CallCenter
Oct 5, 2001 (10:09 AM)
Primetime For Telecommuting Anytime, Anywhere (Part 1)
By Warren S. Hersch, Jennifer O'Herron and Jackie Taylor
See original article

If you could equip your call center agents with a home PC offering Internet access and a second business line to connect to the corporate networks, why make them come to the office when they can more costly effectively telecommute?

Dialing In

That rhetorical question is one that a fast growing number of businesses and prospective employees are asking - and acting on. The International Telework Association & Council (ITAC; Washington, DC) forecasts that telecommuters will number some 30 million by 2004, up from 19.6 million this year, a 53% gain. The growth cuts across multiple sectors: business and legal services, health care, transportation, banking and finance, accounting services and more.

"There's a crying need for qualified workers with specific skills sets," says Jack Heacock, president of Jack Heacock & Associates (Parker, CO) and former executive director at ITAC. "To attract and retain them, businesses have to offer work-at-home options for people who don't want to relocate or commute."

Telecommuting, he adds, offers plenty of benefits. Topping the list is "real estate cost-avoidance." By having agents work from home, says Heacock, call centers can reduce per seat costs, which average $35,000, by $20,000 to $25,000.

Letting agents telecommute can also boost staffing and retention, say observers, by: (1) expanding the labor pool to workers unwilling or unable to commute, such as the physically challenged, retirees and care givers; and (2) giving agents a flexible work environment and schedule that telecommuting affords.

Call centers offering a work-at-home option typically let agents work part time and/or in split shifts. So remote agents Sally or Joe can do, say, a four-hour shift in the early morning, attend to kids or run errands in the late morning and early afternoon, then do a second shift in the evening. These split hours also benefit employers aiming to keep operations humming 24x7.

What's more, notes ITAC, telecommuting enables agents to keep more of the money they earn. The Council estimates the indirect savings for full-time telecommuters (in gas, auto insurance/ repairs and clothing) at $4,000 annually of an average $28,000 per year salary.

Telecommuting also offers health benefits: Fewer cars on the road mean fewer accidents and cleaner air, as Atlanta can attest to. Following its hosting of the Olympic Summer Games in 1996, the city posted a 44% drop in doctors visits and hospitalizations relating to respiratory problems, such as asthma. The city attributed the decline to mandated cutbacks in road traffic needed to reduce congestion during the games.

Additionally, telecommuting can help minimize work disruptions arising from severe storms and natural disasters. Cindy Anderson, marketing manager for remote office solutions developer Teltone, notes that employees at the Seattle, WA-based State Department of Social Services were able to continue to take calls from home following an earthquake using Teltone's OfficeLink software.

"Without being able to telecommute, those staffers would have lost two weeks of work," says Anderson.

State governments nationwide are taking notice of telecommuting's benefits and are spurring residents and businesses to join the bandwagon. Virginia, for example, is offering employers $3,500 per year in tax credits for the first ten teleworkers they hire. In all, telecommuting-friendly legislation is pending in some 40 states.

Congress, too, is considering a bill, introduced by representative Frank Wolf (R-VA), that would provide a $500 tax credit for expenses paid or incurred to set up a workstation in an individual's home. The individual must work at home a minimum of 75 days a year to be eligible for the tax credit.

"The various government initiatives will give a much-needed boost to telecommuting, especially among call centers," says Heacock. "We estimate that upwards of 40% of [call center] agents can work remotely. Compare that with the current rate, which is about 2.5%."

Not everyone is convinced that telecommuting is the wave of the future.

"Without in-house agents, we don't think we could deliver the quality of service clients expect of us," says Marc Abrams, a director of marketing at Technion Communications, a Hollywood, FL-based call center outsourcer.

Adds Chuck Sykes, president of Sykes Enterprises, a Tampa, FL-based outsourcer, "Telecommuting doesn't really lend itself to tech support, which involves frequent updates and training on new product releases. We haven't yet cracked the knowledge management dilemma. The e-learning tools and bandwidth aren't there yet to make remote agent training feasible."

To be sure, Sykes and other call center operations not using telecommuters acknowledge the remote agent model may work for certain positions. Best bets include customer care reps who field general inquiries with standard, unvarying scripts and, therefore, don't require daily hand-holding; plus folks, as mentioned, looking to work part-time and/or in split shifts.

Observers agree, too, that tools on the market are generally adequate to monitor remote agents for productivity. "There's the idea that if you can't see someone you don't know what they are doing," says Teltone's Anderson. "The reality is that agents are the easiest to monitor in terms of productivity, because of all the statistics on them are available."

Still, telecommuting proponents have their work cut out. A big cloud hovering over the industry is a barely growing US economy and a rapidly contracting tech sector. The economic doldrums, say experts, might put a brake on business experiments like telecommuting, and the investments needed to realize them.

Also, telecommuting backers face cultural, educational and logistical hurdles from call center operators and prospective agents. Many call center managers remain unconvinced that they can get quality service from remote agents. Call center managers that do buy into telecommuting need to ensure they hire agents suitable to the job: those comfortable with the work-at-home environment and who have the discipline to separate work from personal distractions.

