The Work-from-Home scheme has been very well received and is currently being extended to other backend customer service staff.

Series on Next Gen NBN adoption/ New ways of work

Customer service staff at SP Services are enjoying better work life balance even as the company extends its customer service hours, thanks to a Work-from-Home scheme backed by the Next Generation Nationwide Broadband Network (Next Gen NBN).

SP Services provides a one-stop service for all households and businesses to gain easy and immediate access to utilities. “We open and close utilities accounts, read meters and bill and collect payment for the electricity, gas, water and refuse collection vendors,” explained SP Services’ Managing Director Mrs Jeanne Cheng. “We also facilitate competition in the electricity market by enabling consumers to switch seamlessly from one retailer to another.”

The company has about 250 customer service staff who help process utilities accounts, answer enquiries on utilities bills and make payment arrangements for customers in financial difficulty. They also perform backend duties such as quality audits, and liaise with the relevant utilities service providers to ensure that customers’ needs are met.

In 2008, SP Services introduced a Work-from-Home scheme, providing its customer service staff with access to the corporate IT systems they need to serve customers from home. This enabled call agents to attend to customers' calls from home after office hours. In 2009, in response to employees’ request for better work-life balance, the scheme was extended to full-time call agents operating during normal office hours.

In the initial stages, however, employees on the Work-from-Home scheme encountered some issues when connecting to the corporate IT network. They were using mobile broadband dongles for Internet access, and the maximum published speed available then was 7.2 Mbps. However, actual speeds varied, slowing down access to the office systems.

Work efficiency was also hindered by the instability of the connection, which would drop off at times. This resulted in staff having to re-login to the system applications that they were using. In view of these infrastructure issues, SP Services held back from offering the Work-from-Home option to more staff.

Things began to change when the Next Gen NBN came into the picture. Employees who were using the fibre network at home gave feedback that the connection was faster and much more stable.

In February 2012, customer service staff at SP Services began using the Next Gen NBN network for the Work-from-Home scheme. The employees were allowed to select their own Next Gen NBN service provider, with the company stipulating the minimum speed requirement of 10 Mbps for their subscription plan. It also provided an Internet subsidy of S$42 per month, which was the average cost of Next Gen NBN plans that met its performance requirement.

Although the fibre subscription cost more than the S$36.90 per month for the mobile broadband plan, SP Services encouraged its staff to move to the Next Gen NBN as the performance was significantly better. As Mrs Cheng pointed out, “Speed in accessing data is important to provide fast response to customers.”

Currently, SP Services has about 20 employees on the Work-from-Home scheme. Under this arrangement, the employees work full time from home, coming back to office once a week for “face time” with colleagues and supervisors. Working hours and lunch breaks are rostered as they are for staff in the office. For after-office hours, SP Services has part-timers working from 6pm to 10pm, so customers who require assistance are now able to call the hotline up to 10pm on weekdays instead of 6pm previously.

For the employees, the Work-from-Home scheme has translated into better use of their time. “They can save commuting time, which is a big plus as most staff spend two to three hours each day travelling to and from the workplace,” noted Mrs Cheng.

In addition, employees on part-time courses find that being on the scheme gives them more time for their studies. Those with family commitments are also happy that they are able to save time from commuting and spend more time with their families. “This has helped us with staff retention and recruitment of staff,” said Mrs Cheng.

Not surprisingly, the scheme has been very well received and is currently being extended to other backend customer service staff. “More staff are keen to try out the Work-from-Home scheme after the positive feedback from colleagues who experienced the improvement in Internet speed,” said Mrs Cheng. “Productivity has improved due to reduction in staff commuting time, absenteeism and attrition.”