Don’t Overlook Contact Center Employees Who Were Working from Home Before COVID-19 Hit

According to the IWG Global Workforce Survey, half of all employees, globally, work away from the office 2.5 days a week. What’s more, a number of businesses set up entire operations – from the start – on a work from home basis.

When JetBlue began, most of its reservations agents fielded calls from the convenience of their homes. Extra bedrooms became mini call centers. Others looked at the nature of contact center workloads and realized they could have what amounted to an auxiliary group of customer service reps that could be pressed into service based on call volumes over the course of the day.

The U.S. Census reported in 2017 5.2% of all workers worked from home every business day. That’s 8 million people. Since that’s a rise from 3.3% in 2000, there’s a good likelihood we’re looking at nearly 12 million full-time work-from-home folks in the U.S. alone.

With the COVID-19 pandemic, many companies told thousands of office workers to continue their jobs from their homes. And while this shift creates lots of operational, practical, and emotional challenges for those working from home newbies, those who’ve been working from home all along need your attention as well.

Let’s take a look at employees of contact centers who do their jobs from their homes. This group represents a considerable portion of the 8-12 million or so people already identified as working from home on an ongoing basis in America.

These are people who do not have 9-to-5-type jobs. Regular work hours are not readily predictable. They often work split shifts, usually when time of need is greatest, that portion of the day with the highest daily intervals, the times when call volumes are at their peak.

For the most part, people in these positions like the flexibility and convenience of working from home. It’s not bad work if you can get it. Many contact center employees who work from home often stay with their employers for many years and are top-notch customer service agents.

The impact of the pandemic on these working from home employees is different from those who’ve been forced into this mode because of government edict or a precautionary posture by the employers.

As concerns about the virus go, well, viral, call volumes are rising. Think about it. With more doctor visits, calls to healthcare providers and health insurers increase. With the roller coaster ride the financial markets have been on, calls to firms serving that industry grow. Add to that the issues around travel and it’s not hard to envision heavy call rates at centers serving transportation and hospitality businesses. The need for customer service agents who work from home also rises. Their work schedules and workloads become more demanding. The flexibility and convenience they so enjoy is severely impacted.

Since these employees have been working from home all along, it is possible that the contact center they work for utilizes an employee engagement and performance management platform. By that I mean a system that blends personalized microlearning and real-time performance management with advanced gamification to help the company using it help their employees perform their best.

During a time of high stress, which for long-term working from home employees means there’s lots more work with lots less control over their work schedule, and more.

These employees need to be engaged with even more than they are normally. They need to be reassured that their efforts are recognized and rewarded. Further, the platform can be used to train them on new pricing or ways to calm an angry caller but to enlighten them on health matters, and more.

Even if they’ve been working from home for a long time, this particular moment is filled with distractions created by COVID-19. Just imagine how difficult it can be for a customer service agent to focus on a call from an irate customer who bought a toaster than doesn’t toast properly when someone they care about has been quarantined.

While attention should be paid to employees who suddenly find themselves in new, unfamiliar, disquieting circumstances, managers will do themselves – and the employees they lead – a great deal of good if they are also sensitive to and address the needs of those who’ve worked home well before the pandemic hit us.

You need to step up the frequency of contact. Find ways to help them manage their workload. Short of that, keep them motivated and feeling good about the extra effort. Encourage them to reach out to colleagues to foster community and bring those working remotely feeling a little closer together and more able to get through a health crisis. All this and more can be done well using an employee engagement and performance management platform.