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Article : The Economics Behind Remote Agents

As the economy continues to force enterprises to find new ways to cut costs, they still look to maintain their service levels and improve on their customer service. A key element of providing superior customer service is the individual agents themselves. Many contact centers have an attrition rate of up to 60%. While some of this is due to poor performance, often times this is also caused by changes in the personal circumstances of the agents. This may include the need to only work part-time due to family issues or other reasons that may cause a person to stay at home.

Historically, traditional call centers have not been able to effectively support work-at-home initiatives. Many of the obstacles they have not been able to overcome include providing the appropriate access for the agent to customer records and data processing capabilities. Another common obstacle has been that the PBX system deployed in the enterprise prevents the enterprise from effectively extending


Tim Dewitt,
Senior Product Marketing Manager,
Lucent Technologies

the contact center to the agents home. For those that have attempted it, the expense of extending a PBX can be enormous. As a result several questions arise that need to be addressed in order to effectively support work-at-home agents. From an infrastructure perspective, these include:

  • How do I extend the contact center?

  • What equipment is required?

  • What software is required?

  • What network changes are required?

From a management perspective, additional questions to be addressed include:

  • How do I manage the performance of my agents?

  • How do I manage my workforce?

  • How do I ensure accurate reporting?

  • What incentives can I offer?

In order to implement an effective Work-At-Home program, the contact center needs to be able to define an arrangement that lowers the overall operating costs including lowering the telecommunication costs, expanding the labor pool, improve agent productivity resulting in higher close rates, support agent retention through a satisfied contact center agent and allow employer/employee flexibility. For the contact centers that have implemented programs like these, the results have been outstanding with positive results in all categories.

A key consideration to implement Work-At-Home agents is the agents available work environment. Since this is essentially considered an extension of the business, contact centers will need to take into consideration the workspace of the Work-At-Home agent. Some companies have determined a check-list to evaluate whether or not the agent's particular work space at home will be sufficient. Some of the items on the checklist include:

  • OSHA standards

  • Children

  • Pets

  • Noise level

  • Virtual Training Programs

For contact centers that have a clear need to implement remote work-at-home agents, ClientCare is an ideal platform to extend the contact center to the agent as well as provide CTI data to reduce their Average Handle Time and increase their overall productivity. Combine the contact center with VoIP and Quality Monitoring tools agents can operate with full functionality. Agents can handle ACD calls as well as non-ACD calls including the ability to conference, transfer and consult. They can also have access to CRM applications to process that customer inquiry. Supervisors can have full access to real time and historical reporting enabling them to track and report on the agents in the office and at home including call activity. Through the ClientCare feature of AgentObserve, supervisors can also monitor the applications accessed by the agents. Quality Monitoring systems that supports VoIP, active call monitoring and recording is also possible, thus offering all the control of being on site, and all the economics of being remote.

The economic incentives for an agent as well as an enterprise to support work-at-home agents are very measurable.

Savings opportunities for the enterprise include reduction in facilities, leveraging POTS, and increasing agent productivity.

Incentives to the agents are also available:
For enterprises desiring to implement work-at-home agents the technology is available and the economic incentives are easy to measure to justify the business case for these types of programs.


About Tim Dewitt
Tim DeWitt has over 8 years of expertise in the call center industry in the areas of marketing, product management and development, as well professional services and deployment of contact center products. Prior to his involvement in the telecommunications industry, Tim has developed software in the areas of computational fluid dynamics as well as avionics including the development of software on the Airbus Flight Management Systems. 

In his current position as ClientCare Contact Center Senior Product Marketing Manager for Lucent Technologies, he leads all marketing activities and functions associated with the company's Network Contact Center Solutions offering. He develops new product, packaging and service ideas, determines their potential and feasibility and provides associated market plans and analyses, value propositions, training and sales tools. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from Arizona State University.

About Lucent Technologies 
Lucent Technologies, headquartered in Murray Hill, N.J., USA, designs and delivers networks for the world's largest communications service providers. Backed by Bell Labs research and development, Lucent relies on its strengths in mobility, optical, data and voice networking technologies as well as software and services to develop next-generation networks. The company's systems, services and software are designed to help customers quickly deploy and better manage their networks and create new, revenue-generating services that help businesses and consumers.

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Published: Monday, December 8, 2003

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