay, resulting in
significant recruiting/staffing savings by not having
to replace them.
Organizations can further profit from agents' improved
morale, via providing higher quality solutions to
their customers, strengthening a vital bond between
companies and their clients. Consequently, companies
can realize higher productivity levels because the
workforce feels valued. This, in turn, can reduce
absenteeism and lead to long-term retention of these
valuable resources. Finally, these agents can serve as
role models, leaders and a motivational tool for their
peers to strive to become a member of this select
pack.
Examples
A good example of this type of success is as follows:
A large telecommunications firm's client was
experiencing concerns about agent retention, shortage
of work space and long training cycles. This client
viewed remote agent technology as a way to alleviate
space shortages and agent retention concerns. Meeting
the needs of these two concerns provided the required
work space to conduct training. By implementing the
remote agent solution, this client expected to save
$2.5 million annually (by reducing the agent turnover
rate and avoiding the costs of rehiring and training
new agents). In addition, the client expected to avoid
acquisition costs and the time associated with leasing
or purchasing a new property to accommodate its
growing agent population. Consequently, the client
envisioned an improvement in agent morale, efficiency,
productivity and higher quality of service to its
customers.
Another example deals with how a company, Company A,
that makes a remote agent solution, helps solve its
clients call center productivity concerns. Company A's
client, Client W, has a membership that includes
170,000 people and high-profile, large-capacity
clients. Client W wanted to increase its 46 customer
service representative center's productivity. As a
result, Company A implemented its remote agent
solution. Client W embarked on a seven-month pilot program with two agents working from home.
The remote agent solution allowed them access to the
corporate phone system and management systems such as
call monitoring for quality. The result was increased
productivity and morale, a decreased number of sick
days, improved attendance and commute time being
transformed into productivity time. In addition,
employees found it easier to work split shifts and
weekend schedules. Finally, Client W's management
decided to expand and offer the remote home agent
program to other representatives with long-standing
track records.
Another company was seeking to upgrade its contact
center for future expansion and installed a new
telecommunications system with an integrated
telecommuting solution. This company implemented a
remote agent solution. The company permitted 13
employees to work from home, and the remote agent
solution allowed them to easily log into the ACD and
take calls. In addition, the company's management was
able to use their existing monitoring and quality
assurance system to observe the calls of their remote
agents. The effect was enhanced productivity and
morale, and employees found the solution easy to use,
flexible and reliable. Finally, the company changed
its recruitment advertisement to mention the
possibility of working from home. This resulted in
four people being hired, compared to zero response
received a week prior.
Last, a highly compensated and highly productive sales
force in a computer catalog organization told its
management that it preferred to generate sales by
working independently, not from a contact center
environment. The computer catalog company agreed to
honor the sales force's request because the
organization was confident in its salespeople to
produce their targets. As a result, the computer
catalog company implemented a remote home agent
solution to address its representatives' requests, and
to fulfill its own strategic goals. The outcome
included retention of these valuable, high-producing
agents; significant morale enhancement; reduced
operational costs; and decreased recruiting and
training expenses.
The Architecture
Now that you know the challenges of agent retention,
the remote home agent concept and its benefits, let's
move into a high-level overview of the technical
architecture. Selecting and allowing a specific group
of agents to work from home is an attractive option;
however, a contact center's technical architecture
needs to accommodate remote home agent technology to
turn this concept into reality. Some remote home agent
products can be implemented using two POTS (plain old
telephone service) lines or BRI (basic rate interface)
technology. POTS lines are usually the better choice,
since they are widely available and inexpensive. BRI
technology cost, on the other hand, varies and is not
always offered by carriers in all geographical
regions. Two POTS lines, for example, can be used to
carry voice and data traffic to remote home agents.
The POTS line for data can be used for PC modem
connection (via WAN), so that a remote home agent can
access the necessary documents, facilitate customer
information management application or control
softphone applications (i.e., dialing the phone,
transferring calls, conferencing other agents, etc.,
using a PC instead of a telephone).
Tips
With this basic understanding, an organization should
consider Figure 2, "dos and don'ts,"
when adopting a remote home agent concept as part of
its contact center agent retention strategy.
Figure
2. |
|
DOs |
DON'Ts |
- Deploy with
full agent functionality
(i.e., telephone functionality -- ability to
call, redirect call to an agent in other
centers and equip desktop with all
applications) just as agents would have
access to if they were working in a call
center.
- Deploy
monitoring and reporting
(historical and real-time) capabilities for
supervisors and the agents to view their
performance.
- Test market
the idea with a group of agents before fully
implementing it (have service installed at
agents' home telephone headset and load all
software on a laptop. Give training to and
ask agents to dial in from home to receive
calls).
- Consider
senior, specialized/ sophisticated and the
most productive agents (evaluate if
employees are ready to work independently).
- Articulate if
the company or the agent is responsible for
medical costs if an accident occurs while
the agent is working from home.
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- Attempt to
implement with inferior technology (i.e.,
not integrating remote technology with the
ACD, depriving agents access to telephone
functions or not giving supervisor access to
historical and real-time reporting to
measure agents' performance).
- Consider
allowing problem agents or newly hired
agents to work from home until they have
proven themselves.
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Alpesh Fadia is a manager with Accenture's
Electronic and High Tech industries Customer
Relationship Management practice. His experience base
includes planning, designing and implementing call
centers and developing CRM Roadmaps.
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