Home is arguably where the contact centers should be. As studies have shown and organizations have experienced, there are significant cost savings and productivity gains by shifting agents out of commercial spaces to home spaces: $7,000-plus per staffer/year for U.S. federal government employees alone reports the Telework Research Network.

Moreover having agents work from home cuts down on health-harming pollution and transportation demand, whose costs that are ultimately borne by all of us. This method also provides business continuity; the weird, destructive winter weather this season has forced many employees to work from their homes.

So why isn’t every contact center going home? One of the biggest obstacles identified by observers is lack of manager education in this method and their limited confidence that those who are working from home will be doing just that.

To overcome those hurdles the RCCSP Professional Education Alliance (708-246-0320) has put together two innovative instructor-led home a.k.a. remote a.k.a. virtual contact center training courses with seminars that are delivered virtually (appropriately enough) beginning later this month. The programs are focused on customer/technical support, which requires a high level of expertise and professionalism that arguably translates into the high level of self-discipline required to successfully work at home.

The Managing a Successful Virtual Support Center course, first offered Jan.27, teaches managers how to develop business cases for and strategies to design effective home/remote support centers and about the technology involved and its role in optimizing home/remote operations. They will learn best practice interaction methodology for the support reps and effective training techniques for them and their teams. The attendees will be provided with how-tos including enhancing current processes to accommodate a “teleworkforce”, establishing and maintaining performance metrics and key performance indicators, managing employee conflict and developing communication channels.

The instruction, delivered over two days, covers telephony i.e. VoIP or PSTN, ISPs and network connectivity, ergonomics, voice/privacy, emergency procedures and establishing routines with these virtual support teams. It outlines best practices in hiring for, screening and career managing home-based reps. It delves into remote training including company initiation and assimilation, technology, customer specific training.

To the latter end the RCCSP Professional Education Alliance offers the Certified Virtual Support Professional course that is aimed at home-based service and support agents, analysts and service professionals. The seminar, which is one-day long and which is first offered Jan.21 imparts best practices for servicing customers from home or other remote locations. Topics to be covered include the role of the virtual support professional, communication channels, use of remote communication technologies, team dynamics, self-management, and how to stay motivated and feel like a part of the team.

Participants will learn home/remote agent/professional roles and responsibilities, about home office and workstation requirements, about the enabling technologies and building virtual teams. There will be taught about communications and customer interaction management skills adapted for the home/virtual environment, how to establish performance metrics and report their success and most critically how to manage themselves and how to stay motivated.

This course offers a certification of completion: which will assure managers who are setting up home/remote programs—especially those who have or are considering taking the Managing a Successful Virtual Support Center course—that they will be successful at working remotely. Having both of these courses available may give sufficient peace of mind to senior management to greenlight a “going home” strategy.

“There is a growing demand for at-home-agents (remote agents or virtual agents),” explains Nina Kawalek, ceo, RCCSP Professional Education Alliance. “With that there is a demand for supervisors properly trained to manage remote resources. That is why we have created these courses.”