The operator of Red Lion Hotels Corp.'s TicketsWest call center here says it has begun having some of the employees in that center work from their homes.

TicketsWest outsourced its call center ticket sales in Spokane last spring to Dallas-based Affiliated Computer Services Inc. to become more efficient, says Julie Silbar, director of business systems operations for Spokane-based Red Lion.

ACS, which recently was acquired by Xerox Corp., operates call centers and provides information technology outsourcing and business processing to companies and government agencies.

"TicketsWest still oversees the call-center operation," but the call-center employees now work for ACS, Silbar says.

Recently, about 40 percent of the 50 people employed by the call center here now have been working from their homes rather than at the call center, which is located in the Red Lion Hotel at the Park, Silbar says.

Silbar says having some call-center agents work at home allows for more flexibility in scheduling, since each employee who works at home has equipment there.

"It's easier to get people on the phones if there's a spike in volume," she says of the home-based workers.

Also, she says the call-center system includes instant messaging and text messaging technology that enables the customer-service agents to handle more calls.

"We have seen savings" since part of the staff began working at home a couple of months ago, Silbar says, adding that TicketsWest expects to realize additional cost savings as more of its call-center agents shift to telecommuting.

She says TicketsWest decided to outsource its call center to save money, but wanted the operation to stay here so the jobs would remain here.

"That's why we chose ACS, so we don't have to lay off people, and we've retained all that knowledge," she says.

The agents are required to have a home office space where they can close the door and work in a quiet area, and must have their own telephone and a wired broadband Internet connection, Silbar says. ACS provides computers and telephone equipment for the employees to use, says Chris Gilligan, an ACS spokesman.

"Having an internal call center is just very expensive—especially a small call center," Silbar says. "If you're managing 300 or so seats, it's easier to manage costs."

The work-from-home program reduces overhead and helps the center retain higher-skilled workers, Gilligan says.

"Our goal is to have about 40 to 50 percent on this account work from home. We've found it improves employee morale, employees increase productivity, it reduces turnover, and reduces costs both for employee and ACS," Gilligan says.

He says the people who work from home volunteer to do so.

ACS handles a lot of outsourcing for call centers, Silbar says. The TicketsWest call center here still has roughly 30 employees onsite, including supervisors, and shares space with the hotel's customer-care center, but is using about 2,500 square feet of space, about one-third less than it occupied previously.

Silbar says the hotel now is using that extra space for its customer-care center and likely will use some of it for storage.

The Spokane call center is TicketsWest's main call center, and it contracts with two smaller independent call centers, in Portland and Colorado Springs, Colo.

When call volume is high, excess calls from those centers are routed to the Spokane call center, Silbar says.