How VCC Live Supports Remote Work

The remote work trend of the past few years has also created a shift in the contact center industry. Contact centers are increasingly becoming virtual. Just like traditional call centers, virtual agents handle the same customer support or telesales tasks with the only difference that they work from home.

We have previously written about the benefits of setting up a remote contact center and transitioning to remote work. Remote operations can be beneficial not just for employees, but also for companies and businesses. If you address initial concerns with the right technology and management mindset, a virtual contact center should be just as or even more productive as an on-premise one. Remote work can lead to increased productivity and lower operational costs. More importantly, it is essential for any business to be able to keep up business operations in times of uncertainty, such as mobility restrictions.

Already made up your mind? Good. But what features and functions help in actually setting up your remote workforce? Here are some of the solutions that VCC Live has to offer when thinking about remote work.

Step 0: A quick and easy setup

When migrating your operations onto different platforms, a quick and easy transition is key. You need to make sure that your business operations won’t lose time, revenue, and clients in the process. Adopting VCC Live software can take as little as a few hours, depending on the complexity of your requirements. To give you an example, an existing customer of ours with 200 agents was forced to move their entire operations to a remote working environment due to national mobility restrictions. Our client managed to complete the entire operation in just one day, including physically moving workstations to their agents’ homes.

1. Possibility to expand your channels anytime

Adding to the ease of setup is the flexibility of VCC Live software. When using VCC Live, your administrators have full access to project settings. This way, they are able to make changes without having to contact VCC Live. This is very different to what would happen with on-premise solutions or even most cloud-based, boxed solutions. 

When thinking about setting up your remote operations, you might have to think about the cross-channel workflow that best serves your needs. Perhaps you need to start using channels currently preferred by your customers, like Facebook Messenger or the chat feature on your website. Maybe you have some special announcements or offers for your clients at times and you need to use mass email or mass SMS sending campaigns. Alternatively, it might happen that you need to add an additional step to your usual calling activity. For example, you might have to send an SMS confirmation after a call is finished. Using VCC Live, you can easily set up all of your preferred channels and modify your workflow whenever it is needed.

2. Security in your operations

Besides ease of access and flexibility, reviewing your data and operations security is also one of the fundamental steps in creating a remote work infrastructure. By reviewing your internal processes, you can assign the appropriate roles and responsibilities to your admins, supervisors, and operators. With this, you can avoid data protection issues or avert project changes that were not approved, making remote work a safe process.

For example, you may want to restrict remote agents’ access to certain data or features, compared to the access offered when working in the office. With VCC software, you can easily do that from your administrator panel by just unmarking the relevant elements. Thanks to the combination of expanded user-right options and two-factor authentication, we are able to offer the highest levels of security to the software as well as to your operations. 

Additionally, we’ve been working hard over the past years to make our company 100% GDPR compliant. We are also proud holders of the ISO27001 certificate that proves the highest levels of information and data security within an organization and in its processes, matching GDPR requirements introduced in 2018. We also hold the ISO22301 certificate that guarantees sustainable business management practices.

However, the certificate that really marks out VCC Live from many other contact center software providers, is the PCI DSS certificate that applies to any organization that accepts credit and debit card payments. We are proud to say that this year was the fourth year that we were able to fulfill the criteria required to be awarded the certificate again.

The mentioned certificates help us adhere to the highest of standards when assessing internal and external risks, and are invaluable when preparing detailed plans for all potentially critical business situations.

3. Easily accessible data and call recordings

With agents working remotely, you want to be sure that all your calls are recorded and safely stored. Additionally, you might want to switch on call recording even in projects where you did not previously do it. You can easily download and store your recordings locally thanks to our VCC Live Archiver application.

If you often carry out manual database imports, consider using an API to automate your workflow and avoid human error when providing data for your projects. Perhaps accessing your data storage points is not even an option for admins or supervisors working remotely. Using our comprehensive developer’s guide, the VCC Live API can be set up easily by your IT administrators.

Besides two-step authentication and our API, VCC Live ensures data security by hosting data in multiple VCC Data Centers around the world.

