Considering the Virtual Contact Center
17th Nov 2006, 06:11 GMT
By tapping high-caliber workers with industry expertise, and connecting them through a network of home-based agents across the U.S., virtual contact centers have the potential to revolutionize the way businesses interact with customers. The home-based services market in this country is growing rapidly, and businesses are quickly realizing the benefits of outsourcing at home. Several factors have contributed to the homeshoring trend and will continue to fuel growth in the coming years. Among them are technological advances that make it easy to set up and monitor home-based agents. Consider the increased availability of high-speed Internet connections, as well as innovations in Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology, which can add a host of features to calling plans, while reducing the price of telecommunications. Going Virtual But home-based, customer-facing operations aren't suited for every business, and a thorough evaluation must precede any attempt at homeshoring operations. A key question you should ask before making any investment in staff or technology is whether your operation fits the virtual call center model. Excellent fits for homeshoring in recent years have been traditional customer service, ordering, travel and restaurant reservations, and financial institutions' customer rewards programs. Any industry with seasonal spikes in call volume or demand for around-the-clock staffing are also ideal candidates for virtual contact center operations, as are those businesses whose rapid expansion has exceeded the ability for bricks-and-mortar operations to keep pace. Physically Unfit Highly brand-conscious companies in the travel, auto, financial-services, and retail sectors have found particular success with homeshoring customer service call center operations, and other industry sectors such as luxury brands and health care are gearing up for the transition from traditional brick and mortar centers to the virtual customer care model. Less suitable for virtual contact centers are physical operations such as order fulfillment and fax-response driven programs. After determining that your business model would thrive under...