How Customer Service Has Evolved In Africa?

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COVID-19 has pushed many businesses to think beyond the legacy contact centers. It has led to change the business strategy for customer service across the world. Most business heads in Africa are now re-thinking their business model to handle the sudden surge in customer queries. Contact centers, playing a pivotal role in the pandemic hit world, are going to be the driving force for sales, service, and collections as they form the last line of business to consumer interaction.

Africa, the hub of BPOs, is shifting from legacy call centers to contact centers, allowing the customer service leaders to rethink and streamline their business strategies according to the need of the hour. Now that the world is settling with working remotely, businesses in Africa are realizing that work from anywhere is here to stay and it is in for the long run. This brings us to the challenges that Africa is facing:

Availability of Agent Infrastructure

While moving the workforce to remote work environments, one question that remains unsolved is whether the agents will have access to laptops and stable internet connectivity. For businesses to operate remotely, ensuring the availability of proper infrastructure like building a conducive work environment is important.

Data Security

Customers trust businesses with their sensitive data on the basis of brand value and faith. Now, one of the biggest challenges remains is data security. Where the agents are using their own devices, ensuring that the agents are not misusing the data in the form of call recordings, screenshots, etc. is a legal concern for companies in Africa.

Virtual Agent Onboarding

In an otherwise environment where agents can easily seek assistance from their managers and peers who are sitting next to them becomes a challenge in remote work environments. Agents cannot have all the information on their tips and they will seek information from their managers to resolve certain queries. 

How a Remote Contact Center Solution can help you overcome these challenges?

Flexibility to Login from Any Device

Let your agents handle call center operations from any device, any browser, and any location. Both managers and agents can log in from the device of their choice and the supervisor will be able to monitor the performance of each agent without any interruption. Remote agents report high productivity when they are given the flexibility to work from anywhere.

Remote Governance with AIM

Managing IT infrastructure may not be a challenge in a physical work environment but while working remotely, the businesses need to ensure that they are able to identify the reasons for low agent productivity. With 15 monitoring parameters, managers can identify issues such as unsupportive devices, low internet connectivity, call failure, etc, thus building a high trust environment for agents. 

Remote Agent Monitoring

It is necessary for businesses to keep a track of the metrics such as average handling time, the number of calls handled, agents’ productivity, agents’ availability, etc. But, monitoring the agents should be a challenge because managers can get a holistic view of agent performance irrespective of the device and location that they are working in.

This simplifies the agent management process and allows the managers to make well-informed decisions such as resource allocation, real-time shifting of agents between different queues as per the call flow.

Omnichannel Customer Engagement

Customers seek top-notch services from the brands and more so in a pandemic hit world where customer’s expectations are increasing each day. They expect to have a human-to-human interaction with the businesses and be served on their preferred channels. The sudden surge in call volumes, chats, and video calls are examples that customers are seeking constant support from your business. If you are not providing the customer service on most popular channels such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Video Call, Email, or any other platform, then you need to revise your customer engagement strategy.

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The shift in customer service strategies needs a remote contact center software that successfully equips you and your agents with the tools to excel at the customer service game.

So, are you ready to set up your remote contact center? Schedule a demo today and hear from our solutions experts to find the right solution.