I don't know about other companies, but I didn't require my staff to have a separate phone line. They were required to have a high speed internet connect, a VPN connection to the office and VoIP software on their computer or a separate unit. We didn't like having separate phone lines as there could be a glitch in the calling and they would end up in the personal voice mail of the persons home instead of being handled properly (this happened to one of the OPS team members).
That being said, each company will be different and have their own reasons for their rules.
All the metrics were captured through our phone switch, ticketing system, and survey system. So everyone knew what they were being measured on.
I managed a small technical support contact centre of 80 full-time and part-time agents. About half of the agents also worked from home, like your situation. When we we trialed the ability of agents to work from home we identified the need to keep the agents connected. We used MSN Messenger for a while but soon recognized that this wouldn't work long term. We implemented and IRC chat server and found this fit our needs.
When we were implementing this, I admit that I had the same questions as your management staff had. The results were surprising and very positive from a management point of view:
1. Our average handle time went down 15 seconds
2. Our productivity (calls handled, time on phone) went up 10%
3. We were able to keep key employees even when they moved out of our employement area
4. Improved the first call resolution rate by 5%
I also believe this was a factor in our ability to have a low employee turn over of 8% in the contact centre.
Later we were able to leverage the technology to improve communication between the contact centre and other groups in the company. Announcements regarding current operations situations could be quickly conveyed to the entire team reducing the trouble shooting time during an system outage and improving communication so efforts were not duplicated.
Hope this helps and good luck.
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I don't know about other companies, but I didn't require my staff to have a separate phone line. They were required to have a high speed internet connect, a VPN connection to the office and VoIP software on their computer or a separate unit. We didn't like having separate phone lines as there could be a glitch in the calling and they would end up in the personal voice mail of the persons home instead of being handled properly (this happened to one of the OPS team members).
That being said, each company will be different and have their own reasons for their rules.
All the metrics were captured through our phone switch, ticketing system, and survey system. So everyone knew what they were being measured on.
I managed a small technical support contact centre of 80 full-time and part-time agents. About half of the agents also worked from home, like your situation. When we we trialed the ability of agents to work from home we identified the need to keep the agents connected. We used MSN Messenger for a while but soon recognized that this wouldn't work long term. We implemented and IRC chat server and found this fit our needs. When we were implementing this, I admit that I had the same questions as your management staff had. The results were surprising and very positive from a management point of view: 1. Our average handle time went down 15 seconds 2. Our productivity (calls handled, time on phone) went up 10% 3. We were able to keep key employees even when they moved out of our employement area 4. Improved the first call resolution rate by 5% I also believe this was a factor in our ability to have a low employee turn over of 8% in the contact centre. Later we were able to leverage the technology to improve communication between the contact centre and other groups in the company. Announcements regarding current operations situations could be quickly conveyed to the entire team reducing the trouble shooting time during an system outage and improving communication so efforts were not duplicated. Hope this helps and good luck.