Coronavirus outbreak has caused lockdowns. Businesses either have to shut off completely and wait till things go well or they have to go remote. Modern call center solutions luckily give an advantage of working remotely with definitely some technical arrangements.
The technicalities of setting up a remote call center software to let agents and supervisors work remotely, but there are some more challenges that need to be tackled by the call centers. You will learn some useful tips to manage your remote team.
1. Define Straightforward Expectations
This is a primary thing whether you have call center team on-premises or work remotely. You need to give them clear expectations.
Make sure your team and you are all set for victory by ensuring everyone agrees with their aims and the intentions behind them. Furthermore, your expectations about their new circumstances have to be loud and clear. To achieve this follow the below-mentioned tips:
1.1 Set new objectives mutually
Whether you’ve been encountering Coronavirus-related call spikes or not, altering the working environment of your team will affect their capability to support your clients.
Do what you can to evaluate that impact, and consent on the team’s new objectives mutually. It’s vital to ensure all agents are happy with their objectives and have faith in their capabilities to meet them easily.
1.2 Concentrate on outcomes
It can be stressful for some supervisors to not examine their agents working in front of them. If this is you ensure you have a mutual process of determining if they are indeed staying available for calls. A call center solution similar to AC3 (AC Call Center) Solution can help to assure their performance as you will see the live reports and summary of the agents.
Ensure your objectives are concentrated on real and relevant business KPIs and you don’t begin tossing in arbitrary activity-supervision ones that could actually hurt productivity.
Trust your agents are the key here. It’s still micromanaging if you’re constantly watching, even if you’re not there.
1.3 Be resilient with your expectations
If you’re demanding everyone to be available on the call center solution or chat or Email in a precise amount of time, ensure everyone is informed about that and can match that expectation.
However, keep in mind that working from home can add a lot of new difficulties. Speak to your agents about their difficulties and what you can do to mitigate them.
2. Communicate Regularly with Your Remote Agents
Excellent communication is good exercise at any time, but even more important during this time when your team is working remotely. Not only it keeps you on the same page every day, but it can also serve to alleviate some of the isolation that can sneak in with working from home.
Remote agents require even more ‘team-building’ events than on-premises agents. Plan ‘remote happy hours’, so your team has the chance to unite with co-workers and communicate to lighten-up the stress.
3. Schedule fun time for the virtually working team
Working remotely can be a miscellaneous kit, so it’s essential to keep everything stress-free and playful whenever attainable. People will miss their team more than you apprehend, and the absence of a commute can seldom make the boundaries between work and home very fuzzy.
Discover some virtual fun activities you would normally do as a team, such as coffee breaks, happy hours, etc.
Arrange a video call and everyone share the same bond. You can also have Facebook Watch Party together.
4. Receive Consistent Feedback
Ultimately, receive regular feedback from inception to end. Receive feedback from your agents on how they’re seeing everything and ideas to grow, including the tools such as call center software that you’re utilizing.
Is it making the work it’s assumed to? Is it supporting our controlling your remote call center team? Monitor to your team’s comments; this is a distinct area for most managers and agents, so missing the team feedback can be hazardous.
Another way to supervise the performance of your team is through your clients. Accept continuous feedback from your buyers to assist you to discover ranges where things are taming or the methods require to be better adjusted to a remote working team.
You can also use reports of your call center solution to monitor KPIs and adjust metrics that can help you improve the performance.
These are the top tips that can help you achieve the best performance from your team working from home.
We have a feature-rich call center dialer that can be used to set up a virtual call center environment. AC Virtual Call Center Software is perfect to run the virtual call center. Get in touch to book a free demo.
