7 Steps Your Contact Center Must Consider When Going Remote

When your contact center faces business disruptions, it’s essential to quickly respond to the situation and adapt your team. Now is the perfect moment to assure your customers that your business is taking a huge step forward to provide them with excellent customer experience.

Thanks to the cloud-based solutions, it has never been easier to migrate your call center into a powerful remote working team. We will share a few quick steps to empower your contact center management:

1. Embrace a Cloud-Based Contact Center Solution

Cloud-based Contact Center technology is the smartest solution to accomplish a seamless transition to remote working. Your contact center can be extended anywhere in the world enabling your team to work independently. In order to choose the best customer service software for your business, make sure it is:

• easy to implement and use;
• requires minimal training;
• easy to add on new agents;
• minimizes the risk of technical issues;
• easy to build reports, dashboards, integrations and set KPIs.

Luckily, Callplan has already adapted this technology, so you can take advantage of empowering your contact center very easily and quickly. We can manage set up in less than 24 hours, or even faster depending on your specific requirements. Thanks to our solution, you can accomplish the entire contact center management through just your web browser and Internet connection.

2. Provide Required Equipment

If you have already implemented a cloud-based solution, your next step is to follow some technical requirements. Make sure your remote agents are equipped with the technical tools necessary to engage successfully and professionally with customers. Here are a few helpful tips to optimize your contact center for working remotely:

• Devices. With the free softphone, your agents need only a PC and a stable internet connection, to handle the calls and manage great customer experience.
• Connectivity. Make sure your agents access your network over a secure corporate VPN.
• Headsets. Clear voice quality is required in order to provide the best possible customer experience. We recommend USB-connected headsets with noise-cancelling features.
• Logins. Make sure your agents have access to all required resources (e.g. Knowledge Base, Document Storage, Callplan etc.) and corporate email addresses.

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3. Prepare Your Contact Center for Fluctuating Workload

During a crisis, changing market conditions can affect your contact center and anticipate spikes and drops in the customer interaction volumes. Make sure that your telecommunication platform and the remote team can handle a changing demand of customer inquiries. To deal with the situation your contact center needs the following capabilities:

Scalability. This requires a software built on a flexible cloud platform that can be quickly scaled and easily reconfigured to handle the extra agents supporting the increased contact volumes.

Dynamic IVR Updates. As a contact center manager, you must consider the flexibility to quickly change your Interactive Voice Response (IVR) scripts. Keep your customers informed – update your IVR message, provide estimated waiting time, working hours and get customers connected to the right agent as quickly as possible.

Callbacks & Voicemails. If you anticipate a spike in call volumes, use a callback to enable your customers to leave a voicemail and receive a call back from an available agent.

Callplan cloud platform gives your contact center the flexibility to dynamically enrich your customer service resources to meet the changing conditions. Adapting to fluctuating demands will help you retain more customers and keep your business running smoothly, during stressful and unpredictable times.
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4. Technical Support for Your Remote Agents

An important aspect of the well established remote team is making sure your essential tools are connected (for example your CRM). Set your agents up with access to internal resources to assist them for technical issues (for example your Helpdesk).

Callplan’s support team is available 24/7 to help, so we can provide assistance and respond to requests from your remote agents. For any issues, our customers can access our Helpdesk.
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5. Communication is the Key

Customer service team is the face of your company that impacts your overall customer experience and retention. As a manager, you should nurture your team on how to handle a specific approach to each customer in emergency events. Advise your agents to be kind and patient in their communication with the customers as well as within the team. Customer satisfaction and retention are at the center of your team’s efforts when moving to a remote working environment. Happy team, happy customers.

6. Encourage and Motivate Your Customer Service Team

When you adapt your company for remote working, it’s important to keep the customer service team motivated, so they can deliver positive customer experiences. As a manager, here are a few tips to consider:

• Create a Proper Work Environment. Don’t forget to encourage your customer service team to create a dedicated work environment. It’s important to obtain a comfortable and ergonomic workspace free from distraction, noise, and interruption.
• Establish Your Goals and Expectations. Set clear expectations and make sure your agents are working towards the same goal. Keeping everyone in the loop is the first step to genuinely connect your remote team.
• Maintain a Regular Schedule. Encourage your team to continue working every day at the same schedule and follow their typical routines. This will keep their focus and productivity at work. Give all agents access to their schedules. Try to deploy daily work-at-home tips for your teammates to help them thrive.
• Keep Internal Communication. Clear communication between managers and agents is essential for the smooth performance of your remote working team. Create shared online resources with access to regular updates, FAQ, HR resources, Knowledge Base, Customer Files, Ticketing System and other frequently needed apps. Develop a playbook, training guide, or checklist with tools and applications required for a slick run of the customer service.
• Enable Performance Visibility to keep everyone updated into their personal achievements. Solutions like Callplan give you the ability to track the performance and engagement and maintain the efficiency of your remote team.
• Give Agents Independency to make more complex decisions. Creativity empowers their problem-solving skills and makes them feel valued and committed to the overall success of the company.
• Provide Remote Training. Working remotely is a great way to support your agents with frequent training sessions to expand their knowledge and skills. Modern collaboration tools can help you provide your team with access to support and guidance resources. The best practice is to coach every agent individually and provide actionable feedback about their performance.

7. Engage with Your Team

Transitioning to working remotely can affect your team. Keeping your agents engaged with their work is essential for establishing a positive customer journeys. We will share the best practices to enhance your remote team engagement:

• Use Collaboration Chats to interact with your team. Communicate through online chat tools to socialise with your agents and help them overcome the isolation feel when working from home.
• Set up Video Meetings to manage team collaboration and keep everyone connected. Kick-off the day with a “face to face” video conference to build an emotional connection and make your team more cohesive.
• Promote an Engaging Company Culture. It’s essential to feel as a part of the company and connected to its values when working remotely. Keep everyone up to date with the company news – encourage team members to share positive customer stories, include live Q&A, or discuss career opportunities. Make everyone feel especially valuable and emphasize the importance of their role.
• Establish Work-Life Balance. Maintaining a healthy environment for your agents is a key part of your leadership. Share ideas across your team for creating a better work-life balance to enhance their well-being. Encourage them to practice regular exercises and take a short walk or stretch, at least once an hour during the working day. Callplan can help managers stay on track using the Time Tracking feature to deliver healthy balance to your teams.
• Have Fun & Reward Your Team. Use gamification and contests to bring a competitive spirit and share a little fun into the remote office. Fostering an entertaining environment is the key to creating an engaged and motivated team. And remember to celebrate the wins, no matter how big or small they are.
• Create Happy Hours at the end of the week to interact with your team or set up a casual online coffee chatter.

We hope that our tips will help you transform your remote workforce into a more cohesive, efficient and happier team, delivering exceptional customer journeys. Thanks to the Callplan Contact Center, it has never been easier to smooth the transition to remote working.

We are here to help teams of all sizes go 100% remote.

To learn more about how Callplan can help your Contact center, get in touch or visit us.

Go remote in less than 24 hours with Callplan for FREE until September 2020.