The decisive challenges of teleworking for contact centers
Nov. 17, 2021
The health crisis linked to Covid-19, which we are struggling to overcome, has had many repercussions, and has given rise to new, unexpected constraints to which professionals have had to adapt very quickly. Nevertheless, the importance of telecommuting (working from home) is not a recent phenomenon. Or at least, not for everyone. Indeed, the world of customer relations has always been fertile ground for daring developments! Remember, with the emergence of homeshoring in the 90s, or the advent of the Internet, the development of ADSL and broadband in the 2000s had already set in motion this process of remote customer relationship management. Today, many companies are facing a new challenge...
Towards the (r)evolution of traditional practices
The issue of remote working in customer relations is not new. The health and economic crisis, by accelerating the boom in e-commerce to the detriment of physical retailers, has completed this process. This organization has become established over time, thanks to robust infrastructures that are easily accessible from any point of connection, ideally enabling business to be maintained at all times. Employers therefore had very little time to prepare for this upheaval, which was initially only expected to be a short-term solution! In this highly uncertain context, a number of factors come into play when deciding whether teleconsultants' functions can indeed be performed remotely. Indeed, the new era of telecommuting implies a much greater and more decisive use of new management methods. And this raises new issues: when the agent is at home, left to his or her own devices, can he or she use the same tools as on site? How can they communicate with their supervisor? Can he or she expect immediate availability and support only through similar digital tools? In many cases, the answer is no! Telecommuting is a very different way of working, where traditional technologies prove far more restrictive and inadequate. And the current particular context has amply demonstrated this. Let's take a look at the technical prerequisites for deploying a teleworking contact center.
Adopting the right approach for optimal remote operation
In contact centers, productivity demands naturally create a highly regulated environment. Customer waiting times must not be exceeded, customer satisfaction indexes must be achieved (and justified!) at all costs, quality of service(QoS) must be maintained at a very high level, performance charts must be respected... Advisors are set a large number of daily quantitative targets, and their supervisors are constantly at their side to support them. But these constraints also apply to those working remotely!
Disconnection times for breaks are very limited and controlled, and objectives remain unchanged, bringing the demands and even the stress of the contact center into the home. So whether on-site, telecommuting or offshore, the same toil and languor! However, if expectations are not to waver, then it's essential to offer remote advisors optimal working conditions, for their comfort and efficiency. To achieve this, a number of conditions must be met:
Offer optimal work tools, accessible remotely and without interruption;
Benefit from an interaction management solution incorporating a softphone to enable agents to work without their fixed workstation;
Guarantee secure access and data compatible with a remote connection, in particular via authorization based on the SSO method;
Use a solution with a small hardware footprint, making it easy to access and use remotely.
Finally, thanks to the cloud, and despite geographical distance, the supervisor can remotely access the usual indicators enabling him or her to assess the quality of the agent's work (number of files handled, response time, customer satisfaction rate, etc.). For this, the implementation of an omnichannel customer interaction management tool is essential!
Discover ViaFlow, your omnichannel remote customer relationship management ally
To meet the societal challenge of teleworking, ViaDialog supports its partners in adapting to remote working, by offering them a unified platform through ViaFlow , which can be rapidly deployed on site and remotely, to easily adapt to their needs and operations.
ViaFlow is a natively omnichannel platform that can be accessed remotely in a totally secure way, with a small hardware footprint. With our solution, equip your telecommuting agents with software that natively integrates all customer relations channels, and offer your customers an optimal experience in all circumstances.
If you'd like to find out more about how ViaFlow can help you manage your teleworking, our experts are available to talk to you!
