Virtual Call Center

Transform Your Business with a Virtual Call Center Solution

In today’s digital era, customers know their worth. Besides better products and services, they also demand improved customer service from businesses. To meet customer expectations, brands also have come up with better customer service solutions.

One of the ways in which call centers as brands have done so is by undergoing a rigorous digital transformation over the past two years.

This transformation led to virtual call centers, which allow call centers to make and receive customer calls on the go, and be available 24×7 owing to the flexibility of the cloud.

Let’s understand the nuances of virtual contact centers in depth in the sections below, where we’ll cover:

  • What they are
  • How they work
  • How your business can benefit by shifting to one and so on
  • How to start a virtual call center

What are Virtual Call Centers?

A virtual call center is a call center that runs over the internet. It isn’t bound by any hardware or equipment and does not require the call center agents to be present at a single location to be able to run it.

They utilize VoIP technology to make and receive calls.

Starting or setting up a call center nowadays requires:

  • An internet connection
  • Special software
  • Sales agents who are trained in using the software

The above features enable a business to be:

  • Mobile
  • Remotely manageable
  • Better equipped to handle a significant volume of customer call traffic, while enhancing customer experience

Pro Tip: virtual contact centers are a great way to make a business more responsive to digital transformation by ramping up the technological method used for creating customer touchpoints.

What is Virtual Call Center Software?

Virtual call center software refers to a full-fledged call center management platform that is housed online.

It equips a business with the following operative functionalities:

  • Enabling Remote Work for Its Employees

Equipping your business with the versatility to operate from anywhere has become a necessity after the pandemic.

  • Monitoring  Employee Targets Online through Automated Tasking and Scheduling

Virtual call center software solutions have timesheets and task logs that are automated based on the log-on and log-off times of your employees. This feature helps you track the actual work that is getting done.

  • Routing Customer Calls Effectively to Reduce Waiting Times

According to a report by Invoca, only 26% of your callers are willing to wait on call for over 5 minutes. This makes it necessary to smartly handle call volumes to help you achieve quick response times, which is where virtual call centers come in.

  • Centralizing And Democratizing Customer Data to Enable Better Coordination between Virtual Call Center Agents 

Intra-organization coordination is extremely important, as the same Invoca survey mentioned above revealed that 53% of the consumers needed to repeat the same set of information to different call center agents to get their query resolved!

This lack of coordination harms the customer experience your business is trying so hard to build.

  • Enhancing Customer Experience

A virtual call center software captures and compiles the data of satisfied consumers for a business to learn from.

According to a report by Treasuredata, this process has helped 56% of the responding companies better understand where to focus their efforts on.

Why Go Virtual?

Consider this number discovered by Microsoft in one of their customer experience surveys: 58% of the consumers agree that customer satisfaction is the key driver of their loyalty to a brand.

While this reason alone should be enough to adopt virtual call center software, the other reasons why you should do so are:

  • Difficult-to-handle calls increased by 50% during the pandemic and after it, as well
  • The lack of technology was a major handicap that limited the service a call agent could provide to the consumer. This led to an increase of 68% in call escalations
  • The problem of obsolete technology, manual routing, and scattered manpower led to a drastic increase in waiting times (34%)

These numbers acted as a wake-up call. The answer lies in liberating a call center from its grounded restraint and moving it to clouds, making it accessible from anywhere so that the customers can be serviced from anywhere.

Let us further understand how a virtual call center can reduce strain on your business below:

Eliminates Geographical Limitations

A virtual call center enables a business to acquire sales talent from anywhere across the globe and allows them to work from their respective locations.

For instance, you could be situated in New York and hire a sales agent from India with a full work commitment.

It also empowers your business to plan global call agent shifts in a way that your customer service center stays online 24×7 without keeping any agent awake for the graveyard shift.

Low Capital Investment

Unlike the traditional, hardwired contact centers, all you need to start a virtual call center is a stable internet connection that is available for every sales/marketing employee, and virtual call center software.

The minimal costs involved make it a highly economical choice.

Furthermore, it boosts your ROI as well. Yet another cost you would save would be the cost of:

  • Real estate
  • Hardware
  • Software
  • Manpower
  • An IT team for maintenance
  • Regular training for your employees and agents

Mobility and Flexibility

A report by PwC discovered that the essence of customer loyalty has changed. It took only one bad experience for 32% of the loyal customers to leave a brand for a competitor.

Given the high employee turnover and customer churn rate, it is important to ensure that the call center agents are as satisfied and productive as possible.

This is because a boost in call agent productivity gives a boost to customer experience quality as well!

How do Virtual Call Centers Work?

