3 reasons why contact centers should operate from home

The current situation is making many organizations rely on a remote workforce. Whether it’s countries’ restrictions regarding the global health crisis or precautions taken by companies themself, the fact is that some departments are easier to make remote compared to others. Is the contact center one of them? It depends on the company’s situation. There are reasons why some businesses  may not want to risk changing the nature of their customer service when it’s the time they need it most. Many industries are now reacting to changes that need clear and productive communication like never before. 

Luckily, some companies can adapt quite easily. With a cloud-based contact center, they can reach an entire set of office tools from anywhere. All support channels can be managed from service specialists’ browsers. No matter how small or big are teams, managers can organize their work easily. Companies that move their contact centers to employees’ homes can even have additional benefits. Here are some of them:

1.Lower costs

Fewer agents in the office mean lower costs for maintaining the working space, paying for electricity, etc. According to Global Workplace Analytics, companies that have full telework saves $10,000 per employee in a year for real estate maintenance. It also enables remote agents to work with their equipment, this way reducing hardware costs. With a cloud-based contact center, the only tool that agents need is a headset; everything else can be accessed through their personal computers.

2. Employees are more productive

Yes, everyone who gets out of bed at 6 a.m. has a little dream about working from home. But managers are not so sure about the fact that agents can be more engaged sitting comfortably on sofas. What are their reasons?

• it’s harder to observe what agents are doing at the moment
• managers are not sure about self-discipline capacities
• It can be hard to communicate

Before addressing these statements Let’s manifest some numbers first:

The retention rate for at-home agents is 80% versus 25% for in-office

Frost and Sullivan

This means the work morale of remote agents is higher, they are more satisfied, dedicated to their work and willing to stay. All of these factors influence a worker’s everyday performance and engagement. And in fact.

Alpine Access remote agents closed 30% more sales than traditional agents in a year.

Global Workplace Analytics

But can your agents do it? The general tendency is that for more motivated agents less external control is needed. But even if that would not be a case, performance monitoring statistics and activity statuses let managers track an engagement of every agent, no matter the distance.

At the same time, it will provide more freedom to your team: they can have a more flexible routine and maybe even work on desired hours, if you can deal with schedules. This leads to more satisfied agents and also increases their productivity.

What about communication? Here we have a two-sided situation. On the one hand, it is faster to talk about tasks alive than via messages. But at the same time, office relationships can be distracting, people like to have small, or not so small chats with their favorite colleagues from time to time. But you don’t have to cancel all the meetings, instead organize a video conference.

3.You can have a better team

Location or driving license is no longer an obstacle that prevented you from hiring that excellent candidate last time. You can have a wider talent pool to choose from and also increase diversity. According to Frost and Sullivan, remote agents tend to be around 38 years old, compared to 23 for on-site agents. 80% of home agents have a college education and management experience, while only around 35% of office agents have it. This also affects the mentioned motivation factor, because remote agents tend to look at this profession as a career path, rather than a starting point.

The hiring process also becomes more simple. It can be done via skype and there is no need to set a time that fits both parties. Moreover, when you can choose from more professionals, it is likely that, regardless of your office location, you will find a suitable candidate faster. Maybe he or she will even have enough experience that will spare all the training time. Moreover, the cloud-based contact center has an easily understandable interface therefore a part of the training process can be deleted permanently.

Or maybe you were searching from a B2 level speaker for a specific audience because it is impossible to have someone better with an offered salary? Well, just to mention, now you can have a native one.

There are many other additional benefits, such as having a more flexible center that can expand and shrink, depending on the need, environmental factors when there is no need to travel to work, costs saved from high turnover processes, and increased customer satisfaction.

We are not talking about the disadvantages of home contact centers because the cloud-based system allows your teams to do the same office tasks from anywhere in the world. It also provides managers with all the necessary tools to track teams’ performance and engagement. You can also have 3 great benefits for letting your customer service teams work remotely- more productive, professional agents, and lower maintenance costs.

If you are interested in remote work opportunities for your contact center,check this page.