Outsourcing: West Corporation Interview (Part 2)

By guest author Tony Scott

The Home Agent Advantage

Tony: You mentioned that you believe you are able to provide a total cost of service at a lower rate using the home agent model versus the brick-and-mortar model?Compared to domestic brick-and-mortar call centers, what percentage differential do you typically find?

Matt: The cost can be around 15% lower than traditional brick-and-mortar pricing.

Tony: So lower pricing with higher quality.

Matt: Right. To provide the level of customer service that our clients desire, an upfront investment is required for training. Our clients usually want agents to have a minimum number of hours “on the phone” to become or remain proficient serving their customers. An agent with a higher level of education allows us to maintain that level of proficiency with fewer training hours.

One of the other advantages with our virtual model is greater flexibility than other models. We do not need additional agent sitting in a call center waiting for the next call. So while we are providing a discount from the traditional price, we are also providing additional savings related to potential facility-based labor – labor that is “stranded” if you will. To illustrate: if I hire someone to work 8 to 5, I may only need them from 8 to 11 and from 2 to 5. There are a few hours in the middle where I have overlap, but I need to keep the person at the call center so that they can cover 2 to 5. That is why I say it’s not only a discount off the price, but there is also some actual hourly labor savings there as well.

Tony: What percentage of your at home agents are full time versus part time, in terms of their hours if they tend to work?

Matt: They are predominantly part time because of the flex model I discussed. It depends on the client, but anywhere from a 20- to 30-hour per week window is typical.

Tony: What percentage of your call center team are home agents versus traditional brick-and-mortar agents, at least domestically?

Matt: On a headcount basis it’s 1.2 to 1.3 times our facility-based agents, but on a hours worked basis, home agents are providing 0.5 or 0.6 the number of hours of our agents working in a traditional call center.

Tony: From a technology, training, and management perspective, how do you handle your at home agents as opposed to a traditional brick-and-mortar call center or the hub-and-spoke model?

Matt: Everything that we have done on the technology and training front was done with “virtual” in mind because we believe that’s our differentiator. We have developed a virtual Automated Call Distribution system; we have some of the best security measures in the industry as it relates to how we manage the desktop; and we have a training department that develops their curriculum with “virtual” in mind.

Tony: Are there other things that you do to ensure the quality that you are looking for, and also to develop cohesion of your at-home agents back to your company?

Matt: Our biggest challenge is how to measure and manage the performance of a home-based agent. We have built tools with that in mind. Everything that an agent does from a performance standpoint drives the degree of flexibility they have. For example, the hours that are made available to each agent and their ability to sign up for the hours they want is based on their performance.

We have supervisors for our home-based agents who are housed together in traditional facility-based environment to ensure that the home-based agents are connected back to the bigger group.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Outsourcing: West Corporation Interview
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