As the world continues to battle with the hangover of the 2008 financial meltdown, companies are continually looking to shave off costs wherever they can – and this is also true of the call centre industry, where bottom-line costs are being scrutinised. This business reality has sparked off the emergence of the virtual call centre.Says Andrew van Niekerk, a director of Teleforge communications, a specialised call centre solutions provider: “As companies face increasing cost pressures – and as all areas of the business come under greater scrutiny – so the interest in leaner contact centres has grown. Companies are either looking to cut costs or are migrating towards more advanced and efficient tools.
“Consequently, industry pundits expect business models such as the virtual or decentralised contact centre to become an increasingly attractive option for customers.”
The virtual contact centre certainly appears to be bearing up to the new business philosophy – getting the best price performance out of a call centre.
“It is all about getting more bang for one’s buck,” said van Niekerk. “It appears that, with the virtual call centre model, organisations are able to reduce their dependence on full-time on-site contact centre employees by making greater use of mobile, or remote, contact centre agents that can operate from any location, but still provide excellent support services.”
This scenario can only be achieved by having the right contact centre technologies and tools in place, including voice-over Internet protocol, automatic call distribution, virtualisation and call routing environments. Most notably, IP telephony makes this a cost effective solution with an impressive return on investment for a business of any size.
Businesses increasingly want to grow their contact centres as their business grows – and not the other way around. This is a real push at the moment. Due to this business goal, the decentralised contact centre model looks even more alluring.
Of further interest is the fact that the decentralised call centre provides the capability for agents to work from home. This, subsequently, brings about a reduction in office rental costs, but with the ability to route calls to the most skilled agent – and doing this in a 24 x 7 environment.
This provides several benefits, including ongoing business continuity, increased employee satisfaction levels, decreased staff churn and absenteeism, and, very importantly, superior, customised and consistent customer service levels.
“What seems to be inexorable is that the marketplace is moving closer and closer to the multimedia contact centre model. But, in order to get this right, the right technology – and the appropriate skills levels – are required. Due to the fact that some – or most – agents will be located remotely, the technology deployed needs to have the capability to glue all operations – or agent points – together seamlessly.”