In this modern society, call centres have served many purposes from general helpdesk service to assist their subscribers in technical or other related issues or Public hotline numbers and general enquires that is related to their departments. In short, it is basically a place where several employees known as helpdesk officers are staffed to handle incoming and outgoing telephone calls. Certain call centres are important for critical reasons, such as emergency hotline numbers for the police station, hospitals, suicide hotlines or ambulance services.
Although most of the call centres are meant for commercial reasons, such as Customer service hotline for handling complaints and to retain customer loyalty or telemarketing team by doing cold calls and generating potential customers to purchase their company’s product or service. Thus the call centres operations are either 24/7 daily or during office hours depending on the company/department requirements.
One huge difference between the traditional call centre and Virtual call centre is that the employees will need to travel to and fro to work at the allocated time slot in the call centre but in virtual call centers, the system can link the phone network several locations locally or globally instead of one location which employees can have the choice to work either in their office or at home as long as they can commit fully to the time slot given for their work. The reasons for saying so is that it’s usually hard for employees to focus entirely on their laptops or PC’s and standby to answer incoming calls even if they chose an isolated area in their house.
However. Most employees can overcome this matter as long as they are really committed to their work. Other than that, virtual call centres are convenient since the company allows their staff to work from home. No additional time and money spent from the call center staff due to traveling to and fro to the office and back home.
Especially in poor or dangerous weather that is common in countries other than Singapore. The virtual call centre also eliminates the possibilities of their staff from getting infected with cough, flu or other possible pandemic cases.
From the business viewpoint, virtual call centers help to reduce the setup costs such as IT-related equipment, building rentals or leasing and other related costs. Plus it’s much easier to manage the call center operation on a daily basis as the virtual call center has software programs that are efficient in tracking employee performance and oversee the operation with ease.
Last but not least, customers that are served by helpdesk officers in virtual call centres benefit greatly as the staff tends to be more professional and positive in their mindset which is attributed by the customer-friendly technology and environment. Thus most people will agree that virtual call centres could be the future of all call centre’s operation.