Call centers heading for home
By Ann Bednarz, Network World, 01/30/06
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 marker, Aspect is a natural fit for the leading edge of a trend to extend call centers beyond the confines
of bricks-and-mortar facilities.
Lately 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. Instead of sitting in a physical call center setting, agents work from their homes. IDC calls
the trend "homeshoring" and says it will continue to gain momentum.
Today home-based agents represent a small fraction of the more than 4 million people who work in call centers in the United
States. There are about 112,000 home-based agents in the United States today, according to new research from IDC. However
IDC expects that by 2010 the population will surpass 300,000.
Some companies deploy their own home-based agents, such as JetBlue Airways. Others hire outsourcers that use home workers.
(IDC's population projections are for outsourced agents and don't include home-based agents who are employed by enterprises
running their own call centers, points out Stephen Loynd, a senior analyst at IDC.)
Alpine Access, LiveOps, West, 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 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 facilities costs by shifting staff to home-based workstations.
