The primary motivation for utilizing the at-home agent model is based on the straight forward reasoning that improved agent satisfaction leads to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Productivity:
At-home agents tend to be more productive than their office-based equivalents. According to a Gartner Group survey, home based agents were measured to be 40% more productive. Not only are they gaining time every day by not having to commute, at-home agents are able to stay more focused with less distractions when working from home.

Education:
80% of at-home agents have some college, vs. 34% of in-house agents.  The impact is that the aptitude for learning is likely higher.  On-line learning reduces training time (vs. classroom) by 20-30%.

Work History (including management):
40% of home agents have some management experience compared to 20% of in-house agents. This deeper work experience is returning higher customer satisfaction scores, and better selling/recovery performance.

Effective Service:
Remote agents, many of whom already posses these attributes when hired, engage more effectively with customers.  They strengthen and extend loyalty and trust with our client's brands.  They generate incremental revenue through better selling and service recovery.

Maturity:
The average age of remote agents is 38 versus 23 for brick and mortar agents.  Other attributes that mature team members demonstrate are improved attendance, productivity and retention.

Independence:
This mature, independent group doesn’t want or need a lot of face time. They need fast access to reliable information for providing service and they want to share their experiences with their virtual team members via a secure client specific chat room.  This means less scheduled training and coaching time, and less help desk support.

Problem Solving:
The net result of the experience, maturity and education of at home agents will be reduced handle time for service issues and a reduction of the required resources for help issues.