There's also the loyalty issue. Remote agents, especially those working as contractors, may bolt to a competitor if they feel they can be better compensated for full-time work, or short-term stints that can play havoc with scheduling at the call centers that first hired them. Additionally, agents who don't have frequent "face time" with supervisors may believe - justifiably, say industry watchers - that they're handicapped relative to in-house counterparts for promotions. Why, an agent might ask, give my all to a company if I'm in a dead-end position?

Technology Hurdles

While the birth of the PC and Internet have made telecommuting possible for many more occupations than in decades past, there are still technology hurdles to surmount.

Chief among these is the connection linking the home agent with the call center. If we're talking plain old telephone service (POTS), it can mean upwards of three lines, one for personal use and two for dedicated voice and data links to the call center. For agents working at, say, $10 per hour and having to foot the bill for equipment and business lines (not uncommon), the extra phone bills can be taxing.

What's more, POTS lines may not be enough for high-volume data applications better suited to a fat pipe. High-speed connections to the home - principally digital subscriber line (DSL) and cable modems - satisfy the broadband requirement. But these can come at a hefty price tag, depending on the locale. And, with so many "next-gen" competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs) going bust in the current crunch (read: Covad Commnications Group; Northpoint Communications; and Rythms NetConnections - all of which have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy) getting DSL to millions of potential telecommuters is starting to look like a pipe dream.

Market research firm IDC (Framingham, MA) pegs DSL penetration at 9%, or 2 million homes. Only 60% of American homes and businesses are situated close enough to a carrier's central office to tap into DSL service.

Adding to costs is the ancillary hardware and software that agents typically need to hitch onto the call center's voice and data networks. These encompass hardware adjuncts to agents' desk sets that connect to the corporate PBX and/or ACD (thereby enabling three-digit extension dialing, call transfer and park, conferencing, skills-based routing and other features). They also include software that agents download to PCs for data entry, PC call control and monitoring purposes; and, at the corporate end, a gateway or integrated access device (IAD) that transmits voice and data to the remote worker.

"The single most overlooked aspect of telecommuting is providing technical support for remote workers," says Steve Schilling, CEO of application service provider Netifice (Norcross, GA). "Stuff breaks down that you have to be able to fix."

The good news is that remote office/telecommuting solutions, which we detail below, are maturing: they're becoming more reliable and delivering a growing range of office functionality. And, as big-name players enter the market, the technology, say observers, is encouraging more businesses to view telecommuting as a viable work option.

Apart from PBX/ACD access, many of the current crop of products bring PC call control and/or CRM functionality to the agent's desktop. Among these are Rockwell Electronic Commerce's LAN Agent, which offers a softphone to manage calls on-screen using a mouse. Gematech's Remote Service Manager software features automatic number identification (ANI) to identify callers. The product prioritizes calls based on agents' skills and availability; and it offers call queue and agent statistics through a Web browser for monitoring.

MCK Communications' latest software, Mobile EXTender, lets agents connect to the corporate PBX using wired or wireless touchtone phones. Also, MCK, Avaya and Teltone can facilitate corporate network access using an Internet Protocol (IP) connection. Like DSL and cable services, IP can carry both voice and data, obviating the need for multiple POTS lines (albeit without necessarily the high-speeds of DSL and cable). But with IP, telecommuters needn't worry about coverage or expense; they simply connect to the public Internet.

IP can ultimately render unnecessary today's remote office solutions, as agents connect to all corporate voice/data networks and applications through a Web browser. But, say analysts, until the technology overcomes its current shortcomings - the packet delay, loss and jitter that degrade voice quality - voice over IP (VoIP) will not be widely employed, except within privately managed/hosted IP networks, such as Netifice's. And without IP, telecommuting won't achieve critical mass, say experts.

"Telecommuting won't happen in a big way until IP does," says Alpa Shah, a research manager at market research firm Frost & Sullivan, based in Mountain View, CA. "The technology will enable the enhanced network services telecommuters need, while also driving down long-distance costs."

Elizabeth Herrill, an analyst with Cambridge, MA-based Giga Information Group, agrees. "For telecommuting to really take off, call centers will need to move to a hybrid or pure IP environment," she says. "But apart from quality of service, security remains a problem in the IP world. Without adequate data tunneling and firewalls, call centers are exposing themselves to security breaches."

With or without IP, scores of businesses are positioning most or all of their agents to work remotely. Among them are Willow CSN, a Ft. Lauderdale, FL-based outsourcer with 1,600 agents; outsourcer Alpine Access of Golden, CO, which fields some 700 agents in the Rocky Mountain state (see the sidebar); and Putnam Security, which employs 450-plus remote agents across New England. Farther afield, there's also Finland Post, which implemented an all-IP virtual contact center to handle orders and customer relations.

With seemingly stodgy and bureaucratic quasi-government organizations now leveraging telecommuters, the trend seems clear. But are remote office workers right for your call center? To help you answer that question, below we've assembled third-party products on the market and some user experiences. So read on!

Part 2 | Part 3