To begin with, a quiz: If you pick up the phone and call Virgin America's customer service number to ask about changing your seat assignment on an upcoming flight, the odds are highest that you'll be speaking to:

(a) An Indian gentleman in Bangalore.
(b) A Philippine woman in Manila.
(c) A semi-retired airline rep sitting in a home office outside Tucson.

The answer, believe it or not, is (c).

And that Virgin America rep is not alone. While it runs counter to most of what's been said about outsourcing, not all customer service jobs are being shipped across the ocean.

Indeed, more and more are being sent to the house at the end of your street. And the odds are growing that the person taking those calls works for a little company called Arise.

Founded in 1997 as a joint venture between Bell South, the State of Florida, and private investors in an effort to give the disabled an opportunity to work from home, Arise has evolved over the past decade into a leader in so-called virtual contact center solutions.

With 7,500 home-based agents in 49 states (all but Hawaii), the company services 45 companies with what C.E.O. Angie Selden refers to as the high end of the service spectrum-those calls that offer the best opportunity to cement the customer relationship.

"We're not saying that there are no calls you might want to send offshore," she says. "But companies need to take a portfolio strategy to their customer interactions. For those calls that present the chance to drive more profitable revenue growth, you need to be connecting your customers with someone who understands their culture and has the specific skills and experiences required."

It's no small opportunity. Indeed, the niche that Arise is focused on is growing fast enough that it's even got its own name: Homeshoring. Coined by IDC analyst Stephen Loynd, the term encapsulates a number of trends all playing into the hands of the likes of Arise.

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For starters, says Loynd, there are improvements in technology such as broadband to the home and voice-over-Internet-protocol that make it easy to work from home while simultaneously giving companies confidence that the calls will be answered and the performance be tracked.

A more timely consideration: The price of gasoline. Ask a customer service rep to drive 25 miles to come to work, and it's costing them $5 in gas each way. Let them stay at home, and the $10 stays in their own pocket.

Loynd forecasts that by 2010, there will be 300,000 home-based outsourcing agents in the United States, double the number he says are in the country today.

Listen to Arise's Selden, and it would seem that the sales pitch is a fairly easy one. Given the capabilities of broadband, she points out, there is really no geographic boundary for accessing talent. Companies that continue to use brick-and-mortar call centers, she says, are pretty much constrained by that 25-mile radius when seeking employees.

What's more, companies have more flexibility in staffing with virtual agents than if they were to have agents who arrive on location to do six or eight hours of work in a stint. "Homeshoring creates a completely efficient market," she says. "Because calls don't arrive in nice tidy six- or eight-hour patterns. With us, you can staff up or down according to your needs on an hourly basis."

The concept is compelling enough that a number of well-known firms use Arise agents, including Virgin America, Walgreens, Home Depot, and Carnival Cruise Lines.

And here's the most surprising part: The people sitting at home answering the phone aren't lazy slackers who can't find their way out the door in the morning. The typical Arise agent is 38, with some college education.

Need a licensed insurance agent on the other end of the line? Arise has them, and pays them accordingly: $25 to $35 an hour. Want experienced sales people motivated more by commission? Arise has them too, and pays them about $18 plus commission.

Four of the largest AAA associations use Arise agents, knowing that when you car breaks down at 4:00 a.m. and you tell the agent that you've got a flat on Interstate 95 near South of the Border, a confused foreign call center employee won't send a tow truck to Mexico instead of to you, stranded near the amusement park in South Carolina.

 

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Because Arise works with its agents as independent contractors, there's another wrinkle in their business model that makes them attractive to potential clients. Arise agents actually pay for the privilege of being trained to work for a particular client. This gives them far more motivation to deliver on their performance goals than an hourly employee who's just punching the clock.

And there's no shortage of such motivated people: While it's got those 7,500 agents on board already, Arise has almost twice that amount-some 14,000-being evaluated and trained in the pipeline today.

The evaluation, mind you, is a two-way street. Because qualified home-based agents have a number of companies they could work for today, including Arise competitors such as LiveOps, VIP Desk, and Alpine Access. A few larger companies also play in the space, such as West Corporation's West at Home division, TeleTech's Teletech at Home, and professional services giant Convergys.

Arise saw its top line grow nearly 100 percent in 2006 and is looking at another 100 percent in 2007. What's more, contracts the company has signed for 2008 are triple the total of 2006.

Most recently, Selden says Arise just signed a five-year deal worth eight figures annually with a Fortune 100 company.

And there's more where that came from: Despite all the xenophobic political posturing over the moving of American jobs overseas, companies still spend $150 billion annually in the U.S. on call center services.

If she has her way, Selden and your neighbor down the street are going to be taking an ever-bigger piece of that action.