Remote employees can be a powerful addition to the workforce in today’s technology-focused world. Not only are flexible workers more productive, but they’re also more efficient, less prone to stress, and easier to retain thanks to increases in morale.
For the average contact centre, a remote workforce offers various benefits, including reduced overheads, more flexible scheduling opportunities, and the chance to work with happier, more engaged employees. Of course, while there are plenty of advantages to call centre remote workers, there are also a few challenges to consider too. When you don’t have face-to-face interactions with your agents each day, how do you make sure that you’re running your organisation as effectively as possible? The following tips could help:
1. Embrace a cloud contact centre solution.
Cloud technology is the most natural and flexible way to support a remote workforce. When your contact centre tools are hosted in the cloud, you ensure that your entire team gets access to the same tools and experiences, regardless of where they might be working from. The consistency and unity provided by a cloud contact centre solution mean that everyone can work in cohesion with fewer risks of technical issues.
2. Provide plenty of training.
In a standard contact centre environment, managers provide regular in-house training to optimise the performance of employees. If you’re working remotely, you can still deliver fantastic training programs, the only difference is that you need to take an online approach.
When you don't have face-to-face interactions with your agents each day, how do you make sure that you're running your organisation as effectively as possible? Click To Tweet
Modern collaboration tools can be a fantastic way to ensure that each agent has access to support and guidance when they need it most, irrespective of their location. With the right resources, you can give your employees real-time access to experienced agents, supervisors, and other essential information within a contact centre data hub.
3. Maximise performance.
Perhaps one of the biggest concerns that hold contact centre managers back from considering remote employees involves figuring out how to maximise employee performance and remain in control of what is happening in the contact centre. Here again, technology can help. Workforce management, optimisation tools and time tracking software can help to keep everyone on the same page with better performance tracking, coaching, easier scheduling and enhanced quality management.
4. Support visibility.
Finally, it’s important to make sure that you have full visibility into the performance and engagement of your remote workforce. While workforce optimisation and management tools can help with this, you’ll need to ensure that the tools you leverage provide plenty of access to reporting and analytical solutions. [inlinetweet prefix=”” tweeter=”” suffix=””]The ability to track the performance of agents and access key service metrics can be crucial to maintaining the cohesion and efficiency of your team.[/inlinetweet] Check that your system has options for speech and IVR analytics to go even deeper in your analysis. It’s also worth investing in real-time analytics to ensure that supervisors can track the real-time interactions of their employees, regardless of where agents are located.
Leverage your remote workforce.
Remote agents can offer a host of benefits to the average contact centre environment. However, managers and supervisors need to be sure that they’re leveraging their team properly if they want to get great results. The good news is that with the right technology, a remote team can deliver exceptional customer experiences and consistent profits.
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Originally published May 25, 2018, updated Jan 17, 2023
