TMCnews Featured Article

Call Center Outsourcing is Shifting to Home-based Agents

By Susan J. Campbell, TMCnet Contributing Editor

Call center outsourcing has become a big challenge for many companies as they head into the 2012 fiscal year. In an effort to provide more onshore telemarketing services, the competition is driving up the prices, but are they really offering any real value? 

When the economy bottomed out in 2008, the market noticed more companies looking to regroup and try a different direction to protect revenues and control costs. The direction they often considered was call center outsourcing using home-based agents. 

Sitel, a call center outsourcing company, is being driven to make greater investments into home-based agents due the diversification being driven by their clients. That strategy is being paired with the in-center work already being done. 

Plus, the global operating model is allowing users to service customers offshore, inshore or by agents at home, according to a Sitel white paper. Solutions are being tailored to meet those particular markets.

Companies have clear goals in place to create a customer-focused sales and service culture. Consistently focusing on behavior coaching maintains the company's quality expectations when including advantages, features and the benefits customers want. 

With Sitel's proven track record of integration solutions, channels and processes, it makes sense that companies take advantage of their tools for call center outsourcing.

Sitel's Work@Home Solutions offers companies the ability to protect their profit margins with home-based agents. This offers a solution for call center outsourcing that is profitable for both parties. In order to make call center outsourcing a solid solution for return on investments, the goal must be to reduce the volume of work at brick-and-mortar operations. 

Coupling the home-based agents and self-service automation can add benefits like higher agent retention, lower training costs, enhanced disaster recovery plan, flexibility and increases agent access to ROI. 

Using Sitel's global operating system, the Work@Home Solutions offers access to the in-depth knowledge necessary to accomplish any company's objective: higher quality of sales. GOS gives users higher standards when it comes to policies and procedures used in call center outsourcing. This skill has been developed and perfected over the last 26 years. 

In addition to its established solutions, Sitel has a Center of Excellence strategy that was clearly set up to enable a more virtual home-agent environment. This allows home-based agents to focus on their virtual recruitment, technology applications, management and training. The Center of Excellence delivers thought leadership, learning and performance executions, enhanced customer service quality and more skilled resources. All of these make for better call center outsourcing solutions.


Edited by Jamie Epstein