Podcasts 
Work-at-Home Contact Center Agents are Secure and Happy
This episode features Andrew NcNeile, Chief Customer Officer, ThinScale Technology. Andrew is responsible for sales and marketing operations. His team focuses on helping BPOs deliver endpoint security to bring-your-own-device (BYOD) employees through Secure Remote Worker. Secure Remote Worker allows BPOs to improve security, manageability of IT, and recruit agents from different locations, resulting in a better agent experience.
Background
At the start of 2020, iQor had a stable, robust work-at-home solution in place, having deployed it years earlier to various domestic and offshore customer care programs. But as COVID-19 began impacting global operations in March of 2020, the company saw the demand for work-at-home solutions expand rapidly and took the opportunity to strengthen its infrastructure with a BYOD solution.
A large segment of iQor’s work-at-home team now utilizes a BYOD work-at-home solution. We researched the marketplace for a technology enabling Work-at-Home employees to secure their personal PCs to work remotely as frontline agents for our clients’ customer experience programs. We selected ThinScale Technology as our partner for BYOD endpoint security.
Need for Speed
iQor needed to meet our client’s needs while meeting our employee’s need to work remotely during the pandemic. In the early days of COVID, iQor moved 18,000 employees to work-at-home in three weeks! An amazing achievement that preserved both the employee and customer experience.
BPOs who adopted an early relationship with ThinScale could make rapid transitions of agents to work-at-home, as mentioned above.
For example, in Trinidad and Tobago, iQor moved 95% of our team to work at home in a matter of days. The move was applauded by the Minister of Trade, Gopee-Scoon
“iQor Trinidad Limited, a global Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) which offers support for several international telecommunication and retail companies, has managed to retain its employee base over 1,000 persons and has transitioned 95% of its workforce to work-at-home providing an internet allowance to support team members who required that extra support.”
More Robust Recruiting
iQor needed to expand recruiting beyond where the company has a physical presence (domestic, nearshore, and offshore) and into untapped labor pools in non-urban areas that offer equally irresistible talent looking for an opportunity to work from home. A survey in 2020 reveals that 51% of knowledge workers reported a productivity boost working from home during the pandemic with fewer meetings, no commute time, and fewer interruptions.
ThinScale worked with BPOs for more than one year before the pandemic to provide a validation link for the agent during the recruitment process. Agents download a validation link to their device, and they are ready to go. This allows us to recruit people who reside far away from our physical facilities. We can now recruit from remote towns with talent pools, allowing us to source agents at speed.
For example, iQor is a leader in seasonal staffing services for retailers, utilities, catalog companies, and other segments, with on average year-round teams representing roughly 3,500 employees. When holidays or events for a business drive customer interactions higher, iQor proactively grows the employee base by 164% in anticipation of the demand. This may not sound like much until you realize that’s it’s adding about 5,000 new employees who need to be experts on day one, bringing the total to over 9,000 employees for a window of time. And this can repeat itself throughout the year in planned and unplanned ways. With our secure work-at-home model, we’re very efficient at quickly recruiting and onboarding frontline customer experience employees.
Non-Invasive to Employee’s Device
The ability for agents to configure their devices with Secure Remote Worker without physically installing software is very productive. A single link installer eliminates shipping costs and complex logistics. The agent simply clicks a link to install the ThinScale Technology Secure Remote Worker product, and they are available to work securely immediately.
Once an agent logs out, the agent is completely disconnected from all work-related functions, enabling the agent to fully disconnect and unwind from work. This is an example of iQor’s commitment to creating happy employees.
Security
We needed to mirror security to the same level of security at iQor facilities as required by our clients.
The Bring-Your-Own-Device solution allows iQor to leverage our agents’ devices by temporarily using ThinScale’s Secure Remote Worker platform to lock down a device. Once locked down, the employee cannot access personal programs or software and logs into iQor’s secure cloud environment—the same environment accessed as when the employee is on-site.
Our Working Relationship
Andrew says that working with iQor has been very cooperative from the beginning. Led by Tarn Shant at iQor, the relationship has been a sense of partnership. We’ve mutually built an operation that is working well for both of us.
Andrew’s Fun
At the time of this recording, Andrew had just returned from holiday, where he surfed in Ireland in cold weather in the rain. During non-COVID times, he loves to travel and enjoys skiing. He is also an avid reader and enjoys the theater.
Visit thinscale.com to learn more about Remote Worker Security. Learn more about iQor digital customer experience capabilities.
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