The coronavirus Pandemic has affected every business of all sizes. And the workforce has been shut down all over the world for a brief period of time. At the time of the lockdown, where people were stacking up groceries and necessities, the leaders of the contact center were scrambling their workforce optimization agents to transition.
These were the unprecedented times nobody has ever expected, and call centers were no exception.
The rise of a new era! Call center agents have shifted to work from home zones and the call centers adapted to their existing routines to the ‘new normal’ scenario very quickly! Because any organization of any size understands the value of customer retention and customer relations.
As of today, as many as 80% of the call center employees are working from home. A very swift and effective transition. During these uncertain times, there are businesses that observed unbelievable spikes in demand for support services. The organizations that were rigid and have gone with on-premise technology have faced struggles to keep up during such expected times. The longevity of the pandemic has, however, created a need for a ‘work from home’ environment to ensure better business continuity.
Let us see the reasons why work from home works better for call centers
– Cost-Efficient
Employing work from home workforce will dramatically reduce the costs as the organizations do not bear the prices of maintaining on-premise office area and hardware, operational costs etc.
Leveraging your browser-based call center solutions software, all that the employees majorly need is a system with an internet connection and a headset to make and receive calls.
Thanks to the new-age software and affordable technology, the workforce team stays connected and efficient wherever the location might be.
– The Cloud
Customers during these unprecedented times, especially seek new and immediate ways to interact with businesses from their own devices or channels all over the world. Cloud platforms offer software service tools that have already revolutionized the way organizations communicate among themselves, share data and manage supply chains, payroll submissions, marketing and so much more.
The cloud solutions unify disparate offices and workers on a single computer making it simpler to deal with everyday operations. This will allow the workforce agents to focus on delivering the experience to the customers and keep pace with the changing business landscape.
– Restoring team productivity and performance
The satisfaction of the employees leads to retention of the employees in a long run. This will in turn reduce the training costs and operational costs and improve the quality of customer experience. By far, the retention rate is 80% for the work-from-home agents, according to Frost and Sullivan.
Feeling in control of the time schedules while at home automatically improves the work-life balance.
Helping the agents, having training sessions, getting them engaged, involving a completely different way of boosting the morale of the employee to create employee development, camaraderie, generate productivity and improve the performance of the employees working for your organization.
– Enhancing Customer Satisfaction
Hiring the top talent and making them happy will let the employees enjoy the flexibility and freedom of working from home and the customer’s need for support services from the happy employees will get benefitted. Also, the call center agents get the best feedback from customers that are very valuable to the organizations.
Customers need support services now, more than ever! Keeping them informed and satisfied will result in customer retention and engagement which will in turn result in loyalty and consistency of your organization and improve its brand value.
– Ensuring the continuity of business
Regardless of where the workplace is located, there will be inherent business continuity if adapted to the work from home environment. By encouraging a dispersed set of employees, your organization could minimize the likelihood of widespread outrages and disruptions and continues the business activities regularly.
A transition to work at home from a professional workspace creates a new environment and employees’ rate of productivity and performance would increase and ensure the continuity of business. It will accommodate the changing needs of your workforce.
The list can go on…
Working from home has many benefits for the call center employees and the enterprises especially, and if the organization shifts towards a remote workforce, understand that it would really help and grow your business.
Making sure that you have a clear path for your workflow before you move to a remote workforce is very important. With a proper strategy, strong approach, and some mindful planning, the work from the home environment could be a real possibility in the near future for a long period of time.