Looking for ways to improve the quality of your call center agents?
Tired of going through the time and expense of recruiting, hiring and training new agents, on an ongoing basis, only to have half of them quit after a few months?
Are you worried that the labor market for “qualified candidates” in your call center’s immediate area is getting “tapped-out?”
If you’re thinking that outsourcing your call center is the best solution to your “agent quality” problem, you might also want to consider the home agent model. With the home agent model, you can cast a much wider net in terms of recruiting, because the agents can work from anywhere: Suddenly the entire nation, if not the entire world, becomes your hiring ground. That means you can be much more selective about the agents you hire.
Suppose you’re an ecommerce company specializing in jewelry – you’d want agents who are passionate and knowledgeable about jewelry, right? With the home agent model, you can run targeted help wanted ads on the Internet and hire the people you really want. And, because the people you are hiring are more likely to be passionate about your products and/or services, that means they are more likely to be satisfied with their jobs, which in turn helps drive agent retention. Recent research shows that retention rates among home-based agents averages 80 to 90 percent, whereas at a traditional “brick and mortar” call center it averages 20 or 30 percent.
In addition, with the home-based agent model, the demographics of the agents are better. Many of them are retirees, homemakers, veterans and the disabled, which means the average age of the agents is higher (typically around 40) compared to agents in a traditional call center (typically around 24). As a result they tend to be smarter, more courteous and more reliable. Most are college graduates and some even have post-graduate degrees. Many of them are past call center agents who no longer have the desire (or the ability) to commute to a brick and mortar facility anymore. Very often their maturity, education and experience results in an improved customer experience.
The home agent model brings other advantages as well: For example it offers improved business continuity and redundancy; should the power get knocked out at the main center or your corporate offices, or the network goes down, your home-based call center agents, who are distributed across a region or the country, can continue to take calls and deliver customer service. Then there’s the advantage of lower operating costs stemming from reduced facilities usage; with the home agent model, you don’t need to lease as much space for your call center, which also means reduced utilities usage. What’s more, the home agent model can significantly reduce your company’s carbon footprint, simply by getting more cars off the road.
But how does one make the transition to a home agent program? Most companies make the transition gradually, deploying a handful of home based agents at first and then expanding the program over time. Obviously it requires some changes in terms of business processes and culture -- and no transition to home-based agents is without its challenges -- but at least the technology piece has become many times less daunting than it used to be.
If you’re still using a traditional, on-premises call center system, but want to launch a home agent program, you’ll likely want to consider migrating over to a software-as-a-service or “cloud”-based call center solution. These Web-based systems, which are fast, simple and affordable to deploy, facilitate what is called the “virtual call center,” which means the call center software environment can be accessed from any computer with an Internet connection. These Web-based systems are contributing significantly to the growth of the home agent model by making it many times simpler for companies to securely connect remote agents to their call center systems.
With a virtual call center solution, home-based agents can have access to all the same applications as they do in the main center. In addition, multimedia contacts including phone calls, emails, Web chats and SMS messages can be routed to home-based agents just as if they were in the main center as well.
Many of today’s virtual call center solutions sport Web-based administration, which enables call center managers to monitor and record home-based agents’ phone calls – plus they can capture metrics and KPIs in real-time, regardless of the agent’s location, using a single console. What’s more, most of today’s virtual call center solutions allow managers to coach and train home-based agents while they’re at their desks as well.
Contactual’s OnDemand Contact Center is a software-as-a-service or “cloud”-based virtual call center solution that is ideal for facilitating the home agent model. The fully Web-based solution offers a suite of core call center technologies, including ACD with universal queuing for multimedia contacts and skills based routing; IVR for speech-enabled, self-serve options; and CTI (News - Alert) to facilitate integration with CRM systems and databases.
With its universal queuing capability, the ACD is able to route phone calls, emails, Web chats and text messages to the next available agent – no matter where they are located -- via a single queue. Skills-based routing means the ACD can be programmed to route those contacts to the most appropriate agent, based on contact type and the agent’s specific skill sets. The virtual call center solution’s Web-based administration also allows call center mangers to make changes to the routing schemes “on the fly” and in real time, so they have full control over the contact types each agent receives.
Contactual’s (News - Alert) virtual call center solution also delivers priority routing, which is where calls and contacts from specific (e.g. “premium”) customers are prioritized over others and immediately routed to the next available agent, thus reducing hold times and speeding service. Through integration with a company’s CRM system and other databases, customers can be identified the instant they call, send an email, or launch a chat session by way of their “customer profile,” which typically includes name, street address, customer “type” (“regular,” “new” or “premium,” etc.), phone numbers (including home phone and mobile phone) and IP address. CTI also allows for pertinent customer information, including past purchases and other activity, to be “screen popped” onto agent desktops immediately when a customer calls, thus enabling call center agents to serve customers quickly and efficiently.
If you’re thinking that deploying a virtual call center system is going to be too expensive and disruptive, you should think again: Contactual’s OnDemand Contact Center solution can be deployed very quickly and easily – all you really need are the computers and a high speed Internet connection. There is no need to shell out huge chucks of capital for new hardware, network infrastructure or software licenses – you simply “lease” the software on a “pay-as-you go” or subscription basis. That means you can trial the solution – and also trial a home-based agent program – for a period of time to see how it works out. What’s more, integration with leading CRM system including salesforce and NetSuite (News - Alert), as well as other databases, is a snap, thanks to the solution’s CTI capabilities.
Consider also that there are significant cost savings to be realized through the implementation of a home agent program – cost savings that can more than off-set the cost of deploying a virtual call center system such as Contactual’s OnDemand Contact Center.
To learn more about how Contactual’s virtual call center solution can help you quickly and affordably launch your own home agent program, click here.
Patrick Barnard is a senior Web editor for TMCnet, covering call and contact center technologies. He also compiles and regularly contributes to TMCnet e-Newsletters in the areas of robotics, IT, M2M, OCS and customer interaction solutions. To read more of Patrick's articles, please visit his columnist page.Edited by Patrick Barnard