The graveyard shift for call center agents became one of the reported crimes. Based from a police report last June, 2 suspects were arrested when they supposedly took the cellphone of a call center agent. The victim was on her way to work at around 11 p.m. The suspects were arrested but the cellphone of the victim was not retrieved. In Bacolod, the police reported that a call center agent was attacked while robbers towed her valuables. To help call center agents to keep away from crime, a software firm is planning to let them work at home.

Edgar Doctolero, Avaya’s Country Director, said Let's face it: if I have a daughter who will work the graveyard shift who will have to commute alone…there’s too much risk. And I think their concern is valid. The thing is, there's still this pool of agents that we do not know about who has the aptitude, the skills, the knowledge, to be contact center agents but we cannot tap them because of these concerns. One-X Agent which was released last June, aims to help the contact center industry to hire talented pool of agents who are doubtful to enter the business because of security concerns.

It is a simple all-in-one desktop application intended for forceful contact centers and it has the functionality of a common phone used in call centers. Below are several features that enable call center agents to work effortlessly in any location:

• for an agent working in headquarters
• for an agent working in a branch
• for agents working from home.
   
  Based from the present data of Contact Center Association of the Philippines (CCAP), the hire rate in the contact center industry was only about 5 to 10 from 100 applicants. Doctolero said that he will be proposing the work-from-home agents in a meeting with call center companies. When an agent works from home, the one-X Agent will provide easy access to both agent and contact Centre Company. It will run using Microsoft Windows. It has a pop-up information screen that will provide basic information that is essential to the caller. The agent can pre-record a welcome message for the callers. By means of the wizard and tutorials, agents can simply run the software at home. [via]