Here’s an informative article by Susan J Campbell, a Contributing Editor for TMCNet, Home-Based Agent Strategy Offers Numerous Opportunities for Contact Centers:
Contact centers that employ home-based agents have likely already discovered the benefits of such a strategy. For those that have not yet gone down this path, they have yet to realize the potential savings of up to $10 per employee per hour.
There are also environmental and human resource benefits that can be maximized when using home-based employees, as outlined in a new report from Exony. The far-reaching cost savings and other benefits of homeshoring are detailed in this Exony report.
There are currently 112,000 home-based agents in the U.S. According to IDC, this figure is expected to rise to 330,000 by 2010. Even when this figure is reached in three years, the total number of U.S. home-based contact center workers will represent only about 11 percent of the total estimated 3 million workers at that time.In its latest white paper, Exony argues that with the estimated average of 32 percent cost savings from homeshoring workers, U.S. contact centers could realize more than $2.5 billion annually simply by increasing its reliance on homeshoring workers from 11 percent to 15 percent.
Beyond these significant cost savings, U.S. businesses and workers would also gain tremendously increased benefits in terms of recruiting and retaining skilled staff, improved morale, environmental benefits, and increased opportunities for the disadvantaged in society.
“Although the US market is ahead of all other countries in its adoption of homeshoring, it is way behind in terms of enabling any more than a tiny minority of contact center workers to operate from home,” said Exony CEO Ian Ashby, in a Monday statement. “Combining technologies such as broadband, enabling employees to both handle calls and connect securely with the corporate network, with tools to measure and manage agent and call performance in real-time, allows contact centers to reap more benefits from homeshoring.â€
“Breaking down the barriers toward more widespread adoption of homeshoring is the first step towards more effective contact center operations. It is time for the market to wake up to the benefits and commit a larger share of resources to this way of working,” Ashby added.
Exony, a provider of interaction management software for Virtual Contact Center (VCC) operations, outlines the core benefits of homeshoring. These benefits include reduced overheads, increased staff morale, improved opportunity, and green benefits.
Ashby continued, “Businesses will have no option but to introduce smarter working practices, of which homeshoring is one example, if they are going to be able to recruit and retain the staff they need in the future, and increase productivity and competitiveness to be able to meet the challenges emerging from economies such as India and China.”
“Changing working practices and working smarter will not only increase business productivity and competitiveness, but also reduce transport congestion and pollution, improve health, assist disadvantaged groups, and help workers balance their work and family commitments.”
Deploying a home-based agent strategy is not a turn-key operation for any organization and much research and work must be done before such a set-up can be a success.
These individuals must be properly screened, the right infrastructure must be in place, managers must be properly trained on how to managed home-based agents and other tracking, monitoring and reporting systems must be put in place, among other elements.
With that in mind, transitioning to a home-based strategy could have higher initial costs for the organization, and it may take a while to recoup the investment. However, over the long term, the investment could be well worth it. For those that have not yet reaped the benefits, the time may be right to consider the move.
