West At Home Exceeds 10,000 Contracted Agents

West Corporation, a leading provider of outsourced communication solutions, announced today that its West at Home program has now expanded to over 10,000 active home agents due to continued strong demand from new and existing clients. This compares to approximately 5,500 active home agents at the end of 2004. West defines “active” home agents as those actively taking incoming customer service calls an average of at least 20 hours per week.

“West at Home’s rapid growth over the past year is proof that Fortune 1000 companies are increasingly relying on West at Home contracted agents as a integral part of their customer service programs,” said Mark Frei, Senior Vice President of Sales for West Corporation. “Our leadership in the industry is a testament to our two decades of experience providing outsourced customer service to the world’s largest companies. Not only does West Corporation have the best technological infrastructure for home agents, but we also have the necessary expertise recruiting, training, motivating, and monitoring these agents to deliver superior service to our clients’ most important asset: their customers.”

According to a recent IDC report, the estimated size of the current U.S. home agent market is 112,000 and could reach over 300,000 by 2010, making West one of the industry’s largest providers of home agents. West can quickly ramp up agents for new client applications by tapping into a waiting list of tens of thousands of individuals eager to become West at Home agents.

The popularity of the program is due to its flexible hours, brand-name client base, and self-paced online training programs, which attracts productive, self-motivated applicants from around the country. West at Home’s contractor workforce currently includes students, retirees, stay-at-home parents, and part-time professionals located in all 50 U.S. states.

West at Home can be utilized as either a fully outsourced or hosted solution for companies looking to improve customer service quality while reducing costs. The West at Home platform is also designed to integrate seamlessly with West’s existing contact center solutions, including IVR and speech front-end systems.

Home agents provide exceptional scalability and flexibility, which is particularly useful to companies that have hourly, daily or even seasonal fluctuations in customer service call volumes. West at Home agents currently manage a variety of customer service applications for Fortune 1000 companies in industries such as cable/satellite television, restaurants, healthcare, retail & catalogs, and financial services.