What is homeshoring?

Put simply, it means staff providing call centre activities from their own homes. It can also be seen as a virtual call centre with the agent known as a “home advisor” who is fully integrated in the employer’s contact centre strategy.

Homeshoring takes work stations out of call centres with their high overheads to home-based workers in the Netherlands rather than opting for offshoring. Homeshoring reduces costs, but not at the cost of quality and efficiency.

With today’s vastly improved and more stable broadband connections, it has become easy to make calls over the internet and at the same time to work within a secure enterprise network. The result is a concept offering broad-ranging functionality including presence detection through which call centre staff in various locations together form a strong response team that is completely transparent to customers.

Homeshoring also involves a different type of person. Through homeshoring, individuals who would not normally be considered for call centre work can now apply their specialist knowledge in such roles. People, for example, who live far away from a call centre, older staff, senior citizens, people who want to combine their work with looking after their family and the disabled. In short: homeshoring enables anyone with the right knowledge to work virtually in a contact centre.

It is predicted that by 2012, more than 224,000 people will work in a call centre from their own homes. The sector currently counts 47,000 agents, most of them living in the United States.

What are the benefits of homeshoring?

Overhead costs are drastically reduced. For example, there is no cost for the lease of expensive business premises, call centre furnishings, heating the building, lighting, parking spaces and office equipment and supplies.
Employee motivation goes up. Because staff are able to work more flexibly, have a reduced journey time and ultimately retain more of their salary, employee morale is higher. Homeshoring has also been demonstrated to have positive effects on employee satisfaction and in driving down sick leave.
The recruitment process is simplified. Companies are not bound by regional recruitment and selection campaigns. Workers wishing or forced to work from home are as a group rarely approached by other organisations.
A 2007 survey conducted by Exony (Virtual Contact Centres and Homeshoring: Driving the Benefits Home) indicated that the four million contact centre employees currently working in the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada jointly generate more than six million tonnes of CO2 each year. Homeshoring on the other hand is a sustainable, environmentally-friendly solution since it reduces both travel between home and the workplace, as well as energy consumption in the contact centre itself.

Homeshoring is the future, and not just in the call centres sector. The biggest barrier to a major breakthrough is traditional management still keen to retain control!
That’s a thing of the past with our web-based contact centre solution. Full recording, live eavesdropping and the ability to whisper something to home advisors without the prospect hearing are just some of the options our system offers.