4. Backup telco routes

Adding to security, VCC Live technology is based on instantly available backup telecommunication routes. This means that as soon as our systems notice anomalies in any of our used telecommunication routes, or we are notified of planned maintenance, we are able to instantly switch to alternative routes. In recent, unstable times, where many companies have been facing economic and technological difficulties, it is clear that the instant availability of backup routes is an extremely important advantage. With VCC default routes you have the security of automatic routing modifications whenever there are any problems.

5. Easy human resources management and monitoring

VCC Live software enables ease of access in your workflow when it comes to monitoring and managing your remote working agents. To enable this, VCC Live offers an automatic login feature, remote project switching, full access to user management, and rights setups for supervisors.

Using VCC Live, supervisors or administrators have complete control in their hands even when working remotely. Our technology enables the remote transfer of agents between projects as well as the ability to change their status. Additionally, supervisors can also have closer control over agents’ work time. For example, VCC enables the possibility to set up after work time limitations and, when using manual dialing, prework limitations as well.

Next to remote monitoring, VCC Live takes care of virtual agents’ interface as well. You can make sure your agents’ interface stays as simple as possible, while still allowing them to have all the necessary information they need to do their job. This includes review elements and scripts, that become especially useful, when information from their supervisors may take longer than the usual face to face question handling. You can decide which dispositions should be made visible for agents or when providing additional information is required. Additionally, you can also specify the parameters of your agents’ breaks, with logs and statistics that enable you to get an actual overview of your agents’ work schedules. User state logs allow you to keep track of when agents are on a call, log in or out, or how much time they spend on breaks. The log also highlights whenever a break is too long.

Real-time monitoring can also give you direct insights into ongoing agent conversations, and call-whispering features allow you to give feedback or help an agent without the customer hearing. If necessary you are also able to join agent- client conversation in a conference mode. 

In terms of data handling, we offer comprehensive real-time analytics and reporting possibilities on all your operations and channels. This means project and user-focused statistics as well as real-time monitoring options with customizable dashboards to fit your business needs. Finally, User activity logs enable you or your team supervisor to see daily updates, log-in requests or do-not-call registry updates.

You can also utilize VCC Live dashboards, in order to monitor your team results in terms of the most important business KPI’s. Dashboards are accessible from supervisors’ mobile devices too, so you can use them from anywhere you are without the need to stay in front of your computer.

6. Training, feedback and motivation tools

Adapting to an unexpected scenario and switching to remote work is not only challenging for you but also for your employees. State your expectations and the rules of remote working through clear communication.

Additional training sessions may be needed, especially if you are planning to revise your workflow. You may utilize VCC Live’s listen-in, whispering, and conference mode functions to serve this purpose.

Your employees should also know their work will be assessed just as usual. Remember to give regular feedback to ensure that your agents are doing their jobs well. If there are points to improve, highlight them, based on examples available in call recordings as well as VCC Live logs and statistics.

You can easily assess your agents’ work and give them instant feedback using either our Quality Management tool or by using a simple personal message. If you do not yet have an in-house quality control team, it may be a good idea to establish one to ensure high levels of customer satisfaction, regardless of the situation you are in.

You may also consider motivating your remote team with additional bonuses. These bonuses can be calculated automatically by VCC software, based on dispositions saved by agents and database fields’ values.

Last but not least, you can easily communicate with your employees. You can keep them up to date with personal chat messages, group messages, or send updates to your agents using Agent News whenever you need to share important information.

7. Key Account Management Team

If you feel that you need our help, VCC Live has a dedicated Key Account Management team available. Our experts can share their knowledge, help you prepare and execute software implementation plans, and manage your projects from a technical point of view. Additionally, they can give advice on best-working scenarios based on our own customer experiences.

We hope that this short checklist helped you find the tools for establishing a remote work infrastructure. Providing ease of access and a smooth transition, VCC Live software can help you establish a secure, safe, and efficient remote operation. Transitioning onto a remote work infrastructure proves to be more flexible and in line with modern call center standards. Therefore, it can be seen as more than just a temporary fix but a long-term investment. The time for remote ventures has never been better!

Need a remote contact center solution?

VCC Live’s virtual contact center software gives your agents the tools to perform, keeps things productive and secure, and enables you to develop your workforce – all with nothing more than a laptop