Case Study: “Home-Sourcing at Alpine Access” (Solved)
management
Description
Case Study: “Home-Sourcing at Alpine Access” The Alpine Access Web site says: Alpine Access is the premier provider of customer service solutions using home-based employees. Alpine Access’ clients are organizations that value their customers and are passionate about their brand. Our Alpine Customer Experience (ACE™) solutions mean access to quality employees, compelling operational efficiency and economic success.
Located in Golden Colorado, Alpine Access has positioned itself in the call center industry as a company that provides exceptional talent that is available for other organizations. The company’s key point of differentiation is that, rather than shipping its jobs overseas to international call centers, its employees work from home. One of the primary benefits of this home-sourcing arrangement is that it removes the costs of “bricks and mortar” associated with housing a full-scale call center operation at the company facilities.
This obviously helps keep costs down. In addition, this approach allows the company to have a virtual presence throughout the United States. Its employees are scattered across the United States, and all they really need to do their job is some basic technology. As noted by employee Martha Libby, one of the 7,500 distributed home-based agents, “I have a computer with high-speed Internet access and a hard phone line.
That’s pretty much it.”
With clients such as Express Jet, J. Crew, the Internal Revenue Service, 1-800-Flowers, and Office
Depot, it certainly seems that Alpine Access is on a path to success. And the employees have
responded well to their arrangement. As noted by former CEO Garth Howard, “The employees,
with traffic and gas, there are a lot of things that challenge them in getting to work.... many people
can work from home and be very productive. They commute in house slippers instead of traffic.
Who wouldn’t want to work like that?”
