A virtual contact center allows customer service agents to work remotely from different locations instead of being centralized in a physical office. To do this effectively, businesses need to use various technologies such as cloud-based software, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) systems, and online collaboration tools to connect agents with customers, regardless of their location.
The challenges businesses and human agents face here are similar to those faced by other industries. Still, contact centers are in a unique position to take advantage of this increased virtuality that so many have found themselves living in over the last few years.
To start, here are some of the core elements that make up a successful virtual contact center:
Cloud-based communication tools: These tools allow agents to handle calls, emails, chats, and other forms of communication over the Internet rather than strictly through traditional phone lines or in-person interactions.
Remote agent management: Virtual contact center software often includes features for monitoring agent performance, managing schedules, and providing training remotely.
Customer relationship management (CRM) integration: Integration with CRM systems allows agents to access customer information and history, enabling personalized interactions and efficient issue resolution.
Analytics and reporting tools: An effective virtual contact center platform should offer analytics and reporting tools to track important industry KPIs such as call volume, response times, customer satisfaction, and agent productivity.
When a platform gets all of these and other aspects of an effective contact center right, it empowers agents to deliver exceptional customer service at every turn by equipping them with the right information at the right time and by automating back-office tasks to help offload pressure and drive satisfaction.
Why virtual contact centers are good news for agents and businesses
The benefits of virtual contact centers are numerous for both companies and their employees. This is especially important as research indicates that "customer success" positions are the second-most likely to work remotely at 10.8%, following technical writers at 11.34%.
This leads us to the advantages of virtual contact centers:
Access to a global talent pool
With a virtual-first setup, companies can tap into a global talent pool, allowing them to hire agents with diverse skill sets and language capabilities without geographical constraints.
Scalability
Since virtual contact centers live in the cloud, they’re highly scalable. The lack of hardware required to start and run a remote-first center enables businesses to easily adjust staffing levels and other resources based on fluctuating demand.
Business continuity
Since virtual contact centers are not centralized at a physical office, they are inherently resilient to localized disruptions such as natural disasters or infrastructure failures. Agents can continue to work remotely even when a physical office is inaccessible.
The principle works similarly to insurance policies: By spreading risk over a large pool of decentralized employees, any disruption to one human agent is far less likely to negatively impact the contact center operation as a whole.
Better work-life balance for agents
The opportunity for remote work provided by virtual contact centers can improve agents' work-life balance. A lot of this balance is created by ridding employees schedules of the burden of long commutes. In fact, the average American working remotely saves about an hour every day (55 minutes, to be exact).
Stretch this data to represent all surveyed countries, and the time savings climbs to 72 minutes, leaving employees more time to balance work and personal life.
Reduced environmental impact
Reduced CO2 emissions are one of the largest and perhaps most apparent benefits of remote work, and while they had their biggest decline in 2020 (11%), 2023 figures reveal that they’re still lower today than years previous.
Feature checklist: What to look for (and why) in a virtual contact center solution
Not all virtual contact center software is made equal. To deliver exceptional customer service and increase agent productivity, a cloud contact center should offer a handful of core capabilities and features that not only help future-proof your inbound call center but empower your agents to provide the best customer support possible.
Multi-channel support with omnichannel capabilities
A virtual contact center should support multiple communication channels, such as voice, email, chat, social media, and SMS, to meet the diverse needs and preferences of customers. But what distinguishes a good contact center solution from a great one is bringing those channels together into one source of truth.
A contact center representative should have all the customer data and context they need for meaningful customer interaction—no matter which channel they begin on or where they end up.
CRM integration
In addition to omnichannel capabilities, a virtual contact center solution should integrate with your existing CRM systems to allow agents real-time access to customer data and history. This goes beyond contact gathered across disparate communication channels, including data like purchase and contact history. This enables even more personalized interactions and efficient issue resolution, as agents will no longer need to manually search for and collect personal information while simultaneously providing customer support.
Analytics and reporting tools
Robust analytics and reporting capabilities provide insights into key metrics such as call volume, response times, customer satisfaction, and agent performance, enabling data-driven decision-making and continuous call center improvement.
Security and compliance features
A virtual contact center should have your business's best interest in mind. That means prioritizing security and compliance with features such as data encryption, access controls, audit trails, and more.
Features that facilitate agent training and onboarding
Providing effective agent training can be difficult in a virtual environment. But if your contact center solution can automatically pull the highest- and lowest-scoring calls, it makes supervisors' jobs that much easier. How? By providing visibility into what’s working and what needs improving, gleaning best practices from successful calls to share with agents across your organization can help improve performance.
Self-service capabilities
Interactive voice response (IVR) systems, chatbots with conversational AI, and accessible knowledge bases empower customers to find answers to their questions independently, reducing the need for live agent intervention. This helps save valuable resources, empowering agents to focus on those more challenging inquiries where they’re truly needed.
Futureproof your call center with a virtual contact center
Webex Contact Center helps businesses reinvent their contact center. With interactions and insights supercharged with artificial intelligence, it equips agents with every bit of data and context necessary to deliver a seamless customer experience, every time.
Built for every kind of journey, agents get unmatched AI-powered assistance that helps them solve problems quickly by being fully briefed on customers and enabling efficient collaboration with other teams when required to boost customer engagement and satisfaction.
Learn more about Webex Contact Center and how it can reimagine your call center operation.