In my last post, I described how Unified Communications (UC) allows for a truly mobile workforce. The new level of mobility and flexibility offered by a UC set-up offers many advantages to businesses of all sizes.
If you’re growing a new business, UC means you don’t have to invest in a lot of hardware up front. You can implement full mobility from day one, with all the communications functionality of your established competitors.
If you’re an established business with a legacy phone system, you can begin by integrating some of your most mobile workforce. Office Communications Server works with existing telecommunications systems, so you can deploy advanced VoIP and conferencing alongside your existing phone networks. When the time comes to retire your PBX, you can then move your entire workforce to a complete VoIP solution.
One of the biggest benefits of UC for every business – especially in today’s tough economy – is the ability to cut costs while still providing a fully operational, supportive working environment for your employees. Because they can work from anywhere, you can place some of your employees in cost-efficient satellite offices, or allow them work from home, in order to save on leased space and its associated costs. We’ve found that the work-from-home model also allows access to an otherwise inaccessible workforce.
There are additional HR advantages to UC. For front-line customer service agents, the ability to work at home – or to reduce travel time because they are working at a satellite office closer to home – is an important quality of life issue that can lead to improved productivity and lower attrition.
At the same time, increased mobility for call agents is a great fit for most call center operations, providing greater flexibility in scheduling employees to respond to call volume. It’s easier to have enough employees “in the seats” at any one time when those seats can be many places.
–Michael Haines
Michael Haines is Chief Information Officer for CXO Global Solutions. He has more than 25 years experience in IT.
on Feb 24th, 2009 at 9:43 pm
Great post Michael.
I’ve seen this type of “work from home” call center in action and it is really impressive. The quality of worker both from a moral and educational standpoint was significantly higher than a typical call center. Performance was usually higher as well.
That said, I haven’t seen much in the way of guidance is what additional specific steps a call center can take to manage call quality. Is there an extra cost in increased human real-time monitoring? Is their perhaps a 100% digitized recording option with a special technological approach to reading recorded files search for words or flags that would trigger a human follow up monitor at a later date? Are the use of web cams during working hours a common approach?
What steps are taken to deter identity theft by agents working at home? While not totally prevented even while they are in the call center, being at home makes it that much easier.
I would think questions like these would be huge issues coming from skeptical clients and thus the idea being considered dead on arrival?
on Jul 24th, 2009 at 1:40 pm
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