How the owner of Angie's List used a live Zoom DJ, expanded child care benefits, and other perks to hit 'all-time sales records' despite a pivot to remote work

• Like most other companies, ANGI Homeservices had to quickly pivot, moving its 3,000 employees to remote work when the coronavirus outbreak began.
• The portfolio of online marketplaces for home repairs and other services had never offered work-from-home on such a large scale, so there were many operational and cultural challenges.
• The company, for example, hired a live DJ to play on Zoom to recreate the high-energy atmosphere it maintains in office. It also ran into troubles when laptop prices surged due to high demand.
• The shift has been very successful, according to Chief Operating Officer Craig Smith. "We're actually setting all-time sales records," he told Business Insider.
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In mid-March, the press team at ANGI Homeservices got a rather startling call.

A local Denver reporter was inquiring about whether the company was laying off employees as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. The reason? He saw troves of workers heading out of the local offices there with boxes full of personal belongings.

But what appeared to be mass firings was simply a bulk of the company's 3,000 employees preparing for the new work-from-home order.

Like other corporations, ANGI Homeservices was forced to quickly overhaul its operations to meet social distancing guidelines. The switch, however, is proving fruitful.

"To move that many people that fast at that level of success and actually see productivity higher than it was prior to moving … was really rewarding," said Chief Operating Officer Craig Smith. "We're actually setting all-time sales records."

But while the portfolio of online marketplaces that connects homeowners with repairmen and other services had offices spread across seven locations, it had only tested out remote work with a small number of employees.

So there were a litany of issues that had to be solved. And it wasn't just making sure networks were robust enough for workers to log in from their homes.

ANGI Homeservices, for example, constantly plays music within its offices to motivate its salespeople. Eager to keep that part of the culture alive in the virtual world, the company hired a DJ to play over Zoom.

And while it provided child care benefits prior to the outbreak, the firm has since expanded its partnership with Care.com to give working parents more options.

There were some challenges.

Smith and Chief Information Officer Nate Burford, for example, backed out of a last-minute attempt to order more laptops as prices for IT equipment skyrocketed amid a nationwide shortage.

Still, many of the new changes could last beyond the current outbreak.

Leadership is weighing whether to permanently offer the option to work from home to its highest-performing employees. It's also consider moving to virtual training for new recruits to make it easier to hire employees from across the country.

"This will push us to try different things," said Smith.

Escape from New York

Burford was in New York City on a work trip the last week of February, just before the first confirmed case but right as global fears over the outbreak were rising.

After arriving back in Denver, he knew that the company had to start contingency planning.

It had a bit of luck on its side.

Over the past two years, ANGI Homeservices underwent a significant IT overhaul.

Among other infrastructure improvements, it built out a Citrix-backed virtual desktop platform in-house - a decision that came after disappointing experiences with several vendors.

In hindsight, Burford said, the upgrades proved critical. "A little over a year ago, we couldn't even have done it at all," he said.

By the first week in March, the company had more of a contingency plan in place and began running "beta tests" for at-home work. It started with 50 employees and gradually added more each day.

At night, Burford's team would perform maintenance on its virtual private network - the system that companies use so employees can access internal networks remotely. That work was on top of the 3,500 help desk calls the IT team received in the first week - the amount the department typically receives in two months.

Once the firm felt comfortable with the resiliency of the infrastructure, it began increasing the number of employees it pivoted to remote work.

By March 16, all its employees were at home - a fast timeline for a company that until that point had largely eschewed the concept of remote work.

Empowering call center employees to work remotely

Smith's team conducted a survey at the start of the transition to remote work to learn generally what equipment its employees had available to them and what products might have to be purchased.

It became clear early on, for example, that expanding access to the virtual desktop platform would become more difficult as hardware came into increasingly scarce supply.

"We get a lot of our equipment from Dell. That quickly evaporated as far as [the company's] ability to ship," said Burford.

Luckily for Burford, he placed an order for several hundred laptops early in the crisis timeline. That alleviated some of the need for employees to access the system using their personal computers.

In mid-March, when Burford attempted to place another order - what he described as "the last laptops left in the country" - the bill tallied in the "sizable six figures."

When he dropped the invoice on Smith's desk, they both decided to forgo the purchase.

"There was just so much fear and the prices had gotten so out of control because of the scarcity," said Burford. "It made for a point-in-time tough decision. I won't forget the moment."

The survey also found that 80% of employees had access to hard-line, which meant they could bring much of the company's call-center equipment back home.

The company equipped those that didn't with 5G hotspots to improve the quality of wireless calls.

Recreating the high-energy environment

Outside of IT equipment, executives at ANGI Homeservices also faced the challenge of recreating the in-office culture in the virtual world.

Like many other firms, it is relying on Microsoft teams for instant messaging and Zoom for the morning and afternoon huddles.

Other efforts took more work.

A live DJ on Zoom, for example, replaced the in-office music that played each day. The DJ even calls out successful sales reps to keep people engaged.

The company gave all its employees six months of free access to the DailyBurn, an online fitness platform, and extended a "highly, highly subsidized" offer with Care.com for all the working parents.

Also, daily contests based on performance metrics help keep motivation high, and winners are awarded gift cards to area restaurants to help support the local economy - a quasi-replacement for the free in-office lunches the employees previously received.

The pivot by ANGI Homeservices shows that, while IT equipment and other tools are necessary to allow people to work remotely, the harder job is recreating the internal culture that companies invest heavily in creating.

And the challenge will only get more difficult as social distancing guidelines extend further out.

"It's all the stuff you do leading up to events like this that make them successful. Not really what you do in the moment when your back's against the wall," said Smith. "The team really demonstrated that."

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