Taking call center operations into the virtual realm has proven quite beneficial for business managers and contact center professionals for several reasons: significant cost savings, increased productivity and greater overall flexibility. Perhaps most notable, however, is the benefit of improved agent efficiency and increased employee satisfaction.Despite widespread initiatives for employees to work inside the office – like Marissa Mayer’s infamously leaked internal memo banning employees from working from home – we believe it is absolutely possible to work both remotely and efficiently. In fact, in a recent statement explaining her decision, Mayer explained that “people are more productive when they’re alone [but] they’re more collaborative and innovative when they’re together.”Sure, you may not be able to meet up with co-workers at the water cooler to throw ideas in the air, but you can certainly still collaborate with agents using powerful, advanced technology that will help create a better overall virtual working environment. Here are three features of advanced virtual call center software that will get the job done:Virtual queuingVirtual queuing enables your agents to respond to inquiries when it is most convenient for their customers. Instead of having to hear the redundancy of their estimated wait time, customers can instead opt to be called back by the agent while being able to hold their place in line. For the virtual call center agent who is working within an environment that is subject to greater change, this is especially helpful.Powerful configuration managerToday’s more advanced virtual call center software should boast a powerful configuration manager that enables instant changes to be made without any IT assistance. These types of changes can be simply made by supervisors, administrators or agents themselves – something that is especially advantageous for an at-home employee.CTI screen popsSoftware including a CTI screen pop feature pushes customer information straight to the agent’s desktop, providing real-time information that increases agent efficiency and customer satisfaction. For the virtual worker, this saves processing time and empowers him or her with complete customer interaction history. You’ll never have to worry about your virtual call center agent being out of the loop or lacking necessary customer information.
