In today&#;s digital era, customers know their worth. Besides better products and services, they also demand improved customer service from businesses. To meet customer expectations, brands also have come up with better customer service solutions.
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One of the ways in which call centers as brands have done so is by undergoing a rigorous digital transformation over the past two years.
This transformation led to virtual call centers, which allow call centers to make and receive customer calls on the go, and be available 24×7 owing to the flexibility of the cloud.
Let&#;s understand the nuances of virtual contact centers in depth in the sections below, where we&#;ll cover:
A virtual call center also called remote call center is a customer service operation where agents are geographically dispersed so either work from home or remotely. These representatives handle inbound and outbound calls using VoIP technology and leverage cloud-based solutions for effective call handling and customer support.
Pro Tip: Virtual contact centers are a great way to make a business more responsive to digital transformation by adopting advanced technological methods for creating customer touchpoints.
Virtual call center software is a cloud based application that leverages Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology allowing call centers to make high quality calls without the use of physical hardware or equipment thereby cutting down costs.
This software helps with call center management activities such as call routing , IVR, call queuing, reporting and integration with other CRMs etc. This enables remote agents to handle calls efficiently and also provides them with processes such as automated tasking, scheduling and tools to monitor and enhance their call center performance. Other features include:
Consider this number discovered by Microsoft in one of their customer experience surveys: 58% of the consumers agree that customer satisfaction is the key driver of their loyalty to a brand.
While this reason alone should be enough to adopt virtual call center software, the other reasons why you should do so are:
These numbers acted as a wake-up call. The answer lies in liberating a call center from its grounded restraint and moving it to clouds, making it accessible from anywhere so that the customers can be serviced from anywhere.
Let us further understand how a virtual call center can reduce strain on your business below:
A virtual call center enables a business to acquire sales talent from anywhere across the globe and allows them to work from their respective locations.
For instance, you could be situated in New York and hire a sales agent from India with a full work commitment.
It also empowers your business to plan global call agent shifts in a way that your customer service center stays online 24×7 without keeping any agent awake for the graveyard shift.
Unlike the traditional, hardwired contact centers, all you need to start a virtual call center is a stable internet connection that is available for every sales/marketing employee, and virtual call center software.
The minimal costs involved make it a highly economical choice.
Furthermore, it boosts your ROI as well. Yet another cost you would save would be the cost of:
A report by PwC discovered that the essence of customer loyalty has changed. It took only one bad experience for 32% of the loyal customers to leave a brand for a competitor.
Given the high employee turnover and customer churn rate, it is important to ensure that the call center agents are as satisfied and productive as possible.
This is because a boost in call agent productivity gives a boost to customer experience quality as well!
Virtual outbound call centers have a unique way of working because of their decentralized nature. Let&#;s understand the same in greater detail below.
Now, here are some things you can consider before setting up a call center
Depending upon your virtual call center type, you would require network connectivity. You should also consider the security protocols required for the connection in the interest of providing a safe experience for your customers.
To run the virtual call center software, your employees would require both the knowledge of utilizing some hardware, as well as the actual tools, such as a/an:
Besides offering the right virtual call center software, you must provide employees with the right tools.
Virtual call center employees must be categorized into different groups to ensure an increase in productivity.
For instance, you could customer support professionals into groups of four, and allocate a skilled manager for each group. These managers would then:
Virtual contact center solutions equip a business with many functionalities that add to the overall improvement of call center operations, as seen below:
Virtual contact centers are completely cloud-based, which prevents you from utilizing a certain part of your budget for:
As a business owner, you can reutilize this part of your budget for other things, such as:
Cloud-based call center software equips your company with the technology to work remotely, meaning that the entirety of your customer service workforce can work from anywhere, which reduces problems associated with space, etc.
Customers aren&#;t happy when they are made to wait, regardless of the time. This is where virtual call centers come in, as they can attend to these customers with the help of their features such as:
The above features allow call centers to work 24×7, which is quite a crucial feature.
Owing to the flexible nature of online or virtual call centers, your employees enjoy a healthy work-life balance, which also boosts their productivity and work satisfaction levels.
Managers need not worry about being unaware of the proceedings when their call agents are working from home. Virtual call center software has features that enable managers to monitor every call that an agent is engaged in.
This feature allows managers to:
Despite all the advantages they provide, virtual contact centers do have certain drawbacks that must be considered before investing in software, namely:
Although there is a plethora of online call center software available in the market today, there are a few providers which stand out from the rest.
The names of these software providers have been provided below:
JustCall is a complete virtual call center solution that places a special focus on employee productivity.
This software doesn&#;t have any setup fee.
It has also been ranked #1 for ease of use by G2 and is trusted by over 6,000 brands.
You can leverage the following features of this software to get the most out of your call center:
Established as early as , Genesys is one of the most well-rounded virtual call center software out there. The fact that it touts an uptime of 99.99% has given it a clientele of over 2,700 reputed organizations.
Some of its key features are:
One of the best-known call center software, Zendesk makes it really easy for call center agent to use VoIP along with its ticketing system.
The intuitive workflows let the agents keep track of all the open cases, thereby allowing them to focus on seamless customer service delivery.
It has the following useful features:
Choosing the right virtual call center software is crucial for enhancing your business&#;s customer service operation. With numerous options available in the market, it can be difficult to select the right virtual call center software for your business. Here are a few handy tips you can use to make your decision easier:
Many industries that are regulated by the government need to comply with data privacy and other consumer data protection-centric laws.
If your company happens to be one of these, you need to search for a virtual call center solution that can handle such compliances, especially on a global scale.
