How Do You Manage A Remote Call Center?

With working from home becoming more and more popular, the demand for remote call centers is also increasing. This popularity is a combination of many factors, but one of the biggest is that technology has advanced to the point where being a home-based call center agent is a viable working option.

There are many benefits to working from home, including a better work-life balance, no commuting and more flexible hours. For employers, there are also distinct advantages to operating a remote call center, so let’s take at look at these now.

Benefits of a remote call centre

1. Lower operational costs: Since each remote call center rep works from home, their employer doesn’t need to spend money providing infrastructure and hardware, for example office space, computers, software, telecommunication lines, etc. Large call centers can be very costly to set up and manage over the long term, particularly if you need to pay rent for the office space and keep IT equipment updated. You can still have an extensive call center, whilst saving a significant amount of money, if you hire agents who work from home.
2. Higher productivity: Research has shown that happy employees are more productive, and since remote working is an acquired taste, these people are very happy working from home. They don’t have to commute to work, don’t have to wear ‘office clothes’, usually have very flexible hours and have a much better work-life balance. All of this means that a remote call center rep will be more productive and work harder than one located in a physical call center. This saves the employer money and everyone is happy!
3. Greater workforce pool: When you hire a home-based call center agent they can be located anywhere in the world, because their physical location doesn’t matter. As long as they can speak the language fluently, you can fill your call center with the most experienced and qualified agents, rather than settling for a workforce pool that’s available locally, but might not have the employees you really need. Hiring Filipino call center agents, however, has a lot of advantages because they speak English fluently and usually amenable to working in any timezone.
4. More flexible hours: Since most people work 9 to 5, they become frustrated when they can’t contact a call center after hours. A remote call centre is the ideal solution, because home-based call centre reps are happy to work odd hours.

Managing a remote call center

1. Regular contact: Remaining in contact with each remote call centre rep is important, so ask each agent to check-in when they start their shift and at the end with a daily report. You can also keep tabs on their call logs and activity reports, so you can monitor their progress during their shift if needed.
2. Quality assurance: A cloud based remote call center system can easily incorporate software that allows customers to rate the calls. Supervisors can also listen into calls as part of operator training or just randomly to ensure that your agents are handling the calls appropriately.
3. Update your security: To make sure that your data remains secure you may have to update your security protocols, adding passwords, access codes or other measures. Your IT department should make this happen, otherwise you can easily outsource these tasks.

For more information on remote call centers, contact Outsourced today.