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Breakdown calls handled at home: how the AA is using teleworkingThis article by Andrew Bibby, in a slightly different form, was first
published in Teleworker magazine (UK), Feb/March 1998
The motorist has broken down, and he wants the AA to get him home. His
call, on a mobile phone from somewhere in south Wales, is taken by Carol
Stokes, one of the AA's emergency call handling staff. Following the
standard procedure, she fills out the details on the screen in front of her:
the motorist's name and membership number, the sort of car he is driving,
what seems to be wrong and - prompted here by the built-in location finder
in the AA's software - exactly where the car currently is. Once the details
are input, Carol reassures the driver: the patrol will be there in due
course.
This sort of exchange happens thousands of times a day in the AA's four
call centres (in Leeds, Newcastle, Halesowen and Cheadle) which are
dedicated to taking breakdown calls. Since December 1997, however, the
calls which Carol Stokes processes from motorists in difficulties are routed
direct to her home on the outskirts of Wakefield.
Carol is one of ten AA employees who are taking part in the organisation's
telework pilot. Work now happens from an upstairs spare bedroom equipped
with a special teleworker's desk designed for the AA. Cups of tea come up
whenever possible from her husband downstairs.
Carol Stokes says she is delighted with the arrangement. The AA seems
satisfied, too, with the way its pilot is progressing, though full evaluation
will not take place until the summer of 1998 when the initial six-month
period is over. Ultimately, however, the AA talks of extending telework not
only to staff currently working at the other call centres but also to take on
new employees in other parts of the country.
Like other companies, the AA has a mixture of motives. Sue Moulson,
manager of the Leeds call centre and one of telework project co-ordinators,
talks of the problems which all Leeds call centres are now finding in
recruiting and retaining staff. Leeds, at one time given the sobriquet ofï
'call centre city', is home to several major call centres.
The AA also sees home-working as increasing the flexibility of its
employment arrangements. Unlike their call centre colleagues, the
teleworkers are working split shifts, typically from 7.30am-11am and 4.30pm»8.30pm. These correspond to the morning and evening rush hour periods,
the AA's busiest times for breakdowns. Home-based staff are also more
easily called up to cope with short-term unexpected surges in incoming
calls.
Technically speaking, the AA has adopted the sort of procedure followed by
BT in its small-scale telework pilot in Southampton: ISDN2 lines are
installed to each teleworker's home, carrying both voice and data traffic.
Each AA teleworker is connected to the company's automated call distributed
system, exactly replicating the situation in the call centre. "It's as if the
teleworkers were sitting in a corner of the office, where the supervisor
can't quite see them," Sue Moulson says. Calls can be listened to by
supervisors, to check teleworkers' performance.
The AA is one of only a small number of British companies to have explored
the possibility for teleworking in the call centre environment - or what is
sometimes called the 'dispersed call centre'. The AA has also gone a stage
further than most telework pilots, in recruiting new staff directly into
homeworking. Four of its ten current teleworkers are new to the company.
In addition, each is registered disabled (one is a wheelchair user). Sue
Moulson says that the AA engaged the services of a disability consultant
during the project planning process and recruited partly through the
government's employment advisory service for the disabled: "hopefully
teleworking can open a few more doors," she says.
Taking on new employees to be teleworkers can raise challenging managerial
questions: how do you train your staff and ensure that they are imbued
with the company culture, for example? Not surprisingly, many companies
considering telework prefer to begin with existing employees.
The AA asked its four new staff to travel in to the Leeds call centre for the
standard four week training course, followed by two weeks' supervised
training in actually handling calls. Thereafter, however, the AA has devised
an interesting innovation: each new teleworker is allocated another call
handler as a 'buddy', who spends up to two weeks in the teleworker's own
home helping them through this initial period. The idea is an attempt to
recreate some of the conditions for informal support which exist in the call
centre, and to give the teleworker a friend in the centre who they can ring
up later for news.
The AA says that it hopes also in future to develop procedures for training
new teleworkers entirely in their own homes - something which would be a
necessity, if staff were to be taken on in geographically remote areas. The
organisation is upbeat about the possibilities: as it points out, it has long
experience in the training and supervision of its team of several thousand
patrol staff, who also work alone.
For the present, the AA is seeing how the Leeds pilot goes. Come the
summer of 1998, the company will evaluate the experience, undertake a
cost/benefit analysis - and then consider expanding to become a much more
serious employer of teleworkers.
To contact Andrew Bibby:
I am a professional writer and journalist.
Tel: +44 (0) 1422 845799
Fax: +44 (0) 1422 845800
E-mail: andrew@andrewbibby.com
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