The COVID-19 coronavirus lockdown has forced many companies to send some, if not all, of their workforces home. For companies running call centres, this has both upsides and downsides.
Given the stress levels most call centre agents work under, being at home and not having to tackle commutes and being able to more effectively juggle their work and home lives will have a positive impact.
The downside, for managers, is that it’s much harder to manage a call centre workforce that’s physically dispersed.
Here are 5 ways your call centre solution should help you manage your team remotely:
- Hack remote working 101 – Working from home is a massive change for most of us, and we’re all still trying to work out if the WiFi is that teensy bit better in the lounge, and if we can find a way to incorporate that spare dining room chair into our new ‘office’. Adapting quickly to remote work is doable, but, like culture, takes some effort. If you’re looking for hacks you can implement in your home and across the company, the Euphoria Telecom guide to remote working – When being remote requires connection – can help. Download it here, and feel free to share.
- Monitor your (work)space – Managing which agents are available, when and where is critical to keep your call centre operations running smoothly. Your solution should feature an Agent Workspace that feeds data into your telephone management solution so that you can monitor remote logins, manage time and attendance, and track productivity and other key metrics.
- Analyse this – Data is king, and if your call centre solution isn’t allowing you to monitor agent productivity, you should consider moving to one that does. Ideally, your call centre telephone management solution should give you an in-depth look at how your agents are managing their time and how much of their day is productive and unproductive, so that you can act to ensure your customer service levels are maintained.
- Keep it real – Having real-time reporting on your system and analytics on every call coming into or out of your organisation is a great way to assess productivity and manage your call centre team.
- Press pause – Pause functionality in your call centre phone solution is critical as it allows your agents to pause calls, and select the reason – lunch, a meeting, tea, bathroom breaks etc – and gives you a way to seamlessly monitor time, attendance, participation and availability.
Remote working offers many benefits, not least of which is reduced office space rentals and happier, more productive teams.
Your technology solution should not just enable this – it should enhance it. If it doesn’t, it may be time to do some comparison shopping.
