Virtual contact centres are now rapidly becoming the industry default when it comes to customer service and CX delivery. Gone are the days when you would find large, cramped spaces with rows after rows of agents attending to customer calls. Today, interactions are spread across various channels, which means you don’t always need a fixed-line telephony system to provide service. The cloud also allows agents to consolidate interactions across multiple channels while operating from distributed locations. Finally, the large-scale shift to remote work made virtual contact centres a business must-have since 2020.
What is a Virtual Contact Centre?
You can define virtual contact centres as customer support and service organisations that operate out of distributed geographic locations using cloud-based contact centre systems, without relying on a physical space or technology infrastructure. As per Cisco’s survey, cloud migration is a top priority among contact centres, with 62% planning to go virtual in the next 18 months.
Nearly 3 in 10 contact centres are already 100% virtual in nature
In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic made it impossible to continue operating traditional contact centre environments as-is. Companies had to transition to virtual contact centres almost overnight. In some cases, such as Team Mobile which converted 12,000 employees to a virtual environment, this involved transitioning a very large agent workforce.
Drivers for Virtual Contact Centre Adoption
According to Gartner, 35% of CX agents will operate out of virtual environments by 2023, up from just 7% in 2017. There are several reasons behind this:
- They are less expensive to operate. Since you don’t need any technology infrastructure and agents aren’t coming into the office (eliminating the need for commute subsidies, facility costs, etc.), your capex will be lower
- They are seamless in their deployment. Virtual contact centres are deployed remotely via the cloud, which means that an expert managed services provider or vendor will be able to implement the solution with very little effort from your side
- They are extremely scalable and agile. Thanks to the cloud-based architecture, you can integrate new systems, expand by adding more seats, down-scale when demand is low, and pivot towards new systems (AI, automation, bots, etc.) without ripping out existing systems
3 Signs a Virtual Contact Centre Might be a Good Idea for Your Company
- There is a massive variance in traffic between peak and non-peak periods
In a non-virtual environment, you need to have full capacity in place all the time regardless of actual traffic at the moment. A virtual contact centre lets you scale cloud-resource utilisation as necessary on a pay-per-use basis, reducing your operational costs significantly.
- You are addressing a multilingual audience
Multilingual audiences require custom support not only in their native language of choice but also in tune with their cultural and locational backgrounds. Virtual contact centres allow you to hire and onboard remote agents in the region you are addressing, without any need to relocate.
- Your agents are struggling with fragmented systems
Virtual contact centres on the cloud let you stitch together different apps like UC&C, CRM, ERP, ticketing systems, and agent interfaces, addressing fragmentation.
