Contact Centres Urged to Use Work Wise Week 2008 to Experiment with Remote Working

Only a fraction of the UKís 6,000 contact centres use home working as a means to cut costs, motivate staff and improve customer service, according to industry experts, and should use Work Wise Week in May to experiment with ëvirtualisationí. Work Wise Week (15-21 May, 2008) is a not-for-profit initiative which encourages UK businesses to deploy smarter working practices, and contact centre virtualisation software provider CosmoCom and service provider BT believe it presents contact centre managers with the perfect opportunity to look closely at policies, such as home working. And industry analysts agree.

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Of the UKís 960,000 contact centre staff (source: ContactBabel) - one in every 60 people in the country - only a few thousand work from home, way behind the US, where 330,000 home-based agents are predicted by 2010 (source: IDC), CosmoComís UK managing director, Mike Adolphy, argued.

ìContact centres that have ëvirtualisedí, allowing home working or operating several geographically dispersed contact centres over a single consolidated technology platform, have seen far greater operational efficiency and improved customer service,î he said.

Adolphy said that virtualisation of the contact centre enables companies to grow from existing buildings, increased staff morale and productivity and could, where required, empower firms to eliminate real estate costs by allowing all staff to work remotely.

BT has benefited from its ëHomeshoringí policy in recent years and currently has 15,000 employees working from home, and that is set to increase. BT also has a Homeshoring proposition that can be specifically aimed at the over-55s, mothers returning to work, home carers and the disabled to help with corporate inclusion and CSR agendas. In addition employee attrition rates can be reduced from 26 per cent per annum in the physical contact centre to just 10 per cent in the virtual, Homeshored contact centre. Absenteeism can also be reduced significantly. All together Homeshoring as an option can be considered as a step in the right direction for our carbon agenda whilst helping an organisation to stabilise or indeed reduce operating costs.

Natasha Clough, Senior Global Marketing Manager CRM for BT, said: ìWith proven technology available on the market to enable firms to be much more flexible there is no reason why so many of the UKís contact centres should be content with the traditional contact centre model. Contact centre managers should view Work Wise Week as a great opportunity to look again at how they operate and how they could do things differently.î

Mona Sultan of analyst group Datamonitor said that virtualisation of the contact centre was the natural next step in the industryís evolution.

ìIn a few years we wonít be talking about ëvirtualisedí contact centres, because the practice will become mainstream and they will simply be referred to as ëcontact centresí once more. Much in the same way that ëe-commerceí is still, at the end of the day, just commerce but over a recently-emerged platform,î she said.

Phil Flaxton, chief executive of Work Wise UK, said that home working opens up the jobs market.

ìOffering home working provides opportunities to those who would otherwise not be able to work, such as mature workers, those with personal responsibilities such as carers and parents, and those with disabilities which makes commuting difficult, he said. ìAn increasingly competitive world means that employers and employees have to strive to use their resources effectively; one to gain better productivity, the other to balance work-life pressures. Virtualisation of the contact centre is just one option that can be offered.î

The third annual Work Wise Week runs from Thursday, 15 May to Tuesday, 21 May 2008.