All of our agents work from home.  Here is why...

1. Higher Agent Productivity
Many businesses don’t have the space to create separate areas for inbound customer support and outbound sales. At-home working completely eradicates problematic noise level issues and allows agents to work uninterrupted.

2. Improved Customer Service
Most people would agree that they can perform better in a more focused environment where concentrating on the task at hand is easier. Without interruptions from other staff members, our agent’s only priority becomes the customer. Customers appreciate this as well as they have the full attention of the agent and are not asked to constantly repeat themselves.

3. Wider Talent Pool
A busy contact or call center environment is not to everyone's cup of tea. In fact it could be a major deterrent for agent recruitment. Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, we provide a flexible option for mixing onsite and remote workers seamlessly. And at-home working is an attractive choice for skilled staff who don't enjoy the busy contact center environment.

Remote work is also a great fit for people who have the perfect skills for the role but have family or other commitments. Home workers have the flexibility to do the school run or go to their appointments but can still log in and commit to their agreed hours. This creates a win/win situation by adding certain agents at certain times of day where you know you're likely to have peaks.

4. Increased Flexibility
Using home workers can help you to scale up and down in line with the needs of the business. Depending on the type of business you operate, you may have seasonal fluctuations and changing call patterns. With remote working, we have the flexibility to schedule our staff as needed making it far easier to manage seasonal peaks.

Cloud hosted contact center software lets us simply add additional agents on the fly so that they’re up and running in an instant.

5. Cost Savings
Equipment and office space isn’t cheap. Huge cost savings can be made by employing home workers. With a physical office, you need to be ready for the maximum number of agents that you'll ever need -- even if it's only a few days a year that you actually need that many. By utilizing some additional home workers you can help keep expenses related to space and infrastructure to a minimum.

And for a growing business, employing at-home workers allows you to expand without physically relocating.

6. Skill Retention, Staff Loyalty and Reduced Agent Turnover
Sometimes employees have an off-day where the last thing they want to do is face 50+ of their colleagues. We’ve all been there. And what about the occasional snow day? With remote work, employees can still be productive without requiring time off for unexpected issues.

Have you ever heard someone talk about how much they enjoy the drive to and from the office? At-home work alleviates the burden of commuting to the office, making for a happier employee. And happier staff leads to greater commitment and more motivation.

With the average age of a contact center employee being in the mid 20's, some of your more mature employees may have the best skills but don’t necessarily want to spend their day alongside staff members the same age as their children. Rather than leaving the business they may want to opt for home working.

Bottom line: Increased Employee Engagement = Increased Employee Retention AND Increased Customer Satisfaction ratings.

7. Visibility of Activity and Ownership
Home working, and the lack of insight into the employee’s activities, used to make managers nervous. But today’s cloud contact center system provides just as much insight and visibility into agent activity as if they were in the office. Any abnormal activity will be automatically detected and flagged and you can see at a glance what all of your agents are doing, wherever they are.

You'll also often find that agents working from home have an increased sense of ownership.

With a cloud contact center like RFC Staffing & Virtual Solutions, you can very quickly start to tap into these benefits. Forward thinking companies have been doing this for years and it's a trend that continues to grow. Reach out to one of our experts to talk about how we can help your business achieve its goals through our cloud contact center adoption.

It's easy to get your calls to RFC Staffing VS. We provide a new phone number with all our plans. You can either advertise this number directly, or if you already have a number that you want to use, you can forward it to your RFC Staffing VS number one of three ways:

• Forward your calls to RFC Staffing VS all the time.
• Forward your calls to RFC Staffing VS as needed.
• Forward your calls on a ring-no-answer basis (calls will automatically rollover to RFC Staffing VS if you don't answer after 3 rings).