Home Agents vs. Dedicated Agents

While deciding to outsource your call center, IT or ITES needs, you might be considering whether to select home-based agents, or dedicated agents. Home agents are people who work from their homes or other private workspace and mostly offer a dedicated service. While dedicated agents work for a vendor to offer various specialized services to you as a client.

There are many factors that must be considered before taking the next step. Factors mentioned below will help you analyze the pros and cons of both, and assist you in making a better and informed decision:

*In a recent survey on solopreneurs or home agents, 19.6% respondent hinted at time-management being a major source of pain, which includes attention to spouse, managing clients and family, time for yourself etc.
(Source: TheSolopreneurLife)

From the above table, choosing the type of agent clearly boils down to your outsourcing requirements and goals.

Select a Home Agent If:

• You are running on a very low budget
• You are not worried about a long-term commitment from the agent
• You are only looking to outsource a single or specialized task for a short period of time or on an experimental basis
• Outsourcing is not one of your primary business strategies
• You want to get a task done quickly without much business procedures and processes
• You are looking for personalized attention
• The task that you wish to outsource is not business critical

Select a Dedicated Agent If:

• You have decided that outsourcing is a major business driver with dedicated budgets and clear outsourcing objectives
• You are looking for a long-term business association
• You are looking for specialized and expert level services on a single or multiple areas of business critical operations
• You cannot compromise on reliability, responsibility and quality
• You wish to outsource across geographies
• You seriously want 100% focus on your core business activity with better management of tasks

Factors like nature of the task, duration of the assignment, short-term or long-term association, budget allocations, ease of handling, etc., will have a clear say in choosing the type of agent suitable for your needs. Base your decision strictly on these factual reasons and have a profitable association.

Want to hire dedicated or home agents for your business? Contact us today.