Kate Lister, author of Undress For Success—The Naked Truth About Making Money at Home (Wiley 2009) and Jim Ball, co-founder of Alpine Access, a leading virtual call center, discuss the myths and realities of a home-based workforce.
2. Five Common Myths about Virtual Call Centers
The Mythbusters
Jim Ball
Managing Partner
Alpine Access Consulting
Kate Lister
Telework Researcher, Author
Undress For Success -- The Naked
Truth About Making Money at Home
3. Five Common Myths about Virtual Call Centers
Why You Should Care
• Unlimited recruiting pool
• Happier workforce
• True redundancy
• Increase productivity/performance
• Cost savings
• It’s green
5. Five Common Myths about Virtual Call Centers
Control
• I can’t trust my employees
• I can’t manage my employees virtually
• I don’t know what they are doing
• They might be doing other things instead of work
• I can’t get my agents
real-time information
• There will be a lot of
background noise
6. Five Common Myths about Virtual Call Centers
Truth: Work at home has MORE Control
7. Five Common Myths about Virtual Call Centers
Technology
• It will be too expensive
• Software version control and tech support impossible
• Transmission delays
• I can’t get my calls out to them
8. Five Common Myths about Virtual Call Centers
Truth: Today’s technology is cheaper,
faster and more reliable than ever
9. Five Common Myths about Virtual Call Centers
Complexity
• I can’t hire people without
meeting them
• I can’t manage people
without seeing them
• My training is too
complicated
• The systems are too
different and difficult to
manage
10. Five Common Myths about Virtual Call Centers
Truth: Work at home can save you
time and simplify processes
11. Five Common Myths about Virtual Call Centers
Security
• Access from home will compromise my company’s
data security
• Employee systems will infect my infrastructure
• I can’t see what they’re doing with my customer’s
private information
• Caller information
is too sensitive
to allow outside
my physical facility
12. Five Common Myths about Virtual Call Centers
Truth: Work at home is safer and
has more security controls in place
13. Five Common Myths about Virtual Call Centers
Culture
• Our culture is too important
to us, agents won’t
understand who we really
are
• Agents won’t feel like they
can advance
• Agents will be too lonely
and will miss personal
interaction at work
14. Five Common Myths about Virtual Call Centers
Truth: People who work at home enjoy
rich social interactions and absorb
company culture
16. The Five Common Myths about Virtual Call Centers
Thank you for attending and
welcome home!
Kate Lister
Jim Ball
Managing Partner Author
Undress For Success –
Alpine Access Consulting
jball@alpineaccess.com The Naked Truth About Making
Money at Home
www.alpineaccess.com
kate@undress4success.com
www.undress4success.com