The rise of homeworking for contact centre agents

The rise of homeworking for customer services and contact centre agents

With Whistl’s outsourced contact centre services, we look to support your business with tailored solutions to meet the demands of your call volumes and queries. With both a southern and northern UK call centre base we have been monitoring the rise of call centre home-working and why this trend could be here to stay.

Jabra and Kantar carried out workplace trends research survey “Knowledge Worker Study 2018”, and questioned business professionals within the US, UK, Germany and France specific questions around how businesses now operate in today’s modern world.

_{Jabra Knowledge Worker Survey, 2018. Kantar TNS, based on 2604 interviews}.

Top highlights from the Jabra and Kantar report

• Workspace: Home is the hub of productivity: with 4 x more employees in 2018 highlighting working from home to be the most productive option for them, compared to in 2015.
• Hindering factors: With more open plan offices, noise can be one of the hindering factors for specific job roles. Home environments can create more controlled environments for specific job roles.

The DMA has also outlined some key changes in the trends of ‘homeworking’ in the modern working world. With only one in ten full-time workers working from home before the turn of the millennium, in the UK this has risen to one in four and the forecast for 2025 is one in three.

Does homeworking create greater productivity?

With homeworking rising from 2015, nearly one in three (28%) UK employees consider working from home to be the most productive – however not all businesses have created the right infrastructure and flexibility yet to allow this with (60%) of these employees restricted from this opportunity.

Whistl looks to create the most effective and tailored solutions for your call needs. Homeworking could offer benefits for your business based on cost efficiencies and call throughput outside of typical business hours. With fully managed staff and the right technical infrastructure homeworking could increase your customer service efficiencies.

Advantages of homeworking for contact centres:

• Creates a larger skills pool: Maximising the chance to match agent to customer need whether this be a language need or technical support, improving call resolutions and customer satisfaction.
• More flexibility in call availability: With more agents available to work around other commitments, offering extended working hours without increasing headcount
• Better forecasts and schedules: Call volumes can be shared across the workforce creating a better balance in costs and call volumes to each call agent

In addition to the above benefits, homeworking also reduces carbon emissions and decreases congestion on the roads. With more flexible location working solutions, homeworking can offer more employment opportunities to individuals that might not be able to seek employment within a fixed location call centre.

We will continue to monitor the trends in working environments and welcome the opportunity to discuss how homeworking for contact centres could work for our customers.