The Challenge: Optimize Agent Staffing

By Michael DeSalles
Industry Analyst, Contact Center, Frost & Sullivan

Enterprises large and small have begun to treat their call centers as the strategic corporate asset that they really are—critical to corporate brand image, customer retention and growth. Because of this new attitude, finding a way to best optimize agent staffing and ‘stop the bleeding’ from soaring attrition rates has become a major concern for contact centers today. At the same time there is pressure to reduce overhead, cut real estate costs and trim operational expenses. Frost & Sullivan believes that this is the industry’s single biggest challenge by far –especially at the high end of the value chain. Like a moving target, it can be hard to spot and even harder to nail down. One of the ways that many contact centers attack the problem is by deploying their own home agent force or outsourcing home-based agents employed by service providers. What we’re seeing is the movement of call center agents away from brick-and-mortar facilities to the suburban home office. Most of us know this as the Work-at-home agent model, virtual agent staffing or more affectionately, as “home sourcing”.

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