Call Center Scheduling Featured Article
NTI's Disabled, Remote Agents Help Curb Call Center Attrition
Call center turnover is one of the biggest problems in the industry, and the U.S. attrition rate for the market is between 30 and 45 percent a year. The nonprofit National Telecommuting Institute (NTI) has a solution, as the organization places 500 to 600 people with severe physical disabilities as home-based call center agents each year.
According to Alan Hubbard, chief operations officer at NTI, the organization’s trained agents have a much lower attrition rate than regular call center agents, averaging just eight percent a year. This is an obvious benefit to the companies that hire them in the form of cost savings and the security that they have experienced, happy agents on staff. Hubbard explained that agents trained through NTI typically stay at their jobs longer than their coworkers without disabilities due to competitive pay rates and benefits that are hard to find through other types of jobs.
“NTI takes the guess work out of the hiring process,” said Hubbard. “Our team of recruiters are intimately familiar with the needs of call centers. We help them find and manage skilled agents who just so happen to have a disability and need to work from home.”
NTI works with a variety of vertical industries, including business process outsources and in-house call centers for finance, retail, healthcare and government clients. The organization works with companies ranging from small startups to those in the Fortune 500, with the goal of training disabled Americans to become great customer service agents. Many of the company’s employees do not have the capability to work outside their homes, due to their disabilities.
The organization also has unique insight and experience with attrition and other call center scheduling issues, as NTI runs its own virtual call center. The center employs around 150 agents, and all are disabled and work from home. NTI also has relationships with Amazon, IBM (News - Alert) and Microsoft in addition to many government contracts.
“I've been blessed to have worked from home since 2004 on one of NTI’s government contracts,” said agent Zeanne. “Being in a wheelchair meant my job options were very limited, even though I’m bilingual. But now I make an income and I can better myself.?My whole family sees that a physical disability doesn’t mean you have to let your mind be wasted.?They’re proud of my work ethic and I love that.”
Edited by Maurice Nagle