Key Attributes of At-Home Call Center Agents

The utilization of remote agents is on a dramatic rise after 10 years, with great momentum driven from the arrival of truly locked-down security (HIPAA and PCI compliant).  Add to that - new pricing models with minimal cost-of-entry in SaaS.  And finally, facilities/energy cost reductions are material (with additional operating reductions to be had for those organizations who take a more assertive stance). 

But what about the soft(er) benefits?  Check-check on green savings – we get that.  And we understand we can walk away from big capital investments in technology by moving to cloud computing for everything from ACDs to voice recording, training and work force management.  But what about heightened skills of home agents?  What does that buy us – anything tangible?

The answer is yes: There are big “soft-skill” returns for hiring home agents.  The challenge is that the benefits are understandably a little more difficult to quantify.  The success stories so far tend to be traded in workshops, conferences and more socially (vs. published) because blue-chip companies are just starting to be able to effectively measure the results.   Mergers and acquisitions, legacy systems, and competing priorities slow the ability to source good data in many cases, but it ‘s coming to the surface, and I expect that we’ll see a lot of it published this year.

The Rundown: Leveraging and Managing Home Agents

Executives – The at-home model delivers much more than simply cost reductions.  Best talent makes way for incremental revenue, markedly improved retention, and dramatically different customer engagement. Inclusion of remote customer contacts in your strategy is really not a matter of if; it’s a matter of when.

Directors/Managers – Quantify the returns to include in your business case, and put them in financial terms, finally.

Supervisors – Understand the varying attributes in at-home agents, and the impact this may have to your management style.

 

If your organization is considering a home agent program, a profile of the best qualities to look for in candidates will be helpful.  Based on my experience with the Hilton@Home program, and a couple of dozen clients and organizations I have networked with, here are the top six key attributes and organizational benefits of remote agents:

1.  Higher education:  Companies are reporting that 80% of at-home agents have some college, vs. 20% of in-house agents.  The impact to the organization is that aptitude for learning is likely higher.  On-line learning reduces training time (vs. classroom) by 20-30%, and with higher education, we can continue migrating our training on line, with confidence.

2.  Rich work experience, including management:  40% of home agents have some management experience compared to 20% of in-house agents.   The general feedback is that this deep work experience is returning higher customer satisfaction scores, and better selling/recovery performance.   I don’t have to connect the dots here – after 12 full months of a significant-sized home agent program, organizations can plot these returns for stakeholders.

3.  Maturity:  The average age of remote agents is 38, vs. 22 for in-house agents.  We can add improved attendance, productivity and retention to the benefits listed above and attribute that to mature team members.   That’s the great news, but the footnote is… we need to ensure that our supervisors are just as mature as our agents.  

4.  Highly effective at engagement:  This is an extreme win for customer contacts.   Remote agents (whom are hired possessing these attributes) engage more effectively with our customers.  They strengthen and extend loyalty and trust with our brands.  They generate incremental revenue through better selling or service recovery. We’ll be plotting this metric after 12 months as well.

5.  Socially independent:  This mature, independent group doesn’t want or need a lot of face time.  In fact, they would prefer as little as possible.  They need fast access to good sources for troubleshooting live issues, and they want to share their experiences with team members, but that’s it.  What that means to our organizations is simply less scheduled training and coaching time, and less help desk support.

6.  Strong problem solving skills:  The net result of the experience, maturity and education of this group will reduce handle time for help issues, and will ultimately reduce required resources for help issues.  

A critical point not to be overlooked:  people with these attributes will not work in our brick-and-mortar operations because of the stigma associated with call center positions.  But they will work for us as at-home agents, as long as we hire part-time, enable flexible, agent-built scheduling, and provide ample resources and support.

Michele Rowan is President of Customer Contact Strategies and former VP of Performance Management for Hilton Hotels Corp. mrowan@customercontactstrategies.com