Wouldn’t you like to pay $0 for your contact center workspace? It’s possible by taking advantage of home based call center agents. Using a home based call center agent has many benefits for your business–lower costs, flexible scheduling, etc. However, until recently enabling your call center agents to operate from their homes was difficult and challenging. With the advent of Internet telephony and software-as-a-service call center solutions, a virtual call center supported completely by home based agents became a reality.
Hiring a call center agent for a virtual call center is different from hiring for your traditional physical call center. Let’s look at some of the challenges.
Virtual Call Center Hiring Challenges
There are many challenges in hiring a call center agent for home work. Here are some of the key ones:
- Candidate volume – Because of the lack of geographic restrictions, job inquiries can come from a much wider area. In addition, people with conditions or inclinations that prevent them from working/commuting to a busy office building can apply. The candidate pool is immediately much larger. FurstPerson, an employment solutions company, found that the candidate volume tends to be 5-10 times more than a traditional job. Alpine Access, a call center services provider that depends completely on home call center agents, hired only 2% of its applicants.
- Training – Training can be a difficult issue for home based call center agents. Companies need to ensure candidates are competent enough to handle their jobs working alone, with only virtual monitoring and support from supervisors.
- Screening candidates – Many people think home based call center agents can be hired with less stringent requirements. This is not true. Home workers need the same capabilities as traditional call center agents and the ability to work independently. CB Richard Ellis’ Labor Analytics Group found that selecting agents for home work requires a more robust screening process.
Dealing With Hiring Challenges
So how can you mitigate these hiring challenges?
Candidate volume is both a blessing and a curse. You get a much wider pool from which to hire from, but it also takes a greater time and effort investment to go through them all. To deal with this, it’s important to have a highly effective hiring assessment workflow process. There are also many software solutions that can help the hapless hiring manager to screen for the most qualified call center agent candidates.
Effective policies and good technology can also help you screen candidates. Some companies only hire candidates with a certain reasonable driving distance of a physical call center. Clear expectations need to be communicated and adhered to. For example, some parents might think they can perform call center work while caring for children. The employer should clearly tell the parents that they need child care during working hours. A wider candidate pool should allow you to focus on hiring from the top–make sure you screening process supports makes it easy to find the best call center agent.
Finally, there are multiple approaches towards training. Some companies use a tenure program, where agents are only allowed to work from home after working in the company’s traditional call center for a certain time period. Others conduct training in a physical location, then send the agents back home for work. Obviously, screening candidates who live within a manageable driving distance makes these solutions work best. The other option is to conduct all training completely online. E-learning and training software is ubiquitous, conduct research to make a good choice.
While the benefits of a virtual call center are many, ensure you have planned for the challenges that come with it.