Hiring virtual employees is a great way to access top talent from across the country and make your call center more productive. However, there are challenges that come with hiring remote workers. Use these strategies to make your call center operate smoothly with virtual employees.
“Technology has bridged the gap between the home office and virtual employees. Having the right talent is critical to the success of a great call center – go for quality and consider remote staff!” says Sharon Tsao, CMO, Contemporary Staffing Solutions.
Mandatory Tracking And Reporting
You can physically see what your in-house agents are doing at any given moment of the day. With remote agents, it’s not so easy. It is important to invest in software that will track your remote worker’s productivity throughout the day so you can see in real-time how many calls they are handling.
Quality Assurance Tools
Nobody likes to be micromanaged, but supervisors can be leery when it comes to trusting remote agents, even with mandatory tracking in place. Effective quality assurance tools can help supervisors stay connected to their remote agents without micromanaging. The center should invest in software that allows supervisors to listen in on calls in real-time, rather than simply pulling recordings at a later date. Many real-time quality assurance platforms also allow for screen sharing, so when a supervisor is observing a remote agent, they can also see how the employee is navigating through their desktop tools to assist customers. This allows for better coaching and performance management and can ease any questions about just what remote agents do throughout the day.
Create A Sense of Community
Virtual employees can feel disconnected from the team, simply because they don’t get face time with their coworkers and supervisors. This feeling of disconnection can be exacerbated if managers forget to include virtual call center agents on team emails or they fail to invite them to meetings via conference call or video chat. There are a host of tools that can be used to create a sense of community like Slack, Asana and Google Hangouts.
Make Work Fun
Customer service is a rough business. You can add a little fun to the mix and engage your remote agents by gamifying the work. Break people into teams by shift, and try to ensure that each team included in-house agents and remote agents. Hold weekly or monthly challenges with rewards worth striving for. Things like Gift cards, gas cards, early dismissals and extra days off are inexpensive rewards to offer. Gamifying the work through team challenges can also boost a feeling of connectedness for your virtual agents.
Are You Looking For Talented Virtual Call Center Agents?
When you hire the right people, invest in the right tools and foster a sense of community, remote agents can be a great way to boost productivity, control costs and keep your contact center fully staffed. If you are looking for talented virtual employees for your customer call center, the expert recruiters at Contemporary Staffing Solutions are ready to help. We specialize in connecting call centers with fully-vetted, highly-skilled and engaged talent. Contact CSS today to start filling your customer service center with the best and brightest talent in the market.
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Contemporary Staffing connects job seekers to hiring managers nationally in the following professions: Accounting & Finance, Call Center & Office, Human Resources, IT, Salesforce, and Sales & Marketing.