Remote Contact Center Agents during COVID-19

The novel coronavirus has killed more than 4,000 people, as of March, 19, and there are about 121,000 confirmed cases worldwide. In the current situation with the spread of COVID-19, companies around the world are forced to take action. The best decision is to prevent the spread of illness and protect public health. The outbreak prompted many businesses to shift to a remote work model for all employees possible in a bid to limit the spread of the virus.

Global research by serviced office provider IWG reveals that 70% of people work remotely at least once every week and 53% work remotely for half the week. An increasing number of workers now spend their working days away from a central office all around the world. Therefore, remote workers are not only a necessity now, but it is also a global trend. But the main problem in this situation is how to make remote work as efficient as possible.

Simply Contact was able to quickly and efficiently transfer workers to remote work and ensure an uninterrupted workflow at all contact centers of all our customers. As a result - 80% of our staff have been moved to remote work within a week! 

Contact Center with Remote Agents - Is It Possible?

If the work process is well-organized and controlled, it is possible. It’s up to you as a leader to ensure your remote team is in the most effective way. Employees won’t magically be efficient, confident, and capable, particularly if they’ve never worked at the home office before. You have to provide them with the tools and perspectives to make the most of their environment. We'd like to mention three important points essential to help your remote team function successfully. 

1. Analytics and reporting for performance monitoring

To implement a comprehensive business intelligence platform, organizations must design an effective reporting, analytics, and information delivery framework. The ability to perform sophisticated and innovative reporting and analytics is becoming critical for all organizations. Processing timely data, proper reporting, and analytics capabilities enhance the ability to make more informed, evidence-based decisions.

At Simply Contact, we know that efficient reporting and analytics are key to project success and smooth work. We have a great analytics system that automatically generated reports every hour. We are able to check the effectiveness of each agent and each project as a whole. As a result, we are able to flexibly and productively adjust the work and make sure there are no bottlenecks.

2. Effective communication with the team

Communication is the key to success in any working relationship, especially when it comes to remote workers. The best method of communicating with remote employees is to use a balanced set of tools that allow agents to contact their managers and vice versa as well as ensure the timely response of team members.

At Simply Contact, productivity and the process of work are controlled by supervisors who use internal applications to interact with agents. Through the Service Desk, employees send questions and requests while supervisors are able to respond quickly. Our goal was to streamline the communication process in a remote work environment.

3. Security and confidentiality of information

86% of business executives believe remote workers increase a company’s chances of a data security breach. Company leaders and their employees need to accept equal accountability in doing what they can to protect their company’s and client's information.

Security and confidentiality of information are quite difficult to provide in the conditions of remote work. That's why we had to limit some agents' functions for projects. For example, we forbade remote agents to work with reservation systems. This type of question is performed only by the 20% of employees remaining in the office in order to meet the requirements of PCI DSS

The Established Process Is the Key

Remote work is always a risk, but this is also a global trend. Therefore, the good side of the current switch to remote work is the ability to set up an efficient process and save budget on office facilities in the future.

We think our company is good proof that to some extent, the remote contact center is indeed possible. The most important thing, in this case, is the established processes of reporting, analytics, and communication. As a result, we are able to not only ensure the smooth operation of our current customers but also develop new contact centers for new customers. At this point, we also help companies strengthen their call centers in case they can’t cope with the load in difficult times or cannot transfer their contact center to a remote location.

If you need help with your contact center needs, don't hesitate to contact us.