CRM - October 2008 - (Page 23)

As technology drives flexibility, the living room is becoming the new contact center. Will customer service ever be the same? BY CHRISTOPHER MUSICO F or nearly 10 years, Tangela Hamilton, a 33-year-old Dallas resident, had worked in traditional contact centers. Her life, however, took a monumental shift when she took in her niece, citing a difficult family situation. “My whole life has changed since she’s come in,” Hamilton says, adding that she had never raised a child before.“I have to make sure she’s at school every morning. Working in a brick-and-mortar contact center, I either had to get her there super-duper early or make arrangements.” Consequently, in January 2007, Hamilton started to look seriously at options to become a work-at-home agent (WAHA). It wasn’t until November, after months of searching on the Web, that she landed a position with Working Solutions, a virtual contact center provider in nearby Plano, Texas. Eleven months later, she’s a supervisor in charge of 350 agents—from the comfort of her own home office. She says she wouldn’t have it any other way. “My piece of mind is priceless,” she admits. “My ability to be able to take care of the things I need to, including being home when my kid gets out of school…[it’s] priceless.” She’s not alone. In fact, with IDC predicting that we’ll have 300,000 work-at-home agents by 2012, Hamilton is part of an exploding market with tremendous potential. (“Exploding” may be an understatement: Independent research firm Datamonitor predicts a 36.4 percent compound annual growth rate for the WAHA field through 2012.) “This [homesourcing] model just continues to grow in popularity,” says Frost & Sullivan Strategic Analyst Michael DeSalles. Like any new market or industry segment, though, WAHAs have to be seen as a viable, high-quality option—and they’re beginning to be. But what makes people want to be part of the customer service ranks from their living rooms, and how is the service they provide different than that found in traditional contact centers? As with the customer service industry itself, the answers are more complicated than they seem. CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT | OCTOBER 2008 23

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of CRM - October 2008

CRM - October 2008 Contents Front Office Feedback Reality�Check Customer Centricity The Tipping Point Sprinting Toward Disaster? SAP�Retains Market-Share Lead in�CRM A�Week of Strong Customer�Service CRM�on Twitter Build a Good Event and They Will Come Required Reading There's No Place Like Home The New Breed of CRM�Consultant The Price is Right...You Hope How Much Marketing is Too�Much? The�Sweet Smell of High-Quality�Service The Next Act! For An Acquisition Some Stories Never Get Old CRM�Eases the Pressure For WIKA�Instruments Secret of My Success Re:Tooling Scouting Report Pint of View

CRM - October 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.