Sitting in what used to be the laundry room of her Davie home, with a view of a canoe in her yard, Hernandez takes just a couple of minutes to pinpoint the stranded motorist's location and enter some information into her computer to dispatch a tow truck. The next call comes in almost immediately. "I'm Lisa. How can I help you today?"
In a couple of hours, she'll leave to pick up her kids from school, spend the late afternoon and evening with her family and then get back on the line. Paid by the call, she's well on her way to a $150 day.
In 1998, Hernandez heard about what sounded like one of those "business opportunity" sucker plays that show up daily in your e-mail: Make up to $24 per hour from home answering the phone for Fortune 500 companies.
Wanting to be home for her three children, Hernandez bit. She paid to apply for a job as a WillowCSN "CyberAgent." She paid for training. She supplied her own computer, telephone and data line. After some lean months, she nearly gave up on the business opportunity. But today, with four clients, she clears $500 to $600 a week after taxes -- "more than I expected, to be honest." Even with putting in a 40-hour week, she has time to volunteer at her kids' schools, pick them up each day and spend 4:30 to 8 p.m. with her family.
Hernandez is one of 1,600 telecommuting call-center agents affiliated with Willow, a young Miramar company that says it can change how the call-center industry operates. Willow has the technology to route calls coming into its corporate clients' 800-lines to agents' homes. Willow's technology also gives companies the ability to supervise their scattered at-home agents as if they were just another call-center staff.
Equally crucial, the software allows the clients to post the hours when they need workers. Agents schedule themselves without worker or supervisor ever having to talk. With training and a few keystrokes on their home PCs, they can answer calls for AAA Arizona in the morning, Alamo Rent A Car in the afternoon and the Home Shopping Network in the evening.
Staffing issues
For those clients and Willow's 14 others, Willow and its paid-per-call agents solve a ticklish staffing problem: How to have enough workers on hand to keep callers from waiting (and hanging up and losing their business) while avoiding the high cost of paying people by the hour to sit around when the phones aren't ringing.
The Home Shopping Network, for example, can ask for a legion of its CyberAgents -- all independent contractors -- to be online during a two-hour promotion. HSN then can have a much smaller cadre on hand the following hour when a slow-moving item is pitched. For the next half-hour, it can schedule to have a bigger group back on again. "It's a wonderful solution for us. It's truly just-in-time" staffing, says Norman L. Wright, senior vice president for HSN customer care, which gives a quarter of its calls to Willow. (HSN's parent, USA Networks, is an investor in Willow.)
Since the agents are independent contractors, the client company can ditch them at any time. Plus, there are no employee benefits -- no vacation, no healthcare, no pension -- and no building to house them nor equipment to support them.
Turnover -- a major cost for call centers -- is low. Willow finds the workers, who pay for their own training at no cost to the client. That's why clients can afford to pay what works out to be an average of $15 an hour to Willow agents and still come out ahead over lower-wage, traditional call-center agents handling the same kind of work. HSN's Wright says calls handled by Willow agents are the company's most efficient on a cost-per-call basis.
For all its obvious potential, though, Willow has much to prove -- both to establish itself as the right fit for clients and to overcome past mistakes. Willow was founded in 1997 by entrepreneur Richard Cherry, whose prior telecommuting effort in Canada ended in receivership in 1995 with a loss of nearly $2 million to creditors.
Starting Willow in Florida, he had more success -- and recognition. The Smithsonian gave Willow a Technological Achievement Award for Innovative Technology. Al Gore, then vice president, featured Willow at a Presidential Task Force on Disabilities Recognition and talked about how we'd all be hearing more about CyberAgents. (Willow uses video of the Gore statement in its promotions.)
Some saw in Willow a potential boon for the disabled. And indeed, some disabled workers have done well as Willow agents. Sahadeo Bickram, a Pembroke Pines man who lost the use of his legs 15 years ago in an accident, made $39,000 in his best year with Willow, though surgeries have limited his hours recently. In the wake of Willow's initial success, the state of New York paid to train 52 disabled people and had them looking forward to going online as Willow agents.
But by 1999, things were going wrong. Cherry had 1,600 agents overall and spoke of expanding to 800,000 agents quickly, the Miami Herald reported. Meanwhile, however, Willow agents complained that Cherry was recruiting more agents without adding enough clients. The agents' volume of calls -- and income -- tumbled. By early 2000, Willow was down to 749 agents, and Cherry was out.
