How the Modern Contact Center is Made Better with Distributed Working

As the customer-facing voice of an organization, contact center agents are key to shaping the customer experience. If they are stressed, distracted, or demotivated, this will come across in their interactions, resulting in a poor customer experience. 96% of customers are prepared to go elsewhere if they receive bad customer service from an organization.[1]

Conversely, an agent who feels motivated, focused, and invested in their work will go the extra mile to delight the customer, driving long-term brand loyalty. Therefore it is crucial that CX leaders invest in the agent experience, and one significant way they can do this is by maintaining and improving the distributed working model.

A contact center’s staff are its most valuable asset, but also its biggest cost. Staffing accounts for up to 75% of a contact center’s operational costs.[2] For this reason, improving agent retention rates, and therefore recruitment costs, is critical. To maximize staff retention, organizations need to enable staff to work in the environment where they actually want to be.

During the peak of the COVID-19 crisis, agents experienced the freedom of working remotely. Moving back to the office, organizations that failed to implement a flexible distributed working model faced heavy backlash. Now, 88% of workers would appreciate a more flexible approach to working from home.[3] Keeping agents happy lowers agent turnover, and reduces costs in the long run.

Being in a home environment has shown to have positive effects on productivity. 45% of workers believed they were more productive at home, and 78% of employers found equal or increased productivity during the COVID-19 lockdown.[4] What is it about working remotely that helps agents to be more productive?

In addition to improved mental health, distributed working gives agents much-needed flexibility. It also allows agents to work on-the-go, overall increasing the availability of that agent to work. However, to enable agents to work from wherever, CX leaders must support them with the right technology. A browser-based workspace and mobile interface provides complete convenience for maximum availability.

The contact center agent interface plays a pivotal role in the agent experience. It dictates how and where agents work. To maximize availability, productivity, customer and employee satisfaction, while also reducing costs, giving agents the option of using both their PC and mobile device interchangeably is essential.

A mobile app answers the challenge of new hybrid working practices. Enabling organizations’ contact center workers to make and receive customer calls and access information through their mobile devices will drastically improve the agent experience and reduce costly staff churn. Working over WiFi or mobile data, rather than mobile voice networks, means agents can be connected and available anytime and anyplace, free of call forwarding charges, even when away from their workstations.