Gig Economy for Contact Centers
Nate Nammour, Director of Partnerships at ShyftOff, joined the Contact Center KPI podcast to discuss a gig economy for contact centers and why the traditional W2 employee isn’t the only way.
GigCX is a recent trend that utilizes gig-based workers to handle a company’s customer service efforts.
This model can be deployed in a variety of ways, including in-house gig workers and through third-party agencies.
Key takeaways from Nate Nammour
1. Mixing 1099 workers (gig workers) and W2 in-house employees is difficult to manage.
It’s hard to mix and have both types of agents in your contact center because the mentality and management approach are completely different.
Gig workers are used to autonomy and independence with the hours they work. But that’s not true with W2 employees.
Now this doesn’t mean you can’t outsource to a company that provides Gig workers if you need additional help answering calls.
But Nate’s advice is choose one of the two to avoid internal conflicts.
2. Traditional W2 employees are only productive 65% of the time they’re working.
The reason traditional agents aren’t as productive as gig workers is because of meetings, additional tasks, breaks, and other things that take them away from productive work.
When gig workers sign up to work 6 hours, it’s been shown that they are productive for about 80% of those hours. While they don’t have the same 40 hour work week, they tend to be more productive compared to traditional agents.
3. Priority boarding for the best customer service results.
An example of how GigCX is taking over traditional contact center models is there is a natural competition to get the best shifts and the best customers to take calls for.
Agencies like ShyftOff utilize “priority boarding” and the gig workers who perform the best on specific KPIs based on what the customer is looking for will get the option to choose the best shifts.
This creates a natural competition for gig workers as everyone wants to work their way to the top as the benefits are greater. Plus earning potential is untapped as you can work as much or as efficiently as you want.
