Home based contact centres – A time for new thinking? (2011)

Description

An Ernst & Young paper that argues for home working as a cost–effective solution to many of the problems faced by contact centre operations.

The paper lists several recent technological improvements that help overcome some of the fears associated with home working:
– better broadband provision
– better data security
– better virtual workforce – management products

However, Ernst & Young identify management attitudes as one of the main barriers to achieving succesful home based agent (HBA) operations.

The paper argues that the HBA option will help:

– reduce an organisation’s carbon footprint
– reduce workforce attrition
– attract new workers to the contact centre
– enable organisations to establish more flexible work patterns

The paper concludes that implementation challenges remain, but are largely surmountable.