Work-at-home Call Center

Today many industries are experiencing a huge shift in remote work due to COVID-19 pandemic and work style reform. In this article, we will discuss the benefits of remote call center and best practices to adopt.

What is remote call center

A remote call center is to let both incoming and outgoing call service from home of each customer service professionals.

Compared to an on-premise call center, cloud-based phone system is used for remote call center. Remote call center jobs are perfect for people who has career in call center industry but no longer work for on-site agents after childbirth.

Benefits of remote call center

Cost effective

Remote call center enables you to reduce office maintenance cost and commuting fee. Giving employees autonomy to chose the work style, either remote or on-premise, can prevent turnover. It helps employee retention, which slashes recruitment and training costs.

Securing personnel

Remote call center contributes to secure personnel by offering work chances to more diverse work resources while the traditional call centers can limit opportunity.

The implementation of remote call center contributes to retain female employees who wish to keep a work-life balance after childbirth. Besides, working remotelyis an ideal work style for those who have difficulties working in the office due to injury or nursing. Moreover, remote call center will attract both domestic and overseas personnel so you can chose highly skilled candidates in a cost-effective way.

Flexibility

While in-house call center requires office space and on-site staffing, off-site call center allows you to operate anywhere. For instance, you can outsource call center service and let your agents to work from where your subcontractor is located.

Also, remote call center let you outsource service to overseas agents to cover undesirable shifts like overnights and weekends. Having variety of staffs and work locations will easily respond to fluctuations in work volume on both a regular and seasonal basis, and can expect flexibility in operating your call center.

BCP when working off-site

When a natural disaster strikes, the remote individuals will be able continue operating business activities. During pandemic, employees working at home will have less physical and social contacts, which prevents the virus spread.

Keys to implementing remote call center
①Quality assurance

A call center is a non face-to-face communication channel and offers the customers efficient and effective support. No matter how you operate the call center, in-house or off-site, the call center agents require innovative processes to retain customer satisfactions.

Flexible response and support

When receiving uncommon queries, on-premise call center staff can get an assistance from the trained staff. Since work-at-home staff needs to deal with any types of queries promptly on their own, it is important for the company to develop the management strategies for remote employees such as preparing manuals and FAQs, and online business chat application.

Outsourcing call center

You can train your on-premise call center staff to work remotely. This approach will help you secure enough personnel, but is not cost effective. Some companies may consider hiring new employees, but outsourcing call center is a must to go.

Mamasan&Company Inc. offers the outsourcing call center service with highly experienced and well-trained support representatives. Our service will save you time and money for training.
Call center service_ Mamasan&Company

②Security Assurance

Security is one of the biggest concerns of hiring off-site workers . There are 3 critical approaches to prevent your company from any security risks.

Establish remote work policy

Remote employees work in a private location with little or non-direct supervision. The company should establish clear security policy and guidelines for off-site employees. For instance, employees must keep the devise’s OS and software up-to-dated, install anti-virus software, and change passwords regularly. An information security policy should be a living document, reviewed and updated regularly to protect your company from new or changing threats.

Create safe remote networking

There are 6 types of remote networking access, depending on the company’s budget and needs: Remote Desktop, Virtual Desktop, Cloud Application, Secure Browser, Application Wrapping and Company-provided Laptop. You can chose the right remote networking based on the system requirements, such as data storage device, types of device, fast-speed internet connection and so on.

③Supports for remote employees

Unlike the in-house staff, off-site employees work in a private location. Companies need to invest more time to make remote teams feel connected and valued.

Real-time communication

The lack of office communication is one of the common issues for remote employees. Everyone experiences job stress and the call center representatives, in particular, are burned out by dealing with customer complaints and making cold-calls. Managing workplace stress is therefore vital for the company when the remote call center staff experiences the emotional exhaustion. One of the stress management strategies includes real-time communication with the manager and team members. We recommend to invest in chat and video conferencing software like Zoom meeting and Google chat. They are simple to use and secure.

Attendance management system

The company needs to keep track of distributed teams for their time tracking and productivity. With the remote staff’s clock-ins and clock-outs, we recommend to use the employee monitoring cloud system. This system allows the company to record attendance and overtime by virtual monitoring of log-in and shutting down of the computer. Some monitoring system features employee GPS tracking function or overtime alert function, sothe company can choose the employee monitoring system to meet the company’s needs.

Clear evaluation framework

It can be challenging for the managers to evaluate the performance of remote call center staffs. The evaluation results can cause the loss of staff’s motivation so it is vital for the manager to have a clear evaluation framework in place and review their performance fairly. Measuring the performance and productivity by setting a clear goal, such as the number of appointments or contracts the employees get, will keep them engaged and motivated.

Summary

Prior to implement the remote call center, some organizations may address the common concerns of security, attendance management and quality assurance. However, as mentioned in this article, remotecall centers can help you save costs, keep employee retention and business operations with unprecedented situations.

If you are looking for a new work style which contributes to the company’s growth, it is well worth starting a remote call center.