First published in Contact Management’s July/August 2009 issue; written in collaboration with CMA’s Contact Centre Council.
October 7, 2009
Home really is sweet these days in a recessionary economy where companies are realizing substantial call centre savings through home agent programs. Based on the investments enterprises are making in them, it is clear home agents are no passing fad. Market research firm Datamonitor recently projected explosive growth that will see 222,000 at-home agents by 2012.
Some firms have replaced their call centres entirely with home agents. More commonly, organizations are augmenting their call centre operations with remote agents.
Organizations turn to home agents for many reasons, but nearly all relate to costs. Scheduling flexibility is a big factor with home agent programs providing an economical way of filling periods of peak call volume demand. They are heightening job satisfaction for employees, and giving firms a way of retaining valuable workers who might otherwise leave. It all adds up to shrinking churn and training costs.
Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) recently launched a home-based agent program. According to the bank, setting up virtual workstations has already returned significant improvements over interactions completed in physical contact centres. Further, the home-based staff came to the rescue during the winter when many representatives were unable to make it to work during extremely bad weather.
One employee faced a family relocation to Halifax. The RBC team was disappointed to lose such a valued employee, so it set up a home-based workstation. This person is now taking calls from his new city.
Another person in its Vancouver centre had to miss eight weeks of work because of a severe allergy, so RBC set him up at home as well. A woman with a disability is now taking service calls in a branch location, after experiencing challenges with the physical work environment.
FedEx is pioneer
FedEx is a home agent pioneer in Canada having had a program in place for longer than 10 years. Patsy Bertoia, managing director of customer service for FedEx Canada, implemented the program.
A software vendor with a new home agent application approached the company about testing it out, she recalls. FedEx, which nurtures a people-first culture, recognized the program as a potential benefit for employees. As well, FedEx centres were fully manned at that time and the program offered a way of avoiding adding more real estate.
FedEx conducted a pilot project with one employee to iron out the bugs. After that, it began deploying the program for all three of its centres in Montreal, Mississauga and Vancouver. Of its total complement of 250 agents, 40 work from home in roles FedEx refers to as satellite agents.
These satellite agents are in all three provinces within driving distance of the centres. Those who work at night come into the centres only occasionally for meetings and training. The other daytime satellite agents are required to work out of a centre twice a month for coaching and work group meetings.
“Our call centres are so teamwork focused and have such a special culture we don’t want the satellite agents to lose out on that,” says Bertoia. “So we have them come in once every two weeks and work a shift out of the centre.”
Centres closed at night
Having satellite agents working overnight has allowed FedEx to close its centres during the night, she says.
“If we had people in the centres working those hours, we would definitely need additional management staff. So FedEx has realized facility and staffing changes. As well, FedEx reduces its carbon footprint through the energy savings.”
Satellite jobs are coveted in the centres, she says. Positions are posted and interviews are conducted to make sure applicants have successful work at home traits like self management and motivation. They are also tested for above average computer skills so they can readily accommodate software downloads and computer fixes when necessary.
The satellite job interviews are shorter and less rigorous than the original hiring interviews, she says. You already know the applicants have effective listening and customer focus skills and their work history provides some inkling of their self motivation. The satellite interviews are behavioural-based where applicants are asked how they would respond to certain situations.
The satellite agent positions are not used as a reward, Bertoia says. The only requirement is that people must have worked at least one year as a FedEx call centre rep to apply.
There are no waiting lists either. If applicants pass the interview, but are not chosen for the position, they must reapply when another vacancy comes open.
But those openings are rare, she says. They sometimes happen when satellite agents receive a promotion either in the call centre or some other part of the company. Otherwise satellite agents just don’t leave the company.
Zero attrition
“I’ve had zero attrition with these individuals which is a huge benefit. It tells you how engaged and motivated they are and from a cost saving perspective that is just phenomenal.
“Our agents love it. They don’t have to worry about traffic, buying gas, car maintenance or purchasing work attire. During their break time, they can quickly get something together for dinner or throw in a load of laundry. Many find it is much less stressful working from home because a call centre is a busy place.”
When call volumes peak and additional coverage is needed, the satellite agents are readily available to work overtime, she says. They can sign in from home in a minute.
Satellite agents must sign contracts specifying work expectations. They are prohibited from acting as day care providers and can’t have pets in the room while they are working. They can’t have babies crying and dogs barking in the background.
These home agents are fully connected to FedEx systems, Bertoia says. They can pull up customer interaction history to respond quickly to customer queries and needs.
FedEx furnishes the satellite agents with all the equipment they will need, she says. This includes a personal computer with built-in phone and an Internet connection to the FedEx network. Phones operate either on Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) or landlines.
VoIP or landline usage is determined by whichever works best with fewer outages in different areas. Bertoia says the company’s VoIP tests have found it to be quite reliable.
Kathy Kelly is director of call centres with CAA South Central Ontario on the club side of the firm’s business. Drivers pay an annual membership for roadside assistance whenever their cars break down.
CAA operates two call centres in Hamilton and Thornhill, ON, populated by about 130 plus full-time agents. They field calls from across the country and dispatch service vehicles to members requesting roadside help and information about members’ services.
