3 Ways to Update Your Call Center Office

During the COVID-19 pandemic last year, many businesses had to adapt to remote work to protect the health and safety of their employees. While some business leaders may have had concerns about productivity during the transition, they were largely unfounded. It may sound counterintuitive, but a growing body of studies has shown that employees who work remotely are actually more productive than in the office.

A big reason for this is that it’s simply the impact of a comfortable environment. Also, no long commute to work means that employees have more time to actually work, and if their remote office is planned correctly, they’ll be less likely to get distracted by others.

Of course, not every office can rely on remote workers forever, and many BPO companies around the world such as call centers in the Philippines are starting to bring agents back in. It’s true that, with the right software, agents can make outbound calls and field inbound calls remotely, but it’s easier to analyze data and monitor productivity from a central location. Now that your support team is used to the perks of remote work, however, you’ll need to make some updates to your call center office to make the return appealing. Here are just a few ways you can do that.

1. Adapt your office policies.

The pandemic has enlightened both employees and business leaders alike to the advantages of working remotely, so it probably won’t be wise to eliminate it altogether. In fact, nearly 85% of companies intend to keep some level of remote work offerings. There’s really no going back to the previous “normal,” so you don’t even need to try.

Many supervisors have found that offering a couple of remote workdays to employees per week is a good compromise to make them willing to return to the office. If they keep productivity up, you might even offer as many employees as you can a change at long-term remote work. Keep the people who benefit from the office on location, but give your other agents opportunities to grow.

2. Upgrade office comfort levels.

You need to make sure the office is as comfortable as possible if you want to encourage your call center agents to come back, and the last thing they need to deal with is uncomfortable temperatures caused by a faulty thermostat or HVAC system.

Before you make the announcement for employees to return, learn signs to look for to determine if your thermostat needs replacement. If you’re having difficulty maintaining consistent temperatures, or if the air conditioner never actually gets down to the temperature the thermostat is set for, then you likely have a faulty thermostat that’s preventing the AC unit from completing a full cycle. Make sure any issues like this are taken care of.

3. Use the best software available.

Contact centers suffer from extremely high turnover, and one of the most common agent complaints is working with outdated technology that makes their job harder. For the sake of your employees and customers, you need to upgrade to the best call center software.

Cloud-based contact center software provides the ultimate convenience to your callers with intelligent IVR routing them to the best agent for their call as soon as possible. Customers also don’t have to rely on voice calls anymore.

Modern call center software lets customers make contact with your agents using their preferred digital channels, whether that’s text, SMS, email, live chat, a mobile app, or more. Even better, with true omnichannel routing, callers can switch between communication methods if needed, all while staying in contact with the same support agent. These CRM integrations make for a unique and personalized customer experience and will lead to greater call center customer satisfaction.

You also empower your agents with a unified agent desktop that keeps track of all conversations across all channels. If an agent needs to jump into an existing call, they can do so with full context, which saves everyone’s time and makes the job much easier. With tools like this, employees should show little resistance returning to the office.