1. White Paper
Going Home –
Which Road Do
You Take?
Talent Assessment in
the Remote Agent Model
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2.
Background
Over the last ten years, interest in remote agent contact center models has steadily
increased. For example, attendance at the 2012 Remote Agent Summit held in
February in Dallas increased by 30% over 2011. And home agent models are not
limited to the United States and Canada. Several firms are operating home agent
models in Europe and a UK version of the US Remote Agent Summit is planned for
July. Michele Rowan of At Home Customer Contacts which hosts the Remote Agent
Summit and Workshops reports that:
 Survey results from the 2012 attendees indicate that their percentage of home
agent population will double in size from YE 2012 to YE 2013 going from an
estimated 18% to 36% of their customer contact population.
More companies continue to shift contact center capacity from the traditional brick and
mortar infrastructure to the remote agent model because of the low investment and
high returns.
The value proposition of the remote agent model includes a wide range of operational
areas:
1. Cost reduction through lower real estate costs
2. Improved productivity and agent performance
3. Higher employee engagement
4. Talent attraction and retention
5. Business continuity
6. Preparation for the workforce of the future
In this discussion, we will focus on the talent assessment strategies in the home agent
model. Specifically, we will highlight:
1. The competency profile of a successful home agent
2. Understanding your recruiting model options – hub and spoke versus virtual
3. Preparing for candidate volume in the virtual model
4. Odds and ends to consider
Competency Profiles of Home Agents
The remote agent – what makes them different?
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When hiring remote or home agents, two questions need to be answered:
1. Can they do the contact center job?
2. Can they do the contact center job at home?
3.
When you are hiring for a home agent role, you are first hiring for a customer care,
support, sales, loyalty, or collections role. You must first understand if the candidate
fits the hiring profile for these jobs. Then, you must understand if the candidate can
perform the job while at home.
We suggest a convenient 4 Quadrant framework to understand the competency profiles
of each remote agent contact center job.
Four Quadrant Model: Matching Competencies
The chart to the right outlines
and Results
four groups of competencies
that can be used to understand
and define the contact center
role. A job analysis can help
you understand which
competencies are most
important to your contact
center job. To learn more
about contact center
competencies, visit our blog
postings on contact center
competencies here, here and
here.
Now that we have defined the contact center job we can think about the important
competencies that drive performance at home. Data gathered by FurstPerson from over
1,100 job analysis survey participants across 29 different organizations, employing
agents in both brick and mortar and at home environments confirmed that autonomy
and time management are two competencies that rate as more important for successful
customer care performance in an at-home environment than in a brick and mortar
contact center. These are not the only competencies to consider though. You can read
more about this research on our blog here.
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Key remote agent competencies include autonomy and time management.
Understanding the competency profile Four Quadrant Model: Matching Competencies to
is a critical first step but knowing how Assessments
to evaluate the candidate against the
competency profile is an even more
important second step. The 4
Quadrant chart to the right references
talent assessment tools that can help
you evaluate job competencies and
better select job candidates. For
example, for home agents, measuring
autonomy and time management can
best be performed through personality
assessments. Measuring multi-tasking,
for example, is best done via a
simulation. More complex call types
like technical support or sales may
require using a problem-solving
assessment. Be sure to read more
about using assessment tools as part of
your hiring process on our blog here.
The key point is to understand the difference between the traditional brick and mortar
contact center role and the home agent role. These critical differences determine
success or failure for the home agent role.
If you are considering moving top performers home as either reward or to pilot a home
agent model, you should consider evaluating them for the home agent role. Just
because they are successful as a brick and mortar agent does not mean they will be
successful in the home agent role. In our experience, many organizations move
employees home and then see deterioration in performance because they are not fit for
the remote agent role. You can learn more about this in a previous white paper post
on home agents and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) and Net Promoter performance.
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5.
Hub & Spoke versus Virtual
With remote agent models, you have two recruiting models:
Hub & Spoke – this means that your Virtual – this means that agents
agents work at home but live within can live anywhere.
a convenient drive time of the
physical center.
Comparison Table: Hub & Spoke versus Virtual Models
Hub & Spoke Virtual
 Offers pilot option to try out the remote  Access to talent anywhere and anytime
agent concept with minimal effort which improves your ability to source
 All hiring and training can potentially be difficult skill sets (i.e. nurses) or the most
done at the contact center reducing your talented potential agents
Key Benefits
learning curve and investment  Significant growth in candidate volume
 In-person contact with candidate  Hiring optimization – you can match
 Some growth in candidate volume candidates to all contact center jobs
because of home agent option
 Increase in candidate volume does not  Very challenging to meet candidates in-
match virtual model person which requires careful recruitment
Potential  Stuck with same talent pool associated process planning to personalize the process
with brick and mortar center  Requires careful planning, execution, and
Drawbacks
 Cannot fully utilize real estate cost investment for hiring, training, and front line
savings management
 
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In our view, the access to talent is the most critical benefit of the virtual agent model. In
a traditional brick and mortar labor market, superior talent for contact center jobs is
capped based on population size, competitive influences, and distance. You might be at
a 3 to 1 candidate to hire ratio or maybe 4 to1 or 5 to1. This limits your ability to select
potential top performers. Virtual models allow you to remove or reduce population size
and distance from the recruiting equation. You now have access to more talent which
means you can be more selective. Think of hiring at a 20 to 1 ratio. Virtual home agent
models enable you to hire more potential top performers.
