Home-Based Agents: Expanding your Talent Pool and Realizing Cost Savings

In this podcast Michele Rowan discusses the customer-focused virtual training program headed up by the Hilton and discusses how homesourcing greatly reduced Hilton’s overhead costs within the call center.

Hilton is raising the bar for other call centers by providing outstanding customer service. One of the ways it is achieving this is with an at-home call center representative program comprising 40 percent of its call center representatives. With decreasing budgets and off-shoring tax law changes, domestic work-at-home programs for call centers are growing exponentially.

Michele Rowan, former Vice President of Customer Contacts and Performance Management at Hilton, espouses the benefits of at-home call center programs. A work-at-home strategy, according to Rowan, increases quality and cuts costs. While the concept of at-home agents has been around for several years, interest and utilization have grown exponentially because of the current economic climate and associated cost pressures. At-home call center programs, or homesourcing, are making waves in the call center world through improved call center technology as well. Major technology improvements enable straight-forward transition to the at-home call center model, reduced capital investment and reduced labor costs. Homesourcing also provides a cost-effective solution to President Obama’s initiatives around removal of tax breaks for offshoring U.S. jobs (which will invariably drive up out-sourcing costs).