The future of work is remote. A number of companies are beginning to see that more can be achieved by letting their employees do their jobs from locations of choice. In India, 57% of Indian workers telecommute frequently, 32% work from their houses daily, while 25% are work regular remote shifts, including evenings and weekends. That is why call center management has become crucial.
How Call Center Management Helps
For Indian organizations with call centers, while it may seem difficult to set up and manage virtual call center teams, it can be rewarding. The Quarterly Journal of Economics reveals that remote customer service teams take 13% more calls every day. With the emergence of several productivity tools, call center management can become a walk in the park for you.
Managing inbound and outbound calls
Regardless of your agents’ locations, having the right tool ensures that you are on top of all the calls coming in and going out. You can easily record the calls made by each agent. And, you can obtain reports showing information like the number of calls, quality of calls, time spent on each call, and so on.
Missed calls, on the other hand, are queued up so that you can follow up later. Also, you can send alerts to remind the relevant agents to do so. This way, you are putting a tight lid on lead leakages, ensuring all your customer inquiries get attended to.
Some managers are known to even provide virtual assistance to call center agents during live calls. For instance, if you are keyed into a call with a first-time prospect, you can easily create conversations with your own agents via chat, giving them the required guidance to satisfy the customer.
Handling calls is unarguably the most important part of call center management. Therefore, the need for a tool that lets you track wholesomely.
Fostering team collaboration
Members of your call center team may never get to see each other. Hence, it becomes increasingly important to make the team more united than ever. There are several tools out there that make this possible, including messaging and video conferencing apps like Slack and Zoom. Collaboration software facilitates synchronization between teams in different locations. For instance, agents who have just joined the team can request assistance from their more experienced colleagues on certain issues.
Working on the go
Remote employees, unlike on-site teams often enjoy higher levels of flexibility. They can work from the desk in their living rooms to a corner on the train station. Hence, the need to ensure that tools fit into this kind of work mode. For instance, if your team operates a call center management software, it should ideally work on both desktop and mobile devices, with easily accessible interfaces. Not only that, there should be a synchronization between both versions, ensuring that the call center agent is aware of all activities.
Your physical tools should also be as flexible as possible. A call center agent often requires a desk phone to receive calls. However, desk phones are not exactly mobile. Thanks to softphones, apps that bring all of the functionality of a telephone onto a computer or mobile device, your agents can make calls from anywhere in the world.
Adopting a flexible CRM for Remote Call Center Management
Whether your team works separately in remote locations or together in an office, a flexible call center CRM is what makes everything stick together. The last thing you need is a complex set up, expensive office space or costly hardware. These just defeat the purpose of setting up remote teams.
A flexible CRM like LeadSquared’s enables you to adopt a plug and play model. All you need is just an agent, a mobile phone, and the CRM app.
In this regard, here are some benefits you enjoy from powering your remote team with a call center CRM:
The Power of Integrations
With the LeadSquared CRM, you can integrate with your major business tools, including chat and collaboration tools. Don’t forget your marketing platforms like Adwords and Facebook. This way, you are more in control of your leads and before picking up the phones, your call center agents already know what the client wants.
If you receive a high volume of calls, you can also integrate with major IVR systems like Knowlarity, CallRail, Exotel. And in the process, directing the focus of your agents to more important issues.
Hire employees from anywhere
By adopting a flexible call center management CRM, you open your company to hiring more diversely and from different locations. Since you have a framework for getting the job done easily, the least of your worries is where your call center agents live or work from. You can monitor their performances from a central location and address productivity issues in real-time. It also means your chances of hiring the best people increases drastically.
Reduce Operational Costs
The amount spent running a remote call center is significantly lower than operating an onsite team. There is a lot of logistics involved with setting up a physical location, including the cost of hardware. With these out of the way with virtual teams, you can focus on two things alone; hiring high-quality agents and their productivity.
Your call center management efforts can be a lot stronger when you adopt the right CRM. You can try out the LeadSquared call center CRM for 15 days to see how it can greatly improve your remote team.
