The pandemic caused widespread disruption around the end of 2019, eventually leading to global lockdowns. As a result, businesses had to reconsider their working attitudes and the concept of working from home was adopted. However, people realized that working from home is often much more effective than going to the workplace in certain types of businesses, such as call centers.
Now, call centers are finding that being virtual benefits their organization. According to analysts, 70% of the employees will continue to work from home after the pandemic. That means that today’s call centers must carry these new lessons into the future and make working from home the new norm, which means setting up virtual call centers.
Here are the top benefits of virtual call centers and how they are even better than traditional ones in some ways.
Cloud call center solution
Virtual call centers use the latest cloud call center solutions that help businesses keep everything centralized at one place in the cloud and manage everything from there. It can assist you in increasing staff engagement. Agents from around the country and worldwide are working on the same task as those in the headquarters. You can also scale up or down quickly because cloud solution providers create several features that you can subscribe to or unsubscribe to whenever you want. You are free to add more cloud services as your business expands.
Another important reason for using a cloud call center solution is that you are ahead of the competition due to the latest cloud innovations, which provide tons of automation and AI features. All your data and workspace can be set up online and managed from there.
Tracking activity & progress is easy
Virtual call centers offer the same amount of transparency as in-house centers. In both cases, tracking the activity and progress of an agent depends on the metrics and KPIs. A cloud solution allows businesses to integrate such features with a few clicks.
Not only can you track the agents’ activities but also measure the work time and generate numerous reports based on that data to track the company’s development. Online automated supervisors are available in virtual call centers. They can see which task is due by which agent. They can also monitor idle time and perform various integrations for the firm’s benefit. Since so many plugins and apps are available for cloud solutions, it becomes easy to scale and maintain efficiency virtually.
Efficient CRM integration
CRM services on the cloud are substantially more efficient because they have everything available on the cloud which makes automation easier. You can integrate different processes with CRM without having to figure out the technicalities. If you decide to integrate AI with your CRM, you won’t need to provide it with your customer data or figure out how to update the new one. Since everything is in one place, interlinking becomes easier.
Virtual call centers are cheaper
Because you don’t have to buy a physical setup for the workforce, virtual call centers can save you a lot of money. Since all the agents will operate from home, you will not need to worry about renting an office space, afford furnishing or even paying bills. Travel expenses for agents will be lowered as well. The money saved here can be used to purchase some valuable solutions for the business.
They offer freedom in hiring
If a call center owner is not working remotely, it is difficult to recruit talented people from only one place. Virtual call centers eliminate this by offering you freedom in hiring from wherever you want. You don’t need to look for agents from only a certain area and can even go worldwide. You will be more confident taking projects from different locations as you now have the ability to hire agents from different countries and personalize the experience for your customers.
Virtual call centers improve agent productivity
According to some reports, 60% of the staff are happy working with flexible timing. Virtual call centers provide more flexibility to agents. Cloud solutions provide the feature to track their time and activity so they need to put required time every day but they can do it in parts and take short breaks in between. In-house agents are supposed to spend 8 hours in the office but that does not mean they are efficient throughout. This is where the virtual call centers take the lead in terms of productivity.
Increased security
Every company’s first concern is the security of information. Without a dependable surveillance system, you risk losing vital consumer information. According to surveys, 57% of business owners believe that cloud backup is the greatest security alternative available. Furthermore, it will lower the expense of hiring security personnel.
Conclusion
In a nutshell, virtual call centers outperform on-site call centers in several ways. The two most important factors to consider in almost every organization are how satisfied a customer is and how much revenue the company gains. Virtual call centers excel in both areas. In addition, employed call center agents prefer working remotely.