Virtual outbound call centers have a unique way of working because of their decentralized nature. Let’s understand the same in greater detail below.

  • Virtual call centers utilize Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) to make and receive calls. This functionality makes it possible for a call center to be a remote one as well
  • A VoIP phone system receives analog voice signals from a phone call and converts them into digital signals that can be compressed and sent over an internet connection (like broadband). These digital signals can then be converted into voice once received – that is how a phone call is connected
  • Since phone calls are transported as digital signals, it is easy to store the data securely in cloud spaces. It can be easily accessed using the virtual call center software dashboard

Now, here are some things you can consider before setting up a call center

Network and Security Requirements

Depending upon your virtual call center type, you would require network connectivity. You should also consider the security protocols required for the connection in the interest of providing a safe experience for your customers.

Equipment and Hardware Requirements

To run the virtual call center software, your employees would require both the knowledge of utilizing some hardware, as well as the actual tools, such as a/an:

  • A Mic
  • Software package
  • Good quality headphones, etc

Software and Tools for Virtual Call Centers

Besides offering the right virtual call center software, you must provide employees with the right tools.

Managing Agents and Teams

Virtual call center employees must be categorized into different groups to ensure an increase in productivity.

For instance, you could customer support professionals into groups of four,  and allocate a skilled manager for each group. These managers would then:

  • Look after the performance of their teams
  • Carry our training programs as required, etc

The Most Compelling Advantages of a Virtual Call Center Software

Virtual contact center solutions equip a business with many functionalities that add to the overall improvement of call center operations, as seen below:

Cost Reductions

Virtual contact centers are completely cloud-based, which prevents you from utilizing a certain part of your budget for:

  • Real Estate (Physical offices, the associated rent, etc.)
  • Hardware costs
  • Maintenance and Support teams costs, etc.

As a business owner, you can reutilize this part of your budget for other things, such as:

  • Training modules or programs for your employees
  • Better hiring practices
  • Upgrading your software, etc.

Office Space-Use Optimization

Cloud-based call center software equips your company with the technology to work remotely, meaning that the entirety of your customer service workforce can work from anywhere, which reduces problems associated with space, etc.

Online 24×7

Customers aren’t happy when they are made to wait, regardless of the time. This is where virtual call centers come in, as they can attend to these customers with the help of their features such as:

  • Automated responses
  • Augmented chatbot functionalities, etc.

The above features allow call centers to work 24×7, which is quite a crucial feature.

Work Flexibility

Owing to the flexible nature of online or virtual call centers, your employees enjoy a healthy work-life balance, which also boosts their productivity and work satisfaction levels.

Call Monitoring

Managers need not worry about being unaware of the proceedings when their call agents are working from home. Virtual call center software has features that enable managers to monitor every call that an agent is engaged in.

This feature allows managers to:

  • Train employees better, based on their evaluation of the recordings
  • Suggest promotions for deserving employees, etc.

Shortcomings of Virtual Call Centers

Despite all the advantages they provide, virtual contact centers do have certain drawbacks that must be considered before investing in software, namely:

  • Employee training is necessary in order for them to understand every aspect of using the software. This may take some time, as they need to completely familiarize themselves with the software to move forward
  • It may become cumbersome to avail of IT services for device repair or reconfiguration as the IT team would be based remotely
  • Remote work may create teamwork problems as employees are scattered and not really familiar with each other, owing to the barrier of lack of physical contact, for instance

Virtual Call Center Providers

Although there is a plethora of online call center software available in the market today, there are a few providers which stand out from the rest.

The names of these software providers have been provided below:

JustCall

JustCall is a complete virtual call center solution that places a special focus on employee productivity.

This software doesn’t have any setup fee.

It has also been ranked #1 for ease of use by G2 and is trusted by over 6,000 brands.

You can leverage the following features of this software to get the most out of your call center:

  • Phone numbers across 70+ countries
  • Custom workflows
  • Detailed analytics
  • Device-agnostic
  • Call and agent monitoring, etc.

Genesys

Established as early as 1990, Genesys is one of the most well-rounded virtual call center software out there. The fact that it touts an uptime of 99.99% has given it a clientele of over 2,700 reputed organizations.

Some of its key features are:

  • Capability to integrate third-party chatbots
  • Script customization
  • Platform API
  • Can integrate with a variety of software, including Salesforce
  • Screen recording

Zendesk

One of the best-known call center software, Zendesk makes it really easy for call center agent to use VoIP along with its ticketing system.

The intuitive workflows let the agents keep track of all the open cases, thereby allowing them to focus on seamless customer service delivery.

