Our last post discussed the business, societal and technological changes that are making home-based resources an ever increasing percentage of the customer contact workforce. 2007 IDC estimates range from as few as 112,000 to as many as 672,000 contact center agents worldwide working at home. Avaya research indicates that more than 42% of companies are considering at-home resource deployments in order to attract and retain the highest quality resources. The good news? With at-home agents, the larger addressable work force available makes finding the right people easier, and the expenses associated with supporting premise-based agents shrink as much as 33%. It’s a classic win-win.

What have some of the early practitioners learned as effective practices? Let's examine three of the six we have uncovered in working with these companies.

Select the right people. While there are numerous advantages to home agents, simply sending someone home that has worked in a brick-and-mortar contact center will not guarantee success. Recruiting outside the existing resource base for additional skill sets is common. Two of the more well-known home shoring providers, Willow CSN and Alpine Access, have effectively utilized the benefit of working at home to attract more qualified and more educated resources.

Address the policy side. Making sure that effective and consistent policy is in place is critical, particularly for new hires. For example, in the financial sector, early concerns with security issues have been allayed by actual observed performance improvements in this category for many customers. Some have attributed this to the general higher education levels of their home-based resources. Questions that are typically addressed are: Who is eligible? Where do they work? Who is responsible for what costs? What are the scheduling policies? What are the tax implications for home-based resources?

Ensure a good working environment. Many options are now available for extending calls to the home, and large metropolitan areas have become the new recruiting field for companies seeking new resources, bringing the benefit of high speed access lines (cable or DSL) to many residences. It's important to note that even traditional POTS service is effective in "dual-connect" mode, a connectivity technique introduced and perfected by Avaya several years ago. Secure and dedicated areas, along with noise-free treatments, are critical. The "barking dog" syndrome can be a real pain!

One customer recently revealed that at-home agents performed better in every major metric measuring the effectiveness of contact center agents. The company was utilizing home-based resources to drive a critical cross-selling program for its contact centers. The result? Customer delight: “We raised our expectations of our at-home agents."