Month: February 2020

Let’s face it. Running a contact centre has become more confusing, complex and challenging, even for the seasoned enterprise professional. With more demands from consumers across a multitude of channels, alongside the need for different technologies and compliance requirements, ensuring end-user loyalty in an efficient manner has never been more difficult. But it need not be that way, provided the right business model is in place, one that leverages the best people, platforms and processes.

One of the core areas of any business model must be ‘People’. Operating a home-based agent model, we are fortunate because we can attract an abundance of top-quality applicants interested in pursuing a home-based contact centre career.

Team members can choose the campaign that they want to work on, helping create a highly experienced and engaged workforce… which equates to better service for our clients and their customers.

A home-based model offers our people the ability to work anywhere in the UK, in a way that suits their lifestyles while providing full-time employment and a full set of benefits to ensure team members’ financial stability. This has a major and positive impact on driving down attrition. Moreover, team members can choose the campaign that they want to work on, helping create a highly experienced and engaged workforce… which equates to better service for our clients and their customers.

Our experience contrasts sharply with those of many bricks-and-mortar contact centres, which often have great difficulty finding a strong base of applicants. In the current near full-employment UK economy, many struggle to retain the talent that they have. With due respect for the traditional contact centre model, the target agent profile is under heavy demand from not only customer experience providers but from other sectors, such as hospitality, travel & leisure, retail and front-line financial services. Combined with recent increases in the minimum wage, it is little wonder that good agents for bricks-and-mortar contact centres are harder to find and costs are increasing!

As a home-based contact centre, we can avoid these pressure points. Our recruits are drawn to customer service as a career. They like working from home; it fits their lifestyles. And because we recruit from across the whole UK – not from a finite pool of labour, typically within a fifteen mile radius of a ‘traditional’ contact centre – we do not experience the regional workforce pressures that many operators do in contact centre hotspots like Manchester, South Yorkshire, South Wales, Glasgow and the North East.

I believe that 2020 represents a great opportunity for business whilst operationally being a challenging time for customer experience delivery.

The virtual model allows home-based contact centre operators to focus on pulling in specific skill sets that would otherwise be very tough to recruit for in a traditional contact centre. We are able to better serve clients across sectors by attracting agents with specific experience, higher education levels, language capabilities or professional certifications. This results in a higher-touch point between the brands that we represent and the consumers we serve.

I believe that 2020 represents a great opportunity for business whilst operationally being a challenging time for customer experience delivery. The key for enterprises that want to focus on consumer retention is fresh thinking around the traditional way of doing business. Embracing new operating models that concurrently deliver the best results alongside efficiencies that can be passed back to the client.  As consumers, we continue to grow more discerning than ever, and Sensée’s virtual approach is designed to exceed expectations.

Is your business prepared for the unexpected?

Take the current Coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak.  At the time of writing, 14th February 2020, just nine people have tested positive for coronavirus and the risk to individuals is currently considered ‘low’.

Yet the World Health Organisation has declared the situation a “public health emergency of international concern” with The Foreign and Commonwealth Office issuing daily updates, including travel advice to and from various geographies.  In late January 2020, Chinese officials heightened concerns by pointing to evidence that transmission could occur during the viruses’ incubation period (i.e. in the days before people become visibly ill) or amongst carriers who never get sick.

Currently, travellers arriving from Wuhan or Hubei Province (or elsewhere in China if they have symptoms) are being advised to stay at home for 14 days and avoid public places.  But what if those travel restrictions were extended and really started to impact our daily lives.  For instance, if travel restrictions meant we couldn’t travel to the office, or to face-to-face meetings?

It’s not that far-fetched.  A recent Forbes article points to several global businesses including Starbucks, KFC, Pizza Hut, and McDonald’s that have closed stores, closed offices and introduced Work-at-Home policies.

Is that an option your business has considered?

Is Work-at-Home possible?

When it comes to the spread of diseases, highly populated business operations are clearly a major concern.  And especially so given that Coronavirus carriers won’t necessarily exhibit symptoms and can therefore, in theory, infect a large number of people very quickly.

If your people work in people-heavy operations like factories, goods delivery depots or retail stores home working isn’t an option.  But if they work in others, such as contact centres or back office admin functions, where the main ‘physical tools’ of their trade are a desk, a phone and a computer, then it could make a great deal of sense.  In theory at least…….

Not as simple as it sounds!

Ask any organisation that has introduced contact centre homeworking (or HomeAgent working) and I’m sure they’ll tell you the same thing: you can get a homeworker up and running easily enough from a technology and HR perspective, but getting a HomeAgent operation running effectively is a completely different matter.

In short, operational effectiveness in homeworking calls for a completely different mindset across everything that your business does: from recruiting the right homeworkers, to adapting a virtual mindset when it comes to training, management, scheduling, security, communication and technology.   And these are not skills that can be learnt overnight.  The skills, knowledge and operational excellence required to operate a HomeAgent operation can take years to master, with organisations often making many mistakes along the way.

If homeworking is used as a short-term measure, for example in the contact centre context discussed above, organisations won’t have the luxury of trialling concepts and refining their model over time.  The only options will be to work with an experienced outsourcer that uses a home-based model.   Or indeed just get on with it themselves.

