1 to 1 Magazine – October 5, 2006   

Employee Engagement Goes Outside Office Walls

"As Virgin America prepares to take flight later this year, the new San Francisco–based airline is building its service team with a heavy focus on engagement. Virgin America hired Willow CSN to provide home-based contact center agents who will sell tickets and provide customer service to Virgin America customers. Virgin America is entrusting these make-or-break activities to an external service provider in large part because 'they have skin in the game,' says Todd Pawlowski, Virgin America's vice president of Guest Services and Airports.

"All of Willow's 3,200 home-based agents (scattered among 43 states in the U.S.) are independent contractors. They pay for their own equipment and training and take care of their own benefits. Their compensation is directly tied to their productivity and performance metrics clients set. But their level of success is still determined in part by how well each client's management team engages the customer.

"'With a home-based agent model, it's a bit more challenging to keep people engaged because you can't walk over to their desk and tap them on their shoulder,' Pawlowski says. Virgin America's goal is to make the contractors 'feel and truly believe that they're working for Virgin America although their paycheck is from Willow.'"