Could the familiar contact centre setting, where hundreds of customer service agents sit at terminals wearing head sets become a thing of the past? So-called 'homeshoring' is the latest contact centre ‘hot’ topic, with experts making big claims that increased home-based work could save the UK industry substantial sums of money.

Using advanced technology and communication tools, moving jobs from the confinements of a call centre to the home seems a financially attractive solution. Analysts at research firm Datamonitor forecast global growth in the number of home-based customer service agents of 36.4% (one of the strongest expansion levels of any outsourcing market sub-segments) between 2008 and 2012. Their research suggests that home agents will number 224,000 by 2012, forming part of the mainstream customer service environment.

While in many sectors, homeworking can provide jobs for people previously excluded from employment, such as parents, carers, older workers and those with disabilities, selection of home-based agents will be based primarily on requisite technical skills, with hours of availability a secondary consideration.

But could the creation of a diverse and stable home workforce that enhances the customer experience through improved service really reduce the dependence on physical contact centre facilities?

The concept of ‘teleworking’ from home has existed for almost 20 years and although homeshoring is considered to be similar, it is a very different and more complex proposition. It requires a skilled workforce with disciplined shift patterns integrated into the operation of a virtual contact centre. Specialists need access to real-time voice and data in a secure environment to answer customer calls via skills based routing.

Despite 7.5 percent of the UK workforce working from home at least once a week (source: Office of National Statistics), very few ‘traditional’ contact centre advisors are afforded this option. Perhaps the practical realities of homeshoring prevent the idea from truly taking off.

Dale Saville, president EMEA for global customer care provider Sitel explains his reservations on the future growth of at-home agents. “Homeshoring is a buzzword at the moment, but recent data being collected in the United States indicates the likely global perspective. Some 250,000 agents are predicted to become homeshore agents in the next five years, a relatively small proportion of the three million labour force already working in contact centres. There is much talk of how homeshoring will double or treble in size over the next five years, but these statistics start from a small base.

“Homeshoring is not really a labour arbitrage opportunity or a cost solution but a service flexibility and specialisation solution. The issue of infrastructure management becomes more problematic in the homeshore environment than the contact centre arena. I believe the cost savings argument for at-home agents is not as powerful as the demand aspect which is specialised skills.”

“Even though systems and processes can be carefully placed to ensure smooth delivery of service from the home, many managers will lack confidence in their ability to ‘manage at a distance’ and some will not have faith in their staff's commitment to be as productive as they would be in a contact centre.”

With 2008 the year when the homeshoring phenomenon is predicted to take-off, business continuity managers will need to allow for the advantages and disadvantages of the homeshoring phenomenon. There are only a relatively small number of contact centre environments that would be ideally suited. Anything with financial regulation and implication cannot be performed at home due to information security concerns.

“We don’t see it becoming a large fraction of the contact centre space; it’ll be an important part but not a large part. This is primarily due to security and PCI compliance issues. I’m not sure that homeshore environments will be able to fulfil these requirements. But homeshoring has some very big advantages where unique fractural labour forces are needed within peaks and valleys of demand.

“People tout the value of the current at-home agents in terms of their education levels and retention rates and this raises the interesting issue of self-selection. Will those who opt to be a home-based call centre agent be more motivated, professional or disciplined than the average call centre job applicant and hence have lower attrition rates?

“I think that certain types of “case oriented” work will be nicely addressed by home-based agents. This type of work will typically involve more complex transactions that require research and investigation where the caller expects a longer resolution period. For example, medical claims processing needs a significant amount of data collection and analysis prior to a response versus the instantaneous response of directory assistance."

Saville concludes, “I think homeshoring will be an important, but small part of the overall customer service delivery model. It will fill specialised requirements for fractural labour to address peaks and valleys of demand and unique skill requirements that are difficult to recruit to a single call centre site. I am less sanguine about homeshoring as a cost reduction strategy.”