Groundbreaking Research: Is the Call Center WFH Model Here to Stay After COVID-19?

• SQM Group has conducted groundbreaking customer and employee benchmark research with over 500 leading North American call centers to better understand what companies think about the WFH model post-COVID-19.

The call center industry is starting to determine if their current work from home model is sustainable after COVID-19. SQM Group has gathered customer and employee experience benchmark research to determine if the work from home (WFH) model is here to stay post-COVID-19.

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, most SQM call center clients decided to have their agent and support staff WFH. Furthermore, SQM’s 2021 call center employee research shows that 87% of agents are currently working from home vs. 2019 when 19% of agents worked from home. As most call center practitioners know, it was a sudden and drastic shift to a WFH model. SQM’s research examines the impact of pre/post-COVID-19 by assessing operational, employee, and customer experience data.

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Most call center leaders now believe that the WFH model has been one of the great unintentional positive outcomes of the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to higher employee and customer satisfaction with reduced operating costs, most call center leaders will continue with a WFH model.

SQM predicts that the call center industry’s post-COVID-19 workforce model will be 60%-80% agents WFH, and 20%-40% agents work in a call center facility-based model. This agent workforce allocation forecast is based on the fact that agents prefer WFH, forcing call centers to have a WFH model to attract and retain agents, especially when considering the current competitive labor market.

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The following are SQM Group’s major findings for customer satisfaction (Csat), calls transferred, average handle time (AHT), agent turnover, and agents WFH from 2019 to 2021:

• Csat (stayed the same or improved since 2019): In 2020 this percentage was 75% and in 2021 it was 63% which suggests that the WFH model is conducive for achieving high customer service
• Calls Transferred: comparing 2021 to 2019, 38% went up, 6% stayed the same, and 55% went down
• AHT: in 2019 AHT was 545 seconds and in 2021 AHT was 589 seconds (an 8% increase)
• Agent Turnover: 35% in 2019 and 28% in 2021 (7% increase)
• Agents WFH: in 2019 19% of agent WFH and in 2021 87% of agents WFH (68% increase)

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