|
Home Sweet Call Center By Brendan B. Read
What if I told you that there is a proven way that you can lower turnover, handle call spikes, raise customer satisfaction, hike productivity, shrink sick days and medical costs, and limit tardiness? Now what if I told you that this method provides disaster recovery, can cut between 10% and 15% of your costs and still keep your customer service onshore with Americans (and culturally similar Canadians)? In addition, with this strategy a 100-seat call center could save over $10 million across five years. Chances are you would flood my inbox with messages. You may even wish to pay me to speak with you or work for you as a consultant. But the solution is literally on your doorstep: at home. By leaving the call center or what I call "premise-based office." I won't take the consulting fee. But I can recommend others who will. They helped me with the research for Home Workplace, a book that I have just written on home working setup and management for CMP. You can buy the book, of course, which will be available shortly on Amazon and through CMP Books. As we've written before, call centers that have home working have realized productivity gains and cost savings. They found that they could attract better quality, more flexible employees who would never stuff themselves into premise-based call centers. And their labor pools were no longer limited by commuting distance. The key reason I've heard why more call centers don't have employees working from home is ego. These executives and managers like to see and be seen by their employees to let them know who's in charge. But this only gives the appearance of managing. Most is done through e-mail and memo. A 2002 study of Canadian executives by International Communications Research said 94% of managers often send e-mail rather than meet one-to-one. The Calgary Herald, which carried the story in February 2003, quoted Bob Schultz, professor of strategic management at the University of Calgary's Haskayne School of Business. He said that e-mails "give managers the ability to respond to more people than before. Managers don't have enough time to do face-to-face meetings with everyone." And unless you are on the call or e-mail - which you can do from anywhere - you can't really judge what agents do. There is no point in breathing down their necks. Bottom line: there is no real reason why knowledge-working organizations like call centers must subsidize property and facilities. The same tools: skills-based routing, monitoring, training (through audio/data/video and Web conferencing and Webinars and "elearning"), workforce management, instant messaging and CTI can be and are deployed effectively at home. I can attest to the effectiveness of home working and remote managing. I've been working from home since 2000; initially one or two days a week and full time since late 2001. I stay in touch via phone, e-mail, instant messaging and fax. By eliminating the commute I'm also a lot more productive. With the spread of broadband, voice-over-IP, intelligent, low-cost network routing and affordable, flexibly-priced quality switches, home working is becoming more feasible and cost effective. Virtual private networks provide data security. Relying on premise-based call centers may make you feel good, but it costs your organization plenty. You are walking away from $10 million over five years. That is real money that could be better used elsewhere in your organization such as by enabling expansion, cutting or holding prices, investing in new equipment, research and development, or by hiring more staff and providing better training. Wouldn't it be better to build bottom line results at home than to construct and keep costly disaster-vulnerable monuments to inefficiency that premises offices (and call centers) have become? What's going to impress your senior managers and customers more? Fancy facilities or added jingle in their pockets? Dorothy was right - there is no place like home. |