How Virtual Call Centers have disrupted the CX Environment

What is a Virtual Call Center?

In a post-pandemic world, flexibility has become increasingly important to employees and employers alike. The advantages of remote operations are clear, helping organizations retain high-performing employees, and reducing their operating costs. 

In the world of customer experience, this development has led to the popularization of virtual call centers. These consist of customer service operations no longer hosted in a single location. Instead, agents are spread out geographically and capitalize on cloud-based software to perform their role, no matter where they’re stationed. 

What Issues do Traditional Contact Centers Present?

Running a contact center isn’t easy. From managing thousands of inbound calls, to facilitating customer engagement in an omni-channel environment, organizations have their work cut out for them. A traditional, in person contact center has its own difficulties:

• By operating out of a centralized office, an organization is limited to providing support for their customers within office hours. For companies that have a global customer base, this can restrict the post-purchase services they can provide and harm consumer relationships.

• A lack of flexibility for employees can lead to dissatisfaction, and in turn, higher employee turnover. The nature of contact center operations leaves the industry notorious for high turnover. The ability to work from home can increase employee retention, and limit burnout rates.

• Running an office can quickly become expensive. In a post-COVID world where many organizations have adapted their practices to facilitate working from home, it makes sense to capitalize on the opportunity to cut back on office expenditure.

The Benefits of a Virtual Approach

That’s where virtual contact centers come in. Organizations already have the tools available to facilitate a virtual shift, so why not capitalize on the trend?

• A key benefit of a virtual contact center is the ability to operate across multiple time zones. For globalized organizations, having agents stationed across the world would enable support coverage for larger quantities.

• By running on a cloud-based system, the call center is much less vulnerable to outages than an on-premise solution. Consequently, if one location experiences disruption, agents elsewhere are still able to provide support to customers.

• With less office space required, and no requirements to maintain an on-premise call center system, organizations are able to allocate resources to other areas of the business.

• Efficient and transparent monitoring. Utilizing cloud-based call center software, managers can easily monitor both current and past calls. This enables managers to understand how their employees are performing, without any invasive physical monitoring. 

• Alongside the benefit of covering further time zones, virtual contact centers also allow organizations to access a wider pool of talent. Without the need to commute to a central office, a company can invest in recruiting the best agents across the globe.

Sounds great, right? Before making the shift, there are a few drawbacks that you should be aware of:

• Without a centralized location, it can be difficult for teams to build relationships. The lack of in-person meetings and contact can make it more difficult to overcome problems together.

• Managing employee technical needs can become challenging, particularly when they don’t have access to IT services if there are any issues affecting their performance.

• Onboarding new staff and getting them up to speed becomes a challenge. Without the ability to check-in in-person, it can be difficult to ensure a new employee is receiving adequate training.