Kathy Gibson reports from Gitex – Physically disabled people around the world all face the same problems when it comes to holding down a meaningful job.
Not only are companies often reluctant to hire people with physical disabilities, but they face the problem of getting to work and, often, a working environment that simply isn’t conducive to their wellbeing.
Tom Cheong, founder and MD of Silver Spring Pathfinder (SSP), after a long career in the corporate world, recognised that these issues no longer have to stand in the way of contact centre agents.
One thing the Covid pandemic taught was that it is possible for people to work effectively from anywhere, and he realised that people with disabilities could use the same technology to perform work from their own homes.
Cheong and a social entrepreneur colleague pitched the idea of an outsourced contact centre, running in the cloud and manned by people with disabilities working from their own homes to the Singapore government.
“The time was right to do it,” he tells IT-Online. “The cloud-based contact centre technology is available, bandwidth costs have come right down, and the pay gap between locally-based and overseas contact centre agents have narrowed to the point where it is no longer an issue.
“And hosting a contact centre onshore will always be better than offshoring it from the point of view of language and context.”
SSP uses Avaya OneCloud CCaaS, which allows it to ensure a seamless and positive agent experience for its employees by easily customising the solution’s interfaces to the unique needs of its workforce. As a result, these agents can deliver great customer experiences from their own remote locations.
“By our very nature as a social enterprise, we’re more in tune than most when it comes to being mindful of our employees’ needs. By the same token, for the business to be successful, we need to deliver on our customers’ demands. Avaya OneCloud CCaaS helps us to address both of those points,” says Cheong.
“With Avaya, we’ve got an enterprise-grade solution that powers our interaction network and delivers the highest levels of quality control and CSA performance. We’re able to reliably extend advanced interaction capabilities to our customers, while at the same time, develop customised interfaces for our agents with special needs so that they’re able to do their jobs effectively.”
The system also allows for intelligent routing, Cheong explains. So agents who may have issues speaking get text calls routed to them; while those who may not be comfortable typing would receive voice calls. Because Avaya’s cloud solutions run on the Microsoft platform, visually-impaired agents can use a range of accessibility features to help them do their jobs effectively.
“Before I got involved in this project, like many other people I simply didn’t understand the challenges that people with disabilities face on a daily basis,” Cheong says.
SSP not only offers gainful employment to disabled people, it helps them to gain marketable skills – although so far employer loyalty has been outstanding, and the company has experienced almost zero churn.
And the solution is helping SSP deliver meaningful results for its clients. As an example, SSP was engaged by a long-standing client to manage print and digital media subscription sales for key customers in the education and residential segments. Using Avaya OneCloud CCaaS and various integrative technologies, SSP’s agents were able to re-compile a database from various sources and manage recurring telemarketing campaigns, as well as handle renewal enquiries on behalf of its client.
“This is a good example of how, with Avaya OneCloud CCaaS, we’re able to integrate a large number of capabilities through a single interaction platform, making it easier for us to deliver on our clients’ priorities. That’s not only good news for our clients, but hugely empowering for our employees,” says Cheong.