How to Choose the Best Remote Contact Center Solution in the Post-COVID Era?

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There is a lot of uncertainty in the world today due to the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) pandemic. Businesses were forced into lockdown and it became chaotic for the world to set up a remote contact center instantly. With the lockdown imposition, agents were restricted to working from home and as faced by many businesses, infrastructural preparedness has been a challenge amongst others.

With the onset of WFH solutions, businesses have started to see an improvement in the growth curve along with some cost savings, realizing the benefits of remote contact center solutions. But, how to choose the right remote working solution for your business and manage business operations like business as usual?

Well, you are in the right place. Today, we will be discussing some of the factors that you should keep in mind while opting for a remote call center software.

Choose the right Remote CC as per your Business Size

Based on the size of their business – whether a startup, mid-sized, or an enterprise, organizations have different ways of doing a cost-benefit analysis.

  • Small businesses or startups operate on small-term goals where they look for solutions that have lesser initial cost with maximum gains while being easy to use. So, for them, it makes sense to go for a cloud contact center solution with a subscription-based payment option i.e. pay for only what you use.
  • On the next level are the mid-sized organizations. For them, scalability and ease of use become an important parameter for making the decision. Remote working solutions that allow them to offer autonomy and accountability while ensuring great customer experience is the most suitable solution.
  • Things are slightly different when we talk about large scale enterprises. Customization, flexibility, and a feature-rich remote contact center solution that offers high-level security options is the one that makes the most sense for these organizations.

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Infrastructure for Agents Working Remotely

Agents are the building blocks of a contact center. Thus, it is imperative to consider the infrastructure available to them while working from home. Every agent will not have access to the same level of internet speed and bandwidth, not all agents might have a laptop available to them. As an organization, you need to be mindful of these differences. Based on the infrastructure available at the Virtual Call Center Agents’ end, you can opt for a mobile call center solution (when smartphones are available) or manage your customer interactions over PSTN / WebRTC as per your vendor. Make the decision that is in the best interest of your business as well as the workforce.

The agents get the flexibility to log in from any place, any device, any browser, and any environment, providing them with an opportunity to work at their pace while they handle the customer queries with ease.

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Scalability, Reliability, & Flexibility for your Business

Choose a remote contact center that is quick to deploy, saving you time to go live in no time. Setting up a contact center that takes a toll on your IT department with the hardware and software requirements, but with the right remote contact center, you can do away with all the hassle and your business can start to function within days.

With a remote contact center, you should be able to scale your business and ensure maximum security while the data is stored on the server, eliminating the need for data theft and data loss. Ensuring that business does not compromise on business continuity because of an unprecedented challenge and functions seamlessly.

Ability to Effectively Monitor Remote Agents, Devices, and Environment

Virtual call center agents need the same productivity goals as they do in the physical office. To onboard, train, and monitor agents remotely, it is essential for businesses to have comprehensive remote monitoring tools that allow them to measure the performance of each agent along with the KPIs that are business-specific.

A remote contact center solution should provide the same monitoring capabilities as a facility-based contact center. To establish remote governance, you will need Application Infrastructure Management (AIM) to run the remote contact center operations while also maintaining a high-trust environment.

Integration with Leading Applications

Last, but definitely not the least is the out-of-the-box call center integrations that are available. Whether it’s your existing order management or inventory systems in case of e-commerce or appointment booking tools as used in the healthcare industries, for a remote contact center to run smoothly, it needs to be able to integrate well with the existing technology. These CRM and CTI integrations, helpdesk, and ticketing integrations should allow your customer service agents to get a holistic view of the customer and thus, improve conversion rates and the overall customer experience.

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In A Nutshell

In addition to the above-mentioned factors, you need to remember that contact centers exist to provide viable solutions to the customers’ pain points. Your remote working solution should ensure that the solution you choose should be agent-friendly so that agents can meet your customers’ requirements effortlessly.

Additionally, it should allow the supervisors to track business-specific metrics and make well-informed decisions for the business. They should be present as the managers for their agents to provide on-call assistance, ensuring a high level of customer satisfaction rate.

Shambhavi Sinha

Shambhavi Sinha is working as an SEO expert at Ameyo. She also likes to write tech-based stuff. Her aim is to provide knowledge to users by sharing the knowledge about the latest trends about contact centers.