Home Agent Technology – The agent desktop

It is the evolution of technology that has enabled the HA call center operation model. This BLOG will focus on securing the agent desktop. Employees must have a desktop that prohibits printing, moving or saving data outside a controlled environment. Additionally, we must eliminate the chance of nefarious desktop viruses or key logging trojans which can compromise data security. Significant process adjustments are required in every facet of a home agent operation as well. You’ll see that technology and process are intermingled throughout any serious HA discussion.

There are multiple ways to secure the desktop. VMWare is a very popular product in home agent solutions. It is installed, often downloaded to the agent PC. After booting the PC to the resident environment, the VMWare application is started, which serves to lock out the rest of the applications and provides a secure, centrally controlled desktop environment. Bringing up the VMWare environment can take several minutes, which is very costly in a call center operation.

Every HA desktop must incorporate solid Virtual Private Network (VPN) technology to encrypt the connection, and some VPN vendors also lock the desktop as well. Those approaches rely on the Operating System (OS), typically Microsoft Windows, already resident on the PC. Unfortunately, over the years, my innovative staff have routinely been able to build viruses that penetrate the OS and log key strokes under most solutions for desktop locking. Introducing a process to conduct a thorough virus scan before each log in, can compensate for most virus intrusions. Such a process will also add significant time to the log in process, again, very costly to the HA operation.

I prefer using bootable environments for the agent desktop. This is typically a CD or DVD disc or a USB device that the agent connects/loads to the computer, then the machine boots off that device, eliminating the installed Operating System (OS) and any viruses, entirely. This approach is also done pretty quickly. The best success I’ve seen, uses a Linux kernel via a USB thumb drive, delivering strong software cost reduction as well. This approach, however, also has its challenges such as running the softphone call control applications. These are required for agents to interact with a central telephone switch and are typically built only for Microsoft desktop OS’s. Other applications used in a daily call center operation evolve as well, routinely built for the Microsoft OS environment. These changes will keep the IT group testing future application enhancements as a matter of course, to minimize issues to the home agent operation.

Every solution, has challenges with the continuous evolution of hardware and software. Consider the ultimate desktop challenge: PC’s are simply going away! Tablets are outselling PC’s today in the US and that will eventually have an impact on anyone expecting to use a “standard” personal computing environment. The ultimate solution is creating a very low cost, disposable yet secure desktop apparatus you can ship to the agents. Several companies are working toward that solution, but I don’t know anyone that has achieved it yet. Recovering deployed equipment is very costly, time consuming and often futile.

It’s hard to consider desktop security without addressing connection security at the same time. We only touched on it above when we mentioned VPN. The agent connection must be securely encrypted and all transactions carefully logged for potential forensic analysis. Network capacity via the typical ISP now far surpass application needs, enabling in many cases the use of full Voice over IP (VoIP) delivery through the PC to the agent. Let me explain. VoIP technology allows delivering the calls through a headset connected to the PC, not through a standard telephone. That provides some serious cost avoidance. VoIP is still rare as the end point delivery of voice for home agents because as any ISP throughput issues can impact voice quality. Again, strict processes and heavy monitoring can minimize the problem. Most operations still use a land based telephone line, connected to the desktop PC through the ISP, running a softphone call control software application. And this brings us to another challenge: Home’s with land-lines are disappearing! Most people do all their voice communication on smart phones. Cell phone’s have not proven stable enough for heavy call center use.

Next BLOG we’ll get into agent ID verification, as part of the security challenge - from a technology perspective as well as begin discussing the processes for sourcing, recruiting and hiring agents. Thank you for all the e-mail. I appreciate hearing from others involved with this unique operation model for customer care. Contact me Rick@HomeAgentConsulting.com - Welcome Home!