Alex conducts himself professionally and has the highest work ethic. Yet, he loses about 20% of his productive time. When his supervisor, Julie logs on to her IEX workforce management system and pulls Alex’s data for the past 12 months, it shows at a high level, in any given week, Alex is scheduled for team meetings, refresher training, coaching and breaks. Nothing unusual there, except that these activities take up 10.8% of his productivity. There is another slab of time that Alex enjoys outside of work, as paid holidays and his entitled vacation that adds up to another 7.7%. Together, we are now looking at 18.5%! Julie then pulls up the switch reports that show exactly what happens when Alex sits at his desk, ready to support customers. He only spends about 75-85% of that time helping customers and doing other customer related work. This means that Alex has a further unutilized 15-25% of productivity loss, when he could be upgrading his skills or doing other productive work. Alex is shocked to learn that he is actually considered unproductive for approximately 40% of his paid time! Although he loves his job, Alex is now beginning to see why he cannot make more money in this line of work. It’s not because of anything he’s doing wrong, but because the model has so much waste! Alex now wonders if there is a better way of doing this work, where he gets paid more for the hours he works, and the financial services company gets a lower price. Wouldn’t that remove the reason why jobs go off-shore to lower cost locations?

Meet Sarah, a freelance call center agent working from her home office just a few miles from the facility where Alex is employed. Sarah is self-employed, and enjoys preferential tax treatment as she has legitimate costs associated with working from her home office, such as office supplies, office rent, and work related commuting costs, which effectively lowers her tax rate. Minacs does not pay Sarah benefits but she was able to negotiate a competitive rate on private health insurance for herself and her family through her local insurance carrier. This additional monthly cost of benefits absorbs only a small portion of her tax savings. Sarah has a pre-negotiated rate card that is applied for her work on a “per handled minute” basis. She has visibility into call arrival patterns and has pre-authorized herself to take calls when the volume is higher, thereby giving her most “handled minutes” letting her make the most effective use of her time. Sarah is not paid for her breaks and free time like Alex, but unlike Alex, she is able to take them when she wishes and as often as she likes. This is important to her as she can check in on her two school aged children to make sure that they’re doing their homework. Sarah takes home 22% more than Alex after taxes and benefits while also saving on travel and childcare costs. It takes Sarah about 15 minutes each day to keep herself fully updated on her product and service knowledge through an online portal during her children’s evening reading time. Sarah also gets paid for an additional hour of coaching each week, to other new freelance call center agents using a Web collaboration tool. She particularly enjoys this time, when she can be someone else’s mentor. Did we mention that the financial services client gets a 20% lower cost for using this service?

As our outsourcing clients seek competitive advantage through cost optimization, we must consider alternative models of contact center management, challenge traditional thinking and create a win-win solution for everyone. In the coming series of blogs, we will examine both models in further detail.