Devoted to the call center industry, the agents on the phones, and their managers

Being a home based agent is being embraced by the current workforce. 

“The use of independent contractors to handle customer-service calls from their homes is soaring as companies look to cut costs -- and more employees seek jobs that allow them to work remotely.” CIO Today, Home Based Agents: An Increasingly Popular Option

This is great news but what worries me is how much support can be given to these agents.  The infrastructure is up and running but is it even enough to give the training and continuous improvement an agent needs.

I know of friends and colleagues who moved to these companies.  They are currently taking in calls and loving every minute of it.  One thing I’ve noticed is that there is NO coaching nor mentoring involved.  It’s all productivity – how many calls and hours they’ve done.

Yes, there are weekly meetings and they communicate with them through an instant messenger, but do they really know what their agents are doing while they are working at home?  There are no metrics that I'm aware of nor any performance evaluation. What measures their success to become the next supervisor or manager?  Monitoring of their calls are done by the client themselves and I don't see any supervisors doing this like normal call centers.

The supply of interested employees is evident but will the supply of clients be the same as well?  If there is no check and balance, then getting the buy in from clients will make it difficult to meet the industry's expectations.

I have yet to see a company that addresses this gap.