Workforce Management Featured Article
The Virtual Call Center's Contribution to Workforce Management
Workforce management has shown itself to be a value generating proposition like few others seen before. At the same time, one of the biggest workforces some companies have is in its call center, and that represents a potential for still more value generation, both from the functions of the call center and the efforts of workforce management. A virtual call center can be a great help here, but how does a business put it to use? A new report from Small Business Trends offered some insight into just how to do that.
The virtual call center is, much as the name suggests, a call center that's geared to operate in a cloud-based environment. Rather than having a room full of phones, users can enter the call center remotely and operate from a desktop PC located somewhere else. This represents substantial potential value, as it allows the business to expand its potential hiring pool outward and bring in the best people from other locations, a move that gives workforce management a real chance to shine with the best people in support.
Plus, with users from other locations in place, that makes a great potential way to improve customer service. No longer will customers have to content themselves with the “weekend shift” of underpaid, undertrained staffers, or with a dead call center because no one's there at 3:00 p.m. on a Saturday. Now, businesses can run a call center effectively 24/7, and be available to serve a customer's needs at any time.
Workforce management, meanwhile, steps in here to focus on key points, to allow this virtual operation to produce actual results regardless of where its employees are operating. This improves the value of a mobile workforce substantially; those opposed to telecommuting have been so opposed for several reasons, and one major concern that often gone unspoken is “how do I know they're working when I can't watch them every minute?” Of course, even basic standards of professionalism says work's being done—some wags might even note more work gets done in telecommuting because useless meetings and status reports are gone—but with workforce management tools, there are clearer ways to see work's being done.
In the end, workforce management tools make the mobile workforce a better and more viable proposition. The value that can be derived from a mobile workforce could be lost if the work doesn't get done, and with the right tools, the amount of work being done can be more clearly measured...and managed.
Edited by Alicia Young