New Q&A on At-Home Agent Programs from our recent webinar
Posted by Kerry Engle on Mon, Nov 30, 2009 @ 01:17 PM
Michele Rowan, CEO of Customer Contact Strategies, specializes in helping call centers move customer contacts home. As former VP of Hilton Hotels Corporation, Michele led the expansion from 200 to over 1000 agents. She has written a ‘Go Home' Tool Kit, and conducts workshops on the subject throughout the US. See http://www.gohome.us.com/ for both. Michele was a speaker on our recent webinar on the subject of at-home agent programs and provided her answers to the following questions:
1. Do at-home agents typically get hired from a separate job description? If so, what is different?
"At-home agents need a couple of things that are exclusive to their position (vs. brick & mortar): 1) a dedicated work space that is free of distraction, 2) the ability and desire to work independently, and 3) strong technical skills. In my view, the balance of knowledge, skills and abilities (assuming the in-house and at-home position are like-for-like and not a unique job or offering) are usually identical, constituting a very similar job description."
2. Should you test or assess specific skills for an at-home agent that you do not consider for a brick & mortar agent (technical savvy as an example)?
"I think the majority of skills should be assessed universally amongst contact center professionals (in-house and at-home). With that said, very strong technical skills are required at home, as there can be more disruptions to service (i.e. ISP, soft phone, VPN) and recovery time, to provide continuity of customer service, must be minimal. Troubleshooting ability is just as important as technical savvy, for this very reason.
I recommend requiring a set of minimum connectivity, hardware and speed guidelines as part of the job posting, along with skills like basic use of the Internet, search engines, and whatever tools agents will have to use frequently. It also makes sense to include system diagnostics as one of the final stages in your application process.
It works like this:
a. You send the applicant to a diagnostics site that checks for software and hardware minimum requirements, firewalls, speed.
b. Applicants are provided with a set of instructions to run the diagnostics.
c. While your system is checking the agent's computer for basic requirements, you are evaluating the agent's basic knowledge level of troubleshooting, and technical savvy. I have both participated in and observed this method in play and it is extremely effective.
A very good point was brought up in this question that is worth expanding upon. Some at-home baseline functionality, like ISP connectivity, can sometimes be outside of our control in terms of continuity of service. It is important to closely monitor and manage up time, and if there is a significant variance from in-house vs. at-home agents, you must understand it and bring it in line, or it can quickly cannibalize the success of your program. It is equally as important to establish accountability for up time and call/connectivity control with your agents from the time of hire. In other words, if an agent is dropping calls or has extensive handle time as a result of some at-home technology that is not working properly (assuming it is not our equipment or technology issue), we can help but the primary responsibility sits with the employee. Agents that have patterns of unresolved downtime, regardless of why, might not be a good fit for the at-home position."
Here is a link to the full recording of the at home agent webinar.