Work-at-Home Solutions Are Transforming Call Center Operations

get on board. So far, Google and Mozilla support the WebRTC platform, but Apple and Microsoft do not.

It's just a matter of time before they, too, adopt WebRTC, Matula says, noting that the world is moving "toward working on the Web and communicating right within the [browser]."

Another technology development that has further empowered the work-at-home workforce is the online social community, built using products such as Microsoft's Yammer, Salesforce.com's Chatter, Jive, Lithium, and Google Hangouts. Through social communities, remote employees can communicate with their colleagues, engage in two-way virtual meetings, share information, give and receive training, and acknowledge the efforts of their peers.

Meeting platforms such as Cisco's WebEx, Citrix's GoToMeeting, and Adobe Connect serve the same purpose. "The use of video is expanding, as it should," Rowan says. "In-person interactions are extremely valuable and can't be duplicated in the work-at-home model, but we can get close with the use of video."

Waite says building a sense of community is important because "it's easy to feel isolated when you're working at home.

"Sometimes you may need an extra lifeline," she says. "It makes [at-home agents] feel more bonded to the company...that they have a team of people around them as a resource."

Webcams can help provide home agents with face-to-face contact with their supervisors, coaches, and colleagues, and give supervisors a sneak peek into the agent's work environment.

As a backup, some companies are also requiring work-at-home agents to have a dedicated cell phone with email and instant messaging access so they can maintain constant contact during local power outages or Internet service interruptions.

WFO provides visibility

While managing agents away from the office can be a challenge, there are a number of management tools that can function just as effectively in the virtual environment as in the brick-and-mortar environment. Workforce optimization solutions are chief among them.

"You want to let [agents] manage their own schedules...but you need to be able to see the status of the people where you're routing the work," Waite says. "[WFO] allows you to have total insight and oversight."

WFO solutions today can bring together quality monitoring, call recording, workforce management, analytics, performance management, e-learning, coaching, and other capabilities and blend them with reporting capabilities that can alert supervisors about call volume, average handle time, and other factors so they can ensure that service levels do not slide when agents are not in the office.

Supervisors will also need quality monitoring scorecards that are updated at least daily to show how each team member is performing against the relevant key performance indicators.

Call recording becomes even more important because training is not as easy to organize with teams of agents scattered across many locations. But with the right recording software, supervisors can find examples of best-practice interactions and share them with agents regardless of their locations.

Some organizations also use presence technology that automatically signals supervisors whenever agents log on, log off, go on break, 

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