Everise first started our home-based CX solution in 2018, when we offered the opportunity to our first champion to work from her home to be with her daughter. Since then, we have learned a few things about what makes it successful and sustainable.
Over the past two years, we have invested in the people, processes and technology that enables enterprise compliance and operational readiness when managing a remote workforce. Here are four critical lessons we've learned about creating a successful home-based customer support strategy.
1. Managing a remote workforce requires specialised skills and a dedicated team.
Managing a work-at-home support team is not the same as managing your brick-and-mortar one. Each have their own unique challenges that require specialised skills and experience to overcome. Some of the processes that are radically different include recruiting and onboarding remotely; delivering virtual training and development modules; and remotely managing performance.
Specific training for how to manage a work-at-home workforce should become standard practise in all companies. For example, all Everise Supervisors complete our Everise Accelerator for Supervisors Training, which has multiple add-on modules that are tailored to overcoming the challenges, specific to managing remote teams.
2. Work-at-home infrastructure needs to be secure, scalable, and sustainable.
Sourcing and building the right work-at-home tech stack takes a large investment of time. With that process behind us, we've partnered with best-in-class technology providers and paired it with our proven remote working processes to create a technology stack that is PCI compliant and scales infinitely.
A fully managed Desktop-as-a-Service and multi-layered security enable agents to work remotely without jeopardizing the integrity of the enterprise network; and, our security and compliance is ensured via a Citrix Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), integrated with our best-in-class Softphones and IP Hard Phones with VPN for Remote Logins. To scale effectively, we leverage our global Microsoft partnership. Everise can on demand scale and descale on demand.
3. Data-led performance management is key to your long-term success.
Once your processes and technology are defined, performance management is the next critical element that needs to have a dedicated work-at-home strategy. Driving high performing home-based teams with continuously improving productivity metrics and net promoter scores requires daily visibility from real-time analytics and coaching tools.
Everise has two proprietary business intelligence products that enable our partners to have a real time view of both their customer experience metrics and agent performance.
Everise Experience Intelligence taps more than 60 data connectors to provide real-time reporting on customer interactions. Dashboards powered by Microsoft BI surface the most relevant business intelligence, performance analytics, and actionable insights on customers sentiment – quickly yielding unparalleled insights.
With C.H.A.M.P.S, our partners get a 360° view of our support champions performance and access team insights on how to take this data and act on it. Support champions have transparency on their performance, motivating their improvement. While supervisors get real-time data on agent performance and can engage downward trends immediately.
Our operations managers also drive performance and engagement by completing activities and reporting on our daily success tracker that outline differences from B&M management.
4. Full-time home-based agents consistently outperform their contract counterparts.
The final critical strategy decision you'll have to make is 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, but 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:
- Hidden training and attrition costs
- Part time brand guardians
- Limited performance and quality assurance controls
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.
Plan for this crisis, and the next.
Some of the world’s most important B2C brands leverage the benefits of the Everise home-based CX model. Our crisis-resilient, outsourced home-based support is doubly resilient by also being widely dispersed globally. Everise will craft remote CX solutions to get you through this crisis as well as the next one.
Related Posts and Case Studies:
- Case Study: Home Based Digital Workforce
- A Work-at-Home Business Continuity Solution for Customer Support
- Everisers Celebrate a Successful Work-at-Home Transition
