As global circumstances compel businesses to rapidly adopt work-at-home customer support solutions, many are faced with a critical, yet often overlooked, decision: whether to engage with home-based workers on a contract or full-time basis.
Given the many challenges associated with sending agents home to work, this may seem like a small matter by comparison -- yet the impact on your brand can be enormous.
At Everise, we believe the risks inherent to home-based contract workers are unacceptable for enterprises dedicated to superior brand experiences. There are three main risks you should be aware of with a contractor model.
Risk 1: Hidden Training and Attrition Costs
At Everise, 90% of new employees complete their training. The BPO industry as a whole averages a training throughput of 80%. For contractors, that number plummets to 50%.
In other words, contractors are as likely to quit before taking a single call as not. And yet you, the client, get charged anyway, To account for this enormous shortfall, excess contractors are hired and licensed, and that cost is passed on to you as well.
That’s no way to run a business.
In case you’re struggling to visualize all that, here’s a scenario showing how this works. Let’s assume the requirement is 100 work-at-home agents, and our throughput is a conservative 85%, as opposed to 50% for contractors.
|
|
Contractor Model |
Full-time Employee Model |
|
Hire and Train |
~270 The additional cost of training 170 people is passed on to you. |
~120 The additional cost may or may not be passed on to you, depending on the terms with your vendor. |
|
Throughput |
x 50% |
x 85% |
|
Productive Agents |
= 135 The additional cost of the required 100 work-at-home licenses are passed on to you, plus an additional 35 you don’t need and didn’t ask for. |
= 102 The licensing cost passed on to you mirrors what was requested. |
Risk 2: Part-Time Brand Guardians
According to Gartner, 90% of businesses compete on the basis of customer experience. Success in that fight requires buy-in by customer-facing assets. Contractors are notoriously lacking in connection to your brand. Full-time employees are motivated, invested, and eager to gain the industry knowledge and specific skill-sets required to maximize customer satisfaction and optimize return on CX investment.
Risk 3: Limited Performance and Quality Assurance Controls
Outsourced support centers in the US are subject to strict employment and labor regulations, which impose many limitations on contract work. For example, contractors are exempted from being subject to set work schedules, additional training, and even supervisory oversight. Most notably, contractors are limited to 20 hour work weeks, which seems designed to exclude motivated, passionate agents.
Commit to your customers with committed Home-based agents
The challenges of launching a home-based customer experience workforce are non-trivial on their own, without imposing the added difficulty and expense inherent to a contractor-based model.
The Everise philosophy holds that a work-at-home model comprised of full-time employees offers both an optimal brand experience and the ability for our clients to flexibly mitigate risk in an uncertain market.
Our technology architecture and business intelligence ensure a high level of compliance, security, and quality; nimble enough to deliver service across a distributed workforce; while, balancing the safety and security of our employees working on your behalf.
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