Six Considerations

If you are considering the latter as part of a Business Continuity Plan for your contact centre personnel, here are six considerations:

1. Communications: Ensure that you pay particular attention to all aspects of communication. Not just company announcements but communication within teams, and real time support for advisors that may be experiencing difficulties (using virtual technologies, instant messaging etc.).
2. Team Manager Role: Don’t ignore the crucial role of the Team Manager providing support and guidance. If possible, use technology to enable and deploy a system of virtual floorwalkers.
3. Technology Support: If homeworkers are using company equipment (computers, phones) to conduct their work, ensure that you can support this equipment effectively.
4. Appropriate Office Space: Ensure that homeworkers are able to work from a suitable office in the home. Working and making calls from the living room with kids playing in the background, or dogs barking, just isn’t acceptable!
5. Planning and scheduling: Use the opportunity of homeworking to add greater flexibility into your planning schedules – such as split shifts and micro-shifts (i.e. shifts of an hour or less). This will enable homeworkers to fit work in around their other daily priorities (such as taking the kids to school or caring for a relative) while helping your organisation better match resources to daily peaks and troughs.
6. Security: If you are moving away from a highly secure office environment, you may wish to add extra security measures – such as restricting homeworker access to certain customer data. Also ensure that you are not breaching your obligations under FCA, GDPR and other regulations.  And ensure company equipment is adequately insured for home use.

These are just a few thoughts.  If you have other concerns, consult an expert with direct experience of contact centre homeworking.

Whether you are looking at homeworking as a short-term fix, or a long-term strategy, remember that it isn’t for everyone.  Get it right, however, and it can deliver huge advantages in terms of a better work-life-balance for your employees and financial benefits for your business.  According to a major 2016 HomeAgent survey, for example, 42% of organisations reported lower attrition, 58% lower absenteeism, and 46% higher productivity as a result of homeworking.

As a response to the current Coronavirus issue, homeworking will, in theory, deliver a more dispersed workforce with a lower single point of failure, and hence a lower risk of cross infection.  This will enable your contact centre to operate as normal even if other business functions need to close down.

Over a long career in outsourcing, I have seen many changes. How we do business as providers of front-line services has little resemblance to even a decade ago. One of the things that strikes me is the need for outsourcers to be proactive around fostering a more inclusive workplace, an approach that benefits the agent in tandem with the client whose services or products they are representing. This aligns with ensuring that environmental responsibilities are taken seriously, and not just paid lip-service. I am proud to say that Sensée is committed to ethical delivery, and we are already taking the needed steps to be a British provider of choice in this regard.

“One of the things that strikes me is the need for outsourcers to be proactive around fostering a more inclusive workplace.”

People are a good starting point for this discussion. After all, human resources count for over 70% of contact centre operations in the UK, so it just makes sense to ensure that front-line team members are happy and motivated. And because workplace uncertainty is so pervasive, at Sensée we want our agents to feel as financially secure as possible. This is why we pay our team members a real living wage, in order to remove the uncertainty that comes with so many other jobs in the current marketplace. There are no zero-hour contracts at Sensée — this way of working only drives low morale. When somebody joins our team, they do so with the understanding that they can count on a steady income, one that includes benefits, holidays and pension.

“There are no zero-hour contracts at Sensée — this way of working only drives low morale.”

But, at Sensée remuneration is only a part of the agent equation. Anybody that knows the contact centre industry realises that working conditions greatly influences how well a team performs. This is why we have worked to ensure that our workforce across the UK is able to take full advantage of their virtual status. Agents can map their skills and interests to the client campaign that they choose to work on. This immediately means more engagement with the role (and customer) at hand. Consider, too, that among those seeking to work for Sensée, the lack of a daily commute is a real selling point. Anyone who has been caught on the motorway or the train during rush-hour can relate to this. The Sensée ethos is based on inclusiveness, and we are proud to be an employer of choice for individuals who may have reduced mobility, have mental health challenges, have carer responsibilities, live in rurally isolated communities, or who simply do not want to work traditional shifts in a Bricks and Mortar environment.

“we are proud to be an employer of choice for individuals who may have reduced mobility, have mental health challenges, have carer responsibilities, live in rurally isolated communities, or who simply do not want to work traditional shifts.”

The net result of our ethically driven workplace practices is a team of highly engaged agents who are ready to serve consumers above and beyond. The numbers speak for themselves. Our annual attrition is around 10%, well below that found in traditional outsourced operations. And with sickness levels under 3% per annum, it validates that our agents enjoy coming to work.

This goes hand-in-hand with our commitment to the environment. With business more worried about the climate than ever before, it is important for customer experience to be done with a green approach. Therefore, Sensée’s work-at-home virtual model is more relevant now than ever. Keeping agents off the roads, allowing them to work from their homes, delivering high-quality service means that we are operating with a carbon footprint that is 90% lower than an equivalent sized bricks-and-mortar operation. Our clients love this, and it has been a great morale booster for our agents who are very worried about the ongoing climate change crisis.

“we are operating with a carbon footprint that is 90% lower than an equivalent sized bricks-and-mortar operation.”

Ethical contact centre delivery does not need to be hard — it simply makes sense. Sensée is leading the market with this approach to customer experience delivery, and it continues to be received positively by agents and clients alike. I believe that this approach is the right one for 2020 and beyond.