In response to COVID-19, Cisco said it recently launched a quickly deployable ‘work from home’ contact center solution to accommodate the millions of agents now displaced from traditional office settings. Omar Tawakol, Vice President & General Manager of Cisco Contact Center, announced the company launched the fast deploy version of its contact center solution in a recent company blog post.
With an increasing amount of businesses now requiring employees to work from home, including contact centers, the move comes as no surprise and Tawakol shared:
“Enterprises that don’t have a contact center, or are want to provide customers with an ’emergency hotline’ to handle urgent questions, should consider using the solution. We’ve seen these needs growing exponentially”
Cisco was one of the first to offer its collaboration software for free when the Coronavirus pandemic began making headlines. More recently, the contact center division of Cisco decided to take things a step further, announcing the availability of its quick deploy solution so organizations with ‘urgent needs’ can get up and running in as little as five days.
“In as little as five days, a secure, scalable, native cloud solution for businesses with up to 1,000 concurrent agents can be deployed with the Webex Contact Center”
According to the company, the quick launch contact center solution includes agent and supervisor software, PSTN for inbound calls, omnichannel functionalities, routing, reporting capabilities, and everything else needed to run a virtual contact center.
All an agent needs to for setup is a smartphone that can be dialed directly, a headset, and a computer with a browser and internet connection. Cisco said it will make the solution available until further notice, stating the company will base this on when the COVID-19 virus is cleared by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Following clearance from the CDC, a notification will be sent to users when the solution reaches the end of its life cycle.
If you’re not sure your business is ready for a cloud contact center solution, think again. Consider the needs of your employees and the risks they face when commuting to the office. If it is possible to cut down on travel time, keep employees safe, and enable real-time communications, I’d say that’s a fairly big win for any company.
What we have witnessed during this crisis is corporate social responsibility at its finest. Some of the most impactful in recent history. And we just might be on to something, letting the majority of those who can work from home to do so. Cisco seems to be intrigued by the idea of a post-COVID-19 remote work future, and the company’s seen massive increases in user stats as a result of the pandemic.
What will remote working in a post-COVID-19 world look like? This Thursday, Cisco’s Chief Marketing Officer Aruna Ravichandran, along with UC Analysts Dave Michels and Zeus Kerravala who will attempt to answer this very question via a live stream on Cisco’s social media channels on March 26, at 9 a.m. PST.
