Centre of attention

When a customer needs to contact a company or a government body, the over-riding demand is that the query should be answered fully, accurately and promptly. The agent answering the phone should respond instantly, be friendly but clear, and know all there is to know about the organisation and its products and services.

The agent in the contact centre - who quite clearly cannot know everything about the organisation and its users - appreciates that instant access to data is the difference between a swiftly completed call with a happy customer and yet another dissatisfied tirade.

It is, therefore, in everyone's best interests to resource the contact centre with the best possible technology and the best possible staff.

I want to propose a radical solution: the best way to run a contact centre may be not to have a contact centre. With universal access to broadband, the information can be put anywhere, and with voice over IP telephone technology, calls can be routed seamlessly. So why not have the contact centre staff work from home?

In a recent survey of contact centres in South Africa, conducted by Interactive Intelligence, 45% of respondents said they employed a home-worker strategy to some degree. Eighty-eight percent of them claimed it makes the contact centre more productive, and 73% saw a saving on facility costs.

According to managers and business owners surveyed, the reasons for using home workers included happier employees, cost-containment, more efficient staff, increased productivity due to a lack of interruptions, less travel time, and practicality.

Research suggests that an employer who can offer home working attracts staff with a wider pool of skills; the ability to work flexibly attracts better educated staff. The retention rate for home-based staff is boosted too: typically, call centres see a 20% annual turnover, which is halved when staff members are allowed to work from home.

Eighty-six percent of staff surveyed felt they had a better work/life balance. The main reasons they preferred home working included less travel time, more control over hours and increased family time.

It gives staff the opportunity to plan their hours around their lifestyles. People can return to work after career breaks, and may be happy to work split shifts to cover peaks, something that is virtually impossible when people have to “go” to work.

Why not have the contact centre staff work from home?

Dave Paulding is Interactive Intelligence's regional sales manager for UK and Africa.

Commuting time is eliminated, as indeed are the costs (and for the company, the reduced emissions look good on the green audit). Staff working unsociable hours no longer have to worry about travelling to otherwise deserted industrial areas in the middle of the night.

Eliminating commuting also makes them immune to transport disruption. In fact, 80% felt they were less stressed as a result of working from home. Ninety percent of respondents said they were more productive at home. Seventy-eight percent claimed to have the same functionality than at the office and 77% were confident they could handle all interactions with customers.

Managers are inevitably going to be worried about what their staff are doing. Are they meeting their hours? Are they being productive? In short, can they be trusted when they are out of sight, out of mind?

Managers surveyed stated one of the biggest barriers against letting their staff work remotely was the lack of control (61%).

In reality, supervisors do not manage staff in call centres by standing over them with stopwatches. Built into the technology platform are sophisticated algorithms for presence management, which provide detailed metrics on staff performance. Provided the technology platform is extended to the home worker, the same metrics will apply.

For some staff the inverse worry may apply. “If the manager cannot see how hard I am working,” goes the theory, “how will I be recommended for promotion?” Confidence in the presence management system has to work both ways.

In all of this, the technology is actually the easy part. Unified communications can link workers, wherever they are, over a single connection - in an office or contact centre that would be through the local Ethernet; for remote workers, a single broadband connection carries both the voice and the data.

Security can be layered on to the connection without impairing performance - there are clients working on sensitive military projects, for example.

That means the same technology can be used for mobile staff as well as home-based contact centre agents. Salesmen or consultants on the road can connect into the corporate network from a client's premises, a hotel room or an airport lounge. Given a broadband connection, they can work just as if they were in their home office.

Flexible working is good for businesses, good for staff and good for the environment. The technology is ready: all that is needed is the trust and conviction of good management.