Call center agents ...
without the call centers

Some of the biggest advocates of virtual call centers are home-based agents, who say the arrangement provides flexibility unavailable in traditional office jobs. Customers of 1-800-Flowers.com, for example, have no way of knowing that when agent Barbara Leeper-Zilk picks up their call at her home in Littleton, Colo., she’s often is doing a load of laundry between calls.

“I get up at 10 to 6, let the dogs out, grab a bottle of water, go upstairs and turn on the computer and I’m at work,” says Leeper-Zilk, one of nearly 4,000 agents working for Alpine Access Inc., a Golden, Colo.-based virtual call center firm.

Leeper-Zilk first signed on for extra spending money. Many other home agents are mothers of young children who work during school hours, and older people who want to work limited hours or pick up supplemental income.

“If I was to have a desk job and was required to sit seven out of eight hours, that would be too much for me,” said Pam Brackett, who takes calls from her home in Bellingham, Mass. and whose daily routine is limited by severe rheumatoid arthritis. “If it wasn’t for doing this, I wouldn’t be doing anything.”

The virtual call center concept has been around since the 1990s, but companies were reluctant to give up the managerial control and supervision of a brick-and-mortar call center.

One of the earliest adopters was JetBlue Airways Inc., in 2000. The airline now has a 900-agent network of work-at-home reservation agents, all in the Salt Lake City area.

“We have this pretty much down to a science of where our peak demand is and how many hours we need on the phones,” said Steve Mayne, JetBlue’s manager of business processes. Agents “can bid for an ideal schedule, but it’s awarded on seniority. We tell them they need to be flexible.”

Not everybody — or every home — is suited to call center work. Companies make that clear, and frequently listen in on calls to ensure agents follow the rules.

“This is not alternative childcare. This is a special work environment — no kids, no pets, zero tolerance,” said Tim Houlne, CEO of Working Solutions. “We can’t afford for the dog to start barking when the FedEx man comes to the door.”

Still, Houlne says, compared to a traditional call center the work-at-home arrangement requires a level of trust that has strong appeal to many people.

“Instead of bringing people in to work, we would bring the work out to them,” said Jim Ball, co-founder of Alpine Access. “We basically have an unlimited pool available to us.”

Many of the agents work 15 to 20 hours a week. But some have fashioned it into a financial mainstay, jockeying schedules and making the most of incentive rules, sometimes juggling multiple accounts.

Take Allor, the suburban Dallas agent. She switches from taking orders for printer cartridges and legal pads to booking hotel reservations, timed to the make the most of both the morning rush by office workers to place orders, and the midday pickup in people making travel plans.

Late in the morning, Allor’s older daughter, Carrie Cerneka, tiptoes upstairs and signs on at another workstation on the other side of the bed. In between calls, mother and daughter joust over who’s the most productive home agent.

“Hey, look, I got 4 — 4 reservations!” Allor teases.

“That’s what she says to make herself feel better,” says Cerneka, 23.

On this account, Allor earns 22 cents per minute on the phone and 75 cents for each reservation. The pay averages better than $14 an hour. Allor usually works 50 to 55 hours a week and says she earned about $27,000 last year, when she worked fewer hours.

The rap on jobs like Allor’s, an issue even the virtual call center companies say people should be mindful of, is that it can leave some agents feeling isolated. But agents say it beats trading office gossip around the watercooler, and eliminates office politics. The proof, Allor says, is the constant stream of messages she volleys with co-workers around the country.

“I have friends on here that I truly adore,” Allor says of her virtual colleagues. “Sometimes we hang up at night and the last thing you want to do is get on the phone. But we do. We’ll call each other and root each other on.”

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