Home-based call centres a winner for SalesForce@Home

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 13 August 2009 12:25

IT Industry - Market

40% of contractors have previously worked in call centres, and the remainder all have related experience gained in hospitality, retail or office work.

One client has a big peak of activity between 5 and 8pm, which is great for home-based contractors as an at-home spouse can hand over the kids when the other parent gets back from work and then hit the phone.

As for recruitment, "we're leveraging the online communities," Murray-White told iTWire. The company hasn't advertised for staff in 17 months, yet it has a waiting list of 300 people.

"A happy workforce gives you superior customer service," he said.

On the technical side, Salmat uses Citrix to deliver a virtualised desktop to the contractor's home PC. This works well even for activities that use relatively heavyweight software such as Siebel, and clients are happy with the security aspects as it is usually the approach that they are using for remote access.

Voice communication is handled by setting up one long call from the SalesForce switch to the contractor's phone. This provides a very robust solution, according to Murray-White.

While IP telephony is on SalesForce@Home's radar, his opinion is that consumer-grade broadband is not currently capable of delivering the quality required. Murray-White expects that may change in the next year or two.