Willow's financial backers brought in Asim Saber, whose first name sounds very much like "awesome" when an employee introduces him to a crowd of potential recruits. "I frankly feel privileged to just not only head a great business but also to touch and change people's lives in a positive manner," gushes Saber, a 45-year-old Texan. "What a beautiful thing."
Saber, a veteran telecom exec, replaced Cherry's leadership group. Citing cost concerns, he also dashed the hopes of the New York trainees and stopped the disabled project. M.J. Willard, executive director of the National Telecommuting Institute, which finds home-based work for the disabled and was involved in the New York effort, says she understands Saber's business decision but says, "The timing was terrible. It's still an excellent fit for certain people with mobility impairments." She adds that she hopes Willow succeeds.
Saber says he wants to do more with the disabled. Meanwhile, addressing the complaints of existing agents in south Florida, he instituted minimum earning levels -- like a $10 minimum per hour worked -- to protect agents. He got clients to limit the number of agents they take on so that the agents get calls in volume.
Typical agent Hernandez, 40, fits the Willow agent profile: A woman 25 to 45, juggling children and the desire for a second income. Eight out of 10 Willow agents have taken at least some college courses. Most average 20 hours a week for a client and have two or three clients. Slightly more than half, like Hernandez, speak Spanish and English.
They learn of Willow by word-of-mouth. They pay $25 to apply to Willow. They pay $35 for a background check. If they pass computer skills and speaking evaluations, they pay $280 for a Cyber-Agent 101 class, maybe another $300 to train for a particular client like 1-800 Flowers and probably another $600 for a high-speed internet connection and a specialized voice line that allows calls to be routed to them (and supervisors to eavesdrop). Throw in a couple grand more for a computer if they don't have one. And then there's about $200 a month for the phone lines and a network service fee to Willow.
It's that investment -- what Saber calls "skin in the game" -- that allows him to promise the likes of The Gap that Willow agents are high-quality workers who'll provide high-quality service. "This is not a job. It's a business opportunity. Don't forget that," Saber told a packed room of potential recruits early in December in Coconut Creek.
Saber has hired five sales agents to look for clients. (Willow has 70 full-time employees at its Miramar headquarters.) Combined revenues to agents and Willow, which is paid by the minute, were roughly $25 million last year. The company, as it funds expansion, is losing money. Frank Garcia, a partner in Easton Hunt Capital Partners, a New York and Florida-based venture capital firm affiliated with Dallas' Lamar Hunt family, says 2001 was a consolidation year for Willow as it prepares for a big 2002. "This is a company very well-positioned," says Garcia, who's based in Key Biscayne and whose firm invested $3 million in Willow in 2000. Garcia says Easton Hunt was attracted by Saber and by the investment that the agents make. "This tends to be a different breed of person," Garcia says of CyberAgents.
Saber wants enough new clients to support 10,000 CyberAgents in 24 to 36 months. Sales are slow in the making. "A lot of companies are on the sidelines waiting to see if (telecommuting) works," says Steve Rockwood, president of Alpine Access, a Colorado company founded in 1998 that like Willow offers companies 1,600 home-based telecommuting agents.
Telecommuting
At least one of the industry's major players is studying the telecommuting potential. Convergys Corp., which has about 7,400 employees in Florida, sees telecommuting as a "very important component" in its future and has had a pilot program for a year, says Jim Kutsch, vice president of technology in Jacksonville for the company's communications alliances group.
Kutsch says that while telecommuting has its advantages -- both as an employee benefit and for client flexibility -- it isn't appropriate for all clients. Some Convergys client programs take four to six weeks for agents to complete. "That's not a reasonable demand to put on an independent agent who is not going to work full time at the end of the program," he says.
Andrea Burnett, a spokeswoman with Sykes Enterprises, the large, Tampa-based call-center operator, says Sykes has concluded that telecommuting isn't appropriate for its work: Tech support, with its complicated requirements.
Kutsch also believes telecommuting works better for some employees than others. Instilling a corporate culture and the learning that comes from being with co-workers is hard to pull off in a virtual setting, he says.
In the end, Willow may be a good fit for some companies, not others -- just as it suits agents such as Bickram and Hernandez. "For me, it works," says Hernandez. "I'm just looking for something that would bring a second income into my house and allow me to be with my children when they're small. It just brings a balance to my life."