For example, call center compliance stipulates that for telephonic payments, the call center must never, under any circumstance, record a customer&#;s CVV2. Many more such compliances exist that can be easily automated on virtual call center software to save you hefty penalties.
Always select a virtual call center software that is easy to set up and use. There is no point in investing in software with a lot of functionalities that require employees to be exhaustively trained before they can use it.
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Instead, list down your requirements by analyzing your needs (for example, integrability with ERPs or provision for special numbers) and search for a solution that matches these requirements as closely as possible.
You should also look into the following factors to judge whether the software is worthy of investment:
Call centers can get really backed up with traffic if tasks aren&#;t handled timely and effectively.
The virtual call center software you select must be equipped with functionalities to handle complex workflows and automation processes easily. It should have the scalability to deliver the best output even during exceptionally high traffic times.
You must analyze the business requirements before choosing the right virtual call center, with the help of the following questions:
A virtual call center business opportunity can be successful after choosing the right capabilities.
For example, you might choose an intuitive UI for the virtual call center software. It will help your employees make/receive calls faster.
Other features which you should look for are:
There are many virtual call center solutions available in the market. You must compare the pricing of different virtual call center solutions and choose the right one before choosing a call center setup.
A virtual call center for business must be able to integrate with other systems.
For example, you must be able to integrate your call center software with your CMS, as it will help employees gain information on customers before making/receiving calls, and so on.
According to research conducted by Emplifi, it was found that poor customer experience was the trigger for 86% of the customers to leave one brand for another better one.
It is, thus, extremely important to provide a great experience to customers when they initiate contact with your business.
To further reinforce the importance of putting a good call center in place, this Zendesk survey highlights that 51% of the customers attribute a good experience to speaking with a call center agent who understands the reason why the call was placed.
This brings back the relevance of utilizing the power of consumer data, which can be done easily using call center software.
A virtual contact center empowers a business to reduce customer churn in the following ways:
The cloud-based calling feature, or VoIP, lets virtual call center agents take calls on their own phones routed through the software, irrespective of their location.
This eliminates the need for them to be tied to a desk all day waiting for customer calls
Your business can thus easily function with lesser real estate and hardware, yet with more customer communication power than ever.
32% to 46% of consumers across various industries avoid calling businesses because of the long waiting times associated with them, according to Invoca.
Since every business has its own &#;rush hours&#;, the key is to reduce the waiting time of your consumers.
Virtual call center software helps achieve that by smartly mapping the availability of agents and routing the waiting calls accordingly, which leads to effective utilization of your agents&#; time.
Virtual call center software comes with integration capabilities that let you plug them into any enterprise resource planning software (like CRMs).
This functionality helps to collate the data collected through the call center with every other ERP and create a consistent customer journey across channels, further enhancing your customers&#; experience with your brand.
Whether you are making a switch to a cloud-based call center or starting one from scratch, the following procedures will help you make the transition smoother and quicker:
You should plan the following things before setting up a call center:
It is necessary to hire call agents who can be responsible without supervision.
Maintaining productivity even when the remote environment gets adverse is a critical requirement.
The lack of socializing at work may create problems for certain individuals, which is why you should specify before hiring that a decentralized work mode would be the default.
Since there is no concept of a physical space with virtual call centers, it is important to have mechanisms in place to ascertain that your scattered employees are completing the training assigned to them.
You can adopt video conferencing or recorded tutorials to do so, or arrange for weekly calls, etc.
A worker is only as good as the tools they use.
This is why you should ensure that you provide your employees with:
Virtual call centers can pose certain challenges in management, such as, for instance, remote work can&#;t exactly be &#;monitored&#; the way on-premises call centers can be.
This is why businesses come up with creative ways to ensure productivity stays high, as seen below:
Virtual call center agents aren&#;t always located on-premises. This often unsettles their managers as they aren&#;t able to see what their employees are doing.
This is why managers are advised to focus on the work their employees do, rather than the employees themselves.
Many virtual contact center platforms include options for gamification. It basically helps the managers keep their workforce engaged in a virtual social setting where they can compete with each other in games.
These games are created to facilitate virtual contact center agents to achieve their daily targets. A good example is achieving specific sales milestones to unlock rewards/incentives, etc.
Virtual contact center solutions are based on technology, which continuously upgrades.
Your business needs to ensure that the call center software vendor has policies in place to provide you with the latest version of the software. This usually isn&#;t an issue with cloud-based services, as vendors keep updating their systems frequently.
It can be difficult to maintain a teamwork spirit with a scattered team.
You can ensure that your team members stay on the same page and coordinate for the same goal using various tools and methods, such as:
This is because these methods will help employees stay in touch irrespective of their location.
There is no difference between traditional and virtual customer support employees when it comes to job responsibilities.
However, virtual call centers have the flexibility to work from remote locations.
This is why you should:
While hiring employees for your virtual call center, don&#;t forget to check their availability status, meaning:
Do you understand how to set up a call center virtually?
After having taken care of the various aspects mentioned above, the next step is improve the overall customer experience by:
To improve virtual call center operations, you can:
According to this Getvoip report, 95.7% of the call center professionals surveyed agreed that customer satisfaction is the most critical metric they need to track.
Strategies based on achieving sales aren&#;t relevant anymore, which means that a more long-term solution is required.
Did you know that over 90% of customer support professionals believe that customer satisfaction is the most essential factor for business growth?
A virtual call center setup can help you improve the customer experience as:
Therefore, what are you waiting for? Start setting up your virtual call center now!
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