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Throughout 2011, approximately 3,000 TELUS team members participated in customer first day, an opportunity to experience the “frontlines” for themselves, taking them from their day-to-day roles and job shadow a frontline team member to empower a customer first approach across the organization.

I had the opportunity to visit the Barrie call centre collections department shadowing client account manager John Hill. His training as an air traffic controller may be why John works through his calls with a sense of calmness that immediately puts his customers at ease.

John has been a client account manager for just over three years as an at home agent. “I’m really enjoying the balance that working from home offers,” said John. “With an ailing parent, it gives my family a level of comfort being close to home and allows me to get some personal things done during my breaks.”

Photo: John Hill, Client Account Manager, shown here at his TELUS office desk (thanks for coming into the office John!)

TELUS has implemented an at-home-agent program within many of their call centres across the country. “It’s important to ensure you also foster team engagement when your team is remote,” says Leigh Nettleship, team manager of the client account team. “We have a team meeting once per month where everyone comes into the office, to talk about work processes, but also get a chance to interact face-to-face. We also encourage our team members to participate and to work together as a team in office charity events, food drives, or other volunteering activities.”

“You need to have a personality to work from home and not feel isolated from the social factor of work as well as the self discipline to work on your own,” adds John. In fact, the at-home-agent program includes an application and rigorous interview process that ensures the agent is a right fit for the program.

My personal experience at the Barrie Call Centre enabled me to see first-hand how the customer first mindset directly impacts our clients.

A big thank you to John, Leigh and the Barrie call centre team for making me feel welcome!

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If you have anything to do with a contact centre you have obviously heard of one of the latest trends in our industry; At-Home-Agents. It seems like everywhere you turn now At-Home-Agents are top of mind for contact centre business owners, directors, managers, agents and IT and telephony architects. People are either talking about it, they’re planning for it, implementing it or they have it up and running. Have you ever thought of creating your own At Home Agent Program or if it’s the right thing for your contact centre?

At first glance this latest trend seems to be the ‘perfect storm’ for the contact centre industry. The business has a keen interest to continue to run their operation more efficiently while reducing overhead costs. Agents see this as the best of all worlds. They are saving money, saving time and achieving a far better work/life balance all without having to leave your job for something more flexible or closer to home. And the environment!! Who doesn’t want to contribute to fewer cars on the road and reduced emissions. Few things are as powerful as a contribution to the environment as not commuting to work everyday.

The truth is…Its all true. There is a reason why At-Home-Agents is such a powerful concept in the industry and when done right, it can be a ‘perfect storm’ for MOST contact centres … but it’s not for everyone. If you are thinking of embarking down this road consider the following literary advice...

“Just because he did it doesn’t mean you have to do it” – your Mother

The reasons for moving forward with an At-Home-Agent Program are as numerous as the benefits. Maybe you are nearing capacity (or in some cases reached capacity) for your facilities but you don’t want to build a new contact centre? Maybe you’re suffering agent attrition problems and you would like to hold onto your best agents longer? Or maybe you’ve heard that At-Home-Agents have even better performance metrics than when they are in the office?

While the reasons and benefits of an At-Home-Agent program may seem numerous and obvious, make sure you know exactly why you are going down this road.

Lesson: Before you decide that this is the best solution, clearly define what your problem, problems or future problems are and if the results of an At-Home-Agent program is the best solution.

“The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry” – Robert Burns

For all of you that have launched large programs or projects within a contact centre the ones that are related to the agents directly always seem to be the most intricate. The At-Home-Agent trend is no exception. The inter dependencies of every aspect of your contact centre will come forward in the planning of the program. Expect it to be far more complicated than you imagine. Being experts in Project Management will help but there is also a lot of new territory to cover. How do you manage remote agents? What are the legal ramifications of employees working from home (Workman’s compensation, fire extinguishers, security & confidentiality etc.)? What sort of new policies and procedures are required? What is the best technical solution to get all of your internal applications, data and voice channels to the agents’ house? Will my business tools work seamlessly (WFM, Quality Monitoring)?

Lesson: Large At-Home-Agent programs are complex; research, plan and execute accordingly. We all know the pain associated with not doing this correctly.

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it” – Contact Centre operation types

We all know that we work in one of the most measured industries in business today. The granularity of what contributes to shrinkage is getting ridiculous. We count things in seconds and have a metric for every agent behaviour.

Well, At-Home-Agents are no exception. Contributing to this ‘perfect storm’ is the fact that many of most important agent performance metrics move in the correct direction ( attrition, conformance, sick time, average handle time) or remain unchanged. These metrics in our interconnected contact centre world lead to great savings in recruitment, training and operations. This is a significant component when considering your business case for At-Home-Agent programs. I have seen many examples of business cases that capture the standard overhead assumptions but it’s more complicated than that.

Lesson: Construct a sound business plan. Capture all the relevant data you need and make sure it is accurate. There is no shortcut to good planning and on going analysis.

Ken Coopland has worked in contact centres in a variety of positions for over 22 years and is a Contact Centre Consultant with TELUS. TELUS has over 1100 agents working from home and started their program in early 2005.

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From the trenches: My Customer First Experience

The Perfect Storm: Are At-Home-Agents for you?

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