Future of Virtual Contact Centre Summit (8th Edition) 2023 | Group Futurista | 23 October 2023 | Virtual Summit

Most people view call centres as cost centres within organisations because they tend to incur large costs through high staff turnover and training. So, in order to mitigate this, companies have sought various ways to restructure their contact centre. These ways include, introducing new technologies, outsourcing call centres entirely, or offshoring them. But every coin has two sides, so these different structures come with some drawbacks as well. Let's take an example of outsourcing a call centre, outsourcing call centre functions could affect staff training and product knowledge levels. This can lead to a subpar service being provided. Likewise, offshoring call centres can create language and cultural barriers for customers. This can negatively affect customer experience and therefore customer retention. Well, what if there was a way for companies to keep contact centre agents local, at the same time keeping costs down and staff turnover to a minimum? Good news is that there might just be a way and that's Virtual Contact Centre.

What goes in a virtual contact centre is that all incoming calls and queries are distributed by the cloud across a network of remote agents. These are based upon factors like staff availability or even knowledge and skill level. Also, it allows for queries to quickly be dealt with by the staff as and when they arise. Remote agents can perform the same tasks an office-based agent can with the help of basic hardware, cloud and unified communications tools in place. This can bring about plenty of benefits for businesses, and the agents themselves. In particular, companies looking to hire staff into a call centre will have to look for candidates who live close to the location of the centre. Evidently, this places a cap on the quality and quantity of candidates the business can select from. Nevertheless, as virtual agents are location independent, businesses can look to the whole country or further to select candidates to work for them. You know what that means? More skilled staff could be hired!

The conclusion is that implementing a virtual contact centre into an organisation can create tangible benefits for businesses, customers and staff. Above all, working remotely has shown to increase worker productivity and happiness. This directly improves customer experience and retention, as well as employee retention. Further, it leads to a reduction in costs for businesses, as well as potential increases in revenue from the improvements in productivity. In addition, virtual contact centres make it easier for businesses to scale while also safeguarding their contact centres against any unscheduled downtime or issues.
On this note, Group Futurista is glad to announce its upcoming virtual summit which will include revolutionary keynotes, case studies, and an amazing selection of industry-leading speakers who will come together to share their words of wisdom on what the future holds for Virtual Contact Centre.