CAA uses third-party provider
In 2005, CAA engaged LiveXchange, a third party home agent provider, to set it up with a home agent program. It began with 12 agents. It now has 160 people under contract through LiveXchange working part-time from home as independent contractors.
LiveXchange handles the remote agent staffing and the network infrastructure compatibility. Those big issues are removed for CAA.
“We can go to them with what our needs are and they manage the actual home resource portion of it,” says Kelly. “We don’t get involved in that way at all.”
Nancy Jo Pitman, manager of control centre solutions with CAA, explains that these remote agents are contracted to work a minimum 10 hours a week and at least four hours a weekend to relieve in-house agents from working those more undesirable shifts. Remote agents average between 16 to 18 hours a week.
These part-time agents are equivalent to about 54 full time agents in the amount of time they work, she says. Certain calculations are applied for forecasting and scheduling to get the equivalent number of bodies needed in the part-time remote world.
A skeleton staff of in-house agents works at night in the centres, she says. But the majority of overnight calls are taken by the remote agents.
“It works really well for our in-house agents too because we can provide them with more training, project or special team opportunities,” says Kelly. “When we want to provide more training, or hold some kind of fun day, we just increase coverage by LiveXchange’s agents.”
She hasn’t yet faced the issue of in-house agents wanting to become remote workers. She credits her centre managers for creating a healthy work-life balance and incentives for people to come to work.
Fun environment
“Fun is injected into the agents’ day regularly,” says Pitman. “There are social committees and lots of activities around food, and fun competition. They really enjoy coming into work every day.”
For Kelly, the only real challenge with a home agent program is comparable to what is encountered in-house. It is making sure the agents work the shifts they are committed to work. But there aren’t many missed shifts on the part of remote agents because they are essentially self employed.
For Pitman, reporting was a huge challenge at first in getting the metrics and observing the remote agents in real time. But LiveXchange supplied a Web site where remote agents could be monitored as effectively as agents in-house.
CAA also worked out the type of reports it wanted from LiveXchange. It gets reports on average handle time and adherence to schedule and can compare them to what is happening in-house. She says the metrics that have come up for remote agents are similar to in-house agents.
CAA agents often field calls from members who are in distress and are feeling quite frantic. Kelly says some require immediate assistance and calls are prioritized to get to them as soon as possible.
“Agents must have good empathy and listening skills. They have to get exact locations to make sure we can get there as quickly as we can. It is very similar to a 911 call where you have to keep the caller calm to make certain you get accurate information.”
Rigorous training
To hone those skills, agents undergo about 12 weeks of intensive training responding to scripts that broach safety and other critical aspects. Part of that training places agents in an Intensive Care Unit, a borrowed hospital term, where they are monitored to get them up to speed.
Remote agents go through the same rigorous training which is available to them online. They also get role play calls after training and before taking live calls.
Richard Litvack is senior vice-president, relationship management for credit card issuer Citi Cards Canada, a subsidiary of Citi Cards U.S. It is headquartered in Mississauga, ON, and maintains a London, ON, office as well.
Both locations have call centres with a total of 800 seats between the two. They field mostly inbound calls, mainly customer care.
Litvack says the company is seriously considering a home agent program. Its American parent has been testing it for the last year with favourable results. Three key elements of customer satisfaction, agent productivity and employee satisfaction were all higher among the home agent test population.
Business analysis
The next step is a business analysis to weigh the costs versus the benefits and determine the potential, he says. The company is also reaching out to other organizations that have introduced home agents in Canada to learn their experiences.
“We would anticipate lowering attrition. Obviously learning curves would be shorter as we would have more senior staff stay with us longer. It probably would also help us from a staffing language perspective as well, which can be cost intensive.”
Citi Cards currently offers both English and French language services. He estimates the company now has between 100 and 150 multilingual agents.
One issue the industry faces is staffing specifically for French in non-French dominated regions, he says. Toronto has a significant French speaking population, but a lot of centres are competing for French speaking agents.
“Now we are limited to a population that can commute within a respectable amount of time to and from our current location in Mississauga. By expanding our geographical base with home agents, we can be looking at people who may live in Scarborough or Oshawa or Pickering or other areas who previously probably would not have considered us as an employer simply because of the length of the commute. So it really does open us to a population we haven’t actively been recruiting.”
It could eventually open up the hiring of French speaking agents from Quebec, he says. But the initial inclination is to keep the home agent base regional at first to offer it to employees who have expressed an interest in working from home.
Biggest cost
He acknowledges the biggest cost rests with the technology integration with agents at home. This encompasses firewalls and other steps to guarantee the extreme security of customer information for a financial institution, which is of paramount concern.
“I’m confident we can guarantee it. The question is at what cost can we guarantee it.” It is clear that with all of the benefits of the home-based agent program, anyone involved in call centres may want to consider this in their long term growth plans. At some point your own best agents may want to change companies because they want the option of being a home-based agent”
About the authors
Contact Management is a publication devoted to issues facing Canadian contact centres.
CMA’s Contact Centre Council is an executive level working group of association members that provides thought leadership on issues relating to people, process, technology and regulation in the contact centre sector. The Council produces resources – including articles, white papers, guidelines and best practices documents – and offers educational and networking opportunities throughout the year.
