The call center industry is experiencing major changes, driven by changing customer behavior and ever-increasing customer demands. Virtual call centers are on the rise.
Businesses are moving everything to the cloud from customer data to call center software, paving the way for the virtual call center business model.
The virtual call center is no longer a physical location but a cloud-based process that allows call center agents to work from any place in the world and companies to rely on more flexible and cost-effective call center operations.
Without further ado, here are the top benefits of virtual call centers – both for agents and companies.
Agent benefits
Employees are the most important asset to any organization. And for call centers, often struggling with high turnover rates, agent retention needs to be a major priority. Luckily, call center agents can enjoy a number of advantages of virtual call centers, while also helping businesses keep turnover rates lower.
No commute
Did you know that the majority of workers spend 30 minutes on average on commuting? There’s no question, no one likes sitting in traffic on their way to work when they can spend this time at home. In addition, the possibility to work from home also allows agents to save on expenses, such as gas prices and cost of public transportation.
Flexible hours
These days, employees increasingly prefer flexibility at work, therefore the idea of working from home is appealing for most call center agents. And virtual call centers are just ideal for accommodating these changing employee needs. In fact, inflexible working environment can easily scare potential talents away, especially younger generations, who often struggle with spending their day in a cubicle at the call center. With a virtual call center, however, you can let your agents enjoy some flexibility in their job while also allowing them to get off the hamster wheel.
Reduced stress levels
As already mentioned, agent retention has always been a major challenge for call centers. However, by running a virtual call center and allowing your agents to work from home, you’ll be able to significantly reduce stress levels in your call center. Indeed, home office creates a more relaxing workplace than ever-more popular open plan offices. Amongst other things, your agents will not only be able to shut out office noises and minimize work stress but also set up their ideal work environment.
Company benefits
Similarly to agents, companies too can greatly benefit from leveraging a virtual call center. Since virtual call centers can be run from any place in the world, companies can save on costs, easily scale up their business and gain access to a global pool of talents.
Cost savings
One thing is for sure: running a (physical) call center is extremely expensive. If your business leverages a virtual call center, however, you’ll be able to save on housing expenses, utility costs, IT facilities and employee catering. Furthermore, a virtual call center will allow you to easily scale up your business by adding additional remote agents to your team only during peak times. This, of course, means additional costs savings!
Agent satisfaction
There’s no doubt, constantly looking for and hiring new agents is a real pain in the back. Therefore, you better try and keep the morale high in your agent team before they leave you. Luckily, a virtual call center can be the ideal solution for that. With the above-mentioned advantages of virtual call centers, chances are your agents won’t lose their motivation so easily, and you finally won’t need to worry about agent turnover rate. It’s a win-win!
No geographical limits
Finding the best talent has always been a challenge for call centers, especially for those, who provide multilingual services for a great number of countries. Another major advantage of virtual call centers is that they allow you to access a global pool of high-quality talent and hire agents without geographical limits. For example, you can hire remote native workforce instead of struggling to find multilingual local agents while paying the extra cost for their language skills.
Workplace trends are rapidly changing and it really does seem that both agents and companies can greatly benefit from adopting the virtual call center business model.
Need a virtual 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.
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