Why does this matter? It is all about optimizing your hiring process and performance to
drive more profit for your organization. Using a data-driven hiring process will
demonstrate that the more selective you can be, the more value you can drive in new
hire production. This can lead to performance improvements of 20% to 50% for more
selective hiring models than hiring models stuck at a 3 to 1 hiring ratio.
The figure below helps illustrate why. The virtual agent model offers you a larger
selection of potential top performers. This equates to screening out potential poor
performers and hiring only those that meet or exceed your performance threshold. Only
a data-driven hiring model will help understand these performance trade-offs that are a
direct result of your hiring practices.
Figure: Labor Pool Comparisons
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The other key benefit to the virtual model is the ability to optimize your recruiting
efforts. For each candidate that completes your process, you can match them to all of
your contact center job families and call types. This enables you to save significant
recruiting expense, improve the chances of a candidate being hired by your
organization, and improve overall fill time.
Candidate Volume
For hub and spoke, candidate volume is not as large a concern because it will mirror
your brick and mortar volume. However, moving to a virtual model requires you to
carefully plan the recruitment process and workflow. You should experience an increase
in candidate volume with a virtual model which means you need to consider hiring
automation. If you stick with a recruiter led interviewing process, your costs will
skyrocket, the candidate experience will be poor and, the candidate and recruiter effort
will be significant. Whether it is using assessment tests or some other type of filtering,
you should plan to automate the front-end of the hiring process. The figure below
highlights a traditional recruiter led model with a technology, data-driven model. While
this is an illustration of real world models, notice that the automated approach, backed
by data-driven hiring models, reduces the number of interviews from 100 to 56 which
saves the recruiting team significant time. Moreover, the 56 candidates at this point
have passed two assessments calibrated for performance in this organization.
Figure: Hiring Process Models and Management – Technology Saves Time and Cost
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Odds and Ends
A few other things to consider for the remote agent model:
Employee or Independent Contractor
Most remote agent programs use an employee only model for many reasons but
primarily because directly employing remote agents solves many potential problems. In
fact, several independent contractor models are now being challenged with lawsuits.
Pick a State or Province
With 50 States, the United States offers mini-labs on employment laws, costs, etc.
Frankly, some States, like California, are almost universally avoided by virtual home
agent models because of the costs to employ someone in that State. Make sure to
understand the costs and regulations associated with each State so you can focus your
sourcing spend on the most attractive markets.
Recruiting Tactic
One interesting recruiting strategy is to set-up a Google Alert for call centers or contact
centers so that you are notified of contact centers that are closing. With a virtual model,
you can then reach out to that organization’s Human Resources team to potentially
source and select those employees into your remote agent program.
Provide a Computer or Not
You will need to determine your company policy on providing a computer to the new hire
or requiring them to purchase or use their existing computer. This has a number of
technical and financial implications including compensations and tax benefits.
Work Shift Trends
According to survey data from the 2012 Remote Agent Summit and Michele Rowan, an
emerging trend is increased utilization of split and staggered work shifts at home (often
several a day), attracting high-caliber employees to customer contact positions, while
sharply matching arrival patterns of voice and non-voice work in very targeted
increments. The results are labor cost savings as material as facilities reductions for
many organizations.
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About FurstPerson
FurstPerson provides talent assessment solutions for customer contact
organizations. We enable companies to hire superior talent for service, sales,
and support roles. These roles may be in-person, over the phone, or via
chat/email. Our talent assessment solutions are customized by client, designed
by our expert selection consulting team, and delivered via our web-based talent
assessment platform. Each solution is designed to improve business
performance.
FurstPerson has provided contact center hiring solutions since 1997. Our
solutions are active in over 1,000 locations across North America, Europe, Latin
America, and Asia. Our industry leading solutions cover both brick and mortar
and home agent needs. Our innovative technology includes call center
simulations as well as other industry leading assessment tools.
Our contact center clients have realized results that have improved new hire
retention, job performance, workflow efficiency, and overall profitability.
FurstPerson clients typically realize up to a 70% reduction in 0 to 90 day attrition
and up to a 45% improvement in performance.
Learn more about FurstPerson:
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