Call centers are heading for home

When they're not on the road for a service call, but they are on the clock, field technicians for Aspect Software pitch in handling customer calls that require technical expertise. They can take calls from their homes or satellite offices. Either way, adding to the pool of agents is no big deal, says Gary Barnett, CTO at Aspect.

Routing calls to employees working from home "is just about as simple as it is to set up agents in a building," Barnett says.

Aspect, which makes call-center software, has been routing customer calls to employee homes for years. As a technology provider in the call-center market, Aspect is a natural fit for the leading edge of a trend to extend call centers beyond the confines of brick-and-mortar facilities.

Others are catching on to the idea. Over the last few years, more companies have built virtual call centers by outfitting agents to work from their homes. IDC calls the trend "homeshoring" and says it will continue to gain momentum.

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When they're not on the road for a service call, but they are on the clock, field technicians for Aspect Software pitch in handling customer calls that require technical expertise. They can take calls from their homes or satellite offices. Either way, adding to the pool of agents is no big deal, says Gary Barnett, CTO at Aspect.

Routing calls to employees working from home "is just about as simple as it is to set up agents in a building," Barnett says.

Aspect, which makes call-center software, has been routing customer calls to employee homes for years. As a technology provider in the call-center market, Aspect is a natural fit for the leading edge of a trend to extend call centers beyond the confines of brick-and-mortar facilities.

Others are catching on to the idea. Over the last few years, more companies have built virtual call centers by outfitting agents to work from their homes. IDC calls the trend "homeshoring" and says it will continue to gain momentum.

Home-based agents represent a small fraction of the 4 million-plus people who work in call centers in the United States. Some companies, such as JetBlue Airways, use their own home-based agents. Others hire outsourcers that use home workers.

There are about 112,000 outsourced home-based agents in the country, according to research from IDC. By 2010 IDC expects that population will surpass 300,000. No figures are available for home-based agents who are employed by businesses running their own call centers.

Alpine Access, LiveOps, West Corp., Willow CSN and Working Solutions are among outsourcing firms that hire or contract with agents working from home. Some of their customers that have bought into the idea of home-based agents include 1-800-Flowers, the Internal Revenue Service, J.Crew, McKesson Health Solutions and Office Depot.

Driving the demand for home-based agents is the desire to streamline costly call-center operations. Call centers typically are challenged to find more-productive agents, achieve higher retention rates, and find ways to deal with spikes and lulls in voice traffic. Using agents who work from home provides a way to deal with some of these challenges.

Because at-home jobs are in demand, companies that hire home-based agents have a larger pool of more-qualified candidates to choose from, experts say. In addition, companies can lower facility costs by shifting staff to home-based workstations.

A big draw for companies and agents is the flexibility for home-based agents to take calls for short periods of time, during call peaks. In a traditional call center, it wouldn't make sense to have an agent drive to work just to take calls for 20 minutes. Round-the-clock scheduling also is easier with a geographically distributed workforce.

Economic trends are helping to drive growth of home-based agents, says Stephen Loynd, a senior analyst at IDC. High gas prices and costly living expenses in urban areas combine to make home-based work attractive, which adds to the high retention rates companies achieve with virtual call-center employees.