In recent years, every remote Contact Center has discovered the advantages that working remotely entails, both for the company and agents. This new solution allows not only to provide greater freedom and flexibility to the agent, but also:
- Increases customer service team engagement and retention.
- Provides flexibility when recruiting staff in periods of increased workload.
- Reduces overhead.
- Improves productivity.
- Promotes business continuity in times of crisis.
As we can see, the implementation of this new system has endless advantages, but it also presents some challenges that every contact center manager must know and know how to face in order to maintain efficient operations.
How to maintain agent performance when working remotely
Challenge 1: Limited access to suitable equipment
The first challenge that companies face when taking their Contact Center to the teleworking format is to guarantee that agents have the appropriate technology to allow optimal productivity.
Agents working from home cannot always guarantee quality connectivity or good devices to respond to customer inquiries efficiently and securely.
The slow home connection, lack of VoIP connectivity and poor security are common issues that agents often struggle with and have to deal with in order not to waste time and to focus all attention on providing excellent customer service.
A good remote contact center must be tailored to the specific needs of the company, customers and agents.
First of all, an environment must be created in which the customer service team can feel comfortable. Investing in intuitive omnichannel software that makes it easy to track conversions across channels is essential to ensure a seamless service.
A customized Contact Center As A Service (CCaaS) solution designed for your company should include all the technology that remote employees need to be efficient, that is:
- CRM integration
- call analysis
- artificial intelligence solutions
- Automation
- surveys
- Productivity analysis
Discover all the benefits that our omnichannel software EVOLUTION offers you to guarantee the success of your Contact Center in the cloud.
Challenge 2: Keep agents connected
Enabling a remote contact center means ensuring your team has easy access to the technology they need to have conversations anywhere. No matter where agents are located, they need access to the same features they would in a brick-and-mortar contact center: from high-quality audio to IVR, voice assistants, intelligent routing, and call queues. Now, if you are the manager of the contact center, you do not only have to think about facilitating interactions with customers.
Contact center agents also need to be able to connect with one another to share information, collaborate on complicated issues, and expedite customer service. On many occasions, the members of a disconnected team cannot overcome the isolation, the lack of information or of professional support.
Keeping agents connected and coordinated means building systems that allow workers to collaborate with each other wherever they are. Supervisors must take measures to ensure a correct work process. Whenever possible, operations should be simplified. The team can be divided into subgroups to manage certain tasks, and above all, have tools that allow the connection between these departments.
Challenge 3: Keep agents motivated
In the customer service sector, staff turnover happens on a regular basis, and it is usually one of the main pain points. In most cases, this lack of motivation is caused by a lack of commitment or unsatisfactory working conditions.
When working remotely, camaraderie and the quality of communications and relationships between workers are reduced, affecting and aggravating this situation.
In order not to waste time and money on new staff and to achieve greater retention of talent within the company, it is essential that managers invest in methodologies that allow agents to stay motivated.
To help create a sense of community, you can even consider creating competitions and rewarding the groups or individuals that achieve the best metrics. Rewards can be created for the highest volume of requests resolved on the first call, or rewards for the team with the highest CSAT score at the end of the month. Dashboards can also be used to send motivational messages to agents, wherever they are.
Challenge 4: Security and regulatory compliance
For any organization planning a long-term cloud strategy, it is crucial to ensure that all security and regulatory compliance requirements are taken into account. This means thinking about everything from how to defend employees’ network connections to how to protect customers’ personal data.
The best formula to avoid making a mistake in this field is to work with a provider specialized in the sector. It is essential to integrate a technology capable of building a safe installation that is one hundred percent adapted to the needs of each company.
Our software EVOLUTION supports a series of standards and protocols, designed to minimize possible risks in infrastructure or information, and thus identify and eliminate vulnerabilities.
- Identity Management: Identity management is the core of any infrastructure for secure identity and access control.
- Active Directory: Thanks to the Active Directory you will be able to manage the logins in your contact center equipment as well as the administration of policies and permissions.
- Recording encryption: EVOLUTION allows you to securely capture, encrypt and store any type of interaction. It guarantees call recordings with secure links and sophisticated encryption algorithms, protecting them against unauthorized access.
Challenge 5: Continuous optimization
Finally, for most companies, the transition to the digital world is not an immediate option. There are still companies with little or no digital presence, a fact that makes it significantly difficult for them to adapt to this work model.
Even so, those companies that manage to adapt to the new environment will be the ones that will be able to survive and evolve more easily.
Look for that solution that allows you to move with agility from the beginning. A software adapted to the needs of your company, agents and clients, is essential to guarantee success. Make sure you opt for a system designed to deal with continuous change, scalable and adapted to each situation.
With ICR Evolution you can add new channels to your omnichannel strategy, at the pace that suits you best. Gather information from both agents and customers to measure and implement improvements. Remember that applying appropriate technology contributes directly to generating an impact on the performance of your Contact Center.
The contact center of the future is in the cloud
The era of remote contact centers has arrived, and companies around the world are looking for the most flexible way to ensure that their teams remain productive, wherever they are.
Although there are challenges to overcome along the way, quality planning and a quality provider will quickly improve your digital transformation strategy. Discover how we can help you from ICR Evolution, request a demo now!
