http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=20KI5SQT1CKVECRBAEOCFFA?type=ourWorldNews&storyID=7579763NEW YORK (Reuters) - People who reach Esther DeJesus when they call Office Depot Inc.'s customer service center have no idea that she's sitting at home in a room decorated with pictures of Garfield and Betty Boop.
The Orlando, Florida, resident, who works on the retailer's account for call center contractor Willow CSN, is one of a new breed of customer service representative.
Rather than commuting to a crowded office, she puts in 37 to 40 hours a week at home and sets her own schedule.
"It is really convenient," said DeJesus, who likes the setup because it allows her to take care of her grandmother. And she shares her home office with her twin daughters, who work part-time for Willow while going to college.
After some unsuccessful attempts to move call centers abroad, U.S. companies are shifting some of that work back to this country -- and into people's homes.
Besides Office Depot, JetBlue Airways Corp., General Electric Co. and Staples Inc. are among the companies that have been using stay-at-home customer service representatives as an alternative to traditional call centers in the United States, India and the Philippines.
Home-based workers are usually happier, which means better service, these companies say. The arrangement also allows employers to schedule people in small part-time slots when call volume is higher, rather than hiring regular call-center workers who get paid whether they are busy or not.
To work at home, employees need a computer that meets certain specifications, such as high-speed Internet access. After taking a training course, they're ready to start answering calls that are routed to their home phone.
Companies are passing on some of the savings they're realizing in rent and office equipment. Stay-at-home customer service representatives generally command $13 to $14 an hour, while the industry rate for call center workers is $8 to $9.
HOMEWARD BOUND
Office Depot plans to close nine of its 11 call centers by the end of September and replace them with home-based workers. The Delray Beach, Florida-based company now has 1,400 remote agents and plan to double that number in a year.
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Home-based agents are one response to the growing political backlash against offshoring. Top personal-computer maker Dell Inc., for example, is retreating from India because customers have complained about the difficulty of understanding the workers' accents.
"Expectations about the benefits of offshore will mature," Alexa Bona, a research director at Gartner, said in a report. "More creative responses to outsourcing, such as work-at-home agents, will start to gain ground."
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