It has the following useful features:

  • Real-time reporting and monitoring
  • Automatic ticket creation
  • Built-in VoIP
  • Centralized communication
  • AI-enabled chatbot

How to Choose the Right Virtual Call Center Software

From the many software available in the market today, it can be difficult to select the right virtual call center software for your business.

Here are a few handy tips you can use to make your decision easier:

Security and Compliance

Many industries that are regulated by the government need to comply with data privacy and other consumer data protection-centric laws.

If your company happens to be one of these, you need to search for a virtual call center solution that can handle such compliances, especially on a global scale.

For example, call center compliance stipulates that for telephonic payments, the call center must never, under any circumstance, record a customer’s CVV2. Many more such compliances exist that can be easily automated on virtual call center software to save you hefty penalties.

Setup Difficulty

Always select a virtual call center software that is easy to set up and use. There is no point in investing in software with a lot of functionalities that require employees to be exhaustively trained before they can use it.

Instead, list down your requirements by analyzing your needs (for example, integrability with ERPs or provision for special numbers) and search for a solution that matches these requirements as closely as possible.

You should also look into the following factors to judge whether the software is worthy of investment:

  • Training and deployment timelines
  • Transitional roadblocks
  • Ability to integrate with other software, such as Salesforce, Hubspot CRM, etc.

Handling of Complexity

Call centers can get really backed up with traffic if tasks aren’t handled timely and effectively.

The virtual call center software you select must be equipped with functionalities to handle complex workflows and automation processes easily. It should have the scalability to deliver the best output even during exceptionally high traffic times.

Assessing Business Requirements

You must analyze the business requirements before choosing the right virtual call center, with the help of the following questions:

  • How will the employees interact with consumers?
  • Will employees handle both outbound and inbound calls?
  • Which communication channels are suited for your consumers?

Evaluating Features and Capabilities

A virtual call center business opportunity can be successful after choosing the right capabilities.

For example, you might choose an intuitive UI for the virtual call center software. It will help your employees make/receive calls faster.

Other features which you should look for are:

  • Call analytics
  • Real-time recording
  • Performance tracking
  • Automated voicemail greetings, etc.

Comparing Pricing and Value

There are many virtual call center solutions available in the market. You must compare the pricing of different virtual call center solutions and choose the right one before choosing a call center setup.

Ensuring Integration with Existing Systems

A virtual call center for business must be able to integrate with other systems.

For example, you must be able to integrate your call center software with your CMS, as it will help employees gain information on customers before making/receiving calls, and so on.

How Virtual Call Centers Improve Customer Experience

According to research conducted by Emplifi, it was found that poor customer experience was the trigger for 86% of the customers to leave one brand for another better one.

It is, thus, extremely important to provide a great experience to customers when they initiate contact with your business.

To further reinforce the importance of putting a good call center in place, this Zendesk survey highlights that 51% of the customers attribute a good experience to speaking with a call center agent who understands the reason why the call was placed.

This brings back the relevance of utilizing the power of consumer data, which can be done easily using call center software.

A virtual contact center empowers a business to reduce customer churn in the following ways:

Receive Calls from Anywhere

The cloud-based calling feature, or VoIP, lets virtual call center agents take calls on their own phones routed through the software, irrespective of their location.

This eliminates the need for them to be tied to a desk all day waiting for customer calls

Your business can thus easily function with lesser real estate and hardware, yet with more customer communication power than ever.

Smart Mapping

32% to 46% of consumers across various industries avoid calling businesses because of the long waiting times associated with them, according to Invoca.

Since every business has its own “rush hours”,  the key is to reduce the waiting time of your consumers.

Virtual call center software helps achieve that by smartly mapping the availability of agents and routing the waiting calls accordingly, which leads to effective utilization of your agents’ time.

Omnichannel Support

Virtual call center software comes with integration capabilities that let you plug them into any enterprise resource planning software (like CRMs).

This functionality helps to collate the data collected through the call center with every other ERP and create a consistent customer journey across channels, further enhancing your customers’ experience with your brand.

Starting a Virtual Call Center

Whether you are making a switch to a cloud-based call center or starting one from scratch, the following procedures will help you make the transition smoother and quicker:

Plan the Micro Details

You should plan the following things before setting up a call center:

  • Calculating the manpower required
  • Deciding the work hours per day
  • Developing customer waiting queues and SOPs to expedite query resolution
  • Understanding the network bandwidth requirement based on call load
  • Configuring the voicemails

Hire the Right Workforce

It is necessary to hire call agents who can be responsible without supervision.

Maintaining productivity even when the remote environment gets adverse is a critical requirement.

The lack of socializing at work may create problems for certain individuals, which is why you should specify before hiring that a decentralized work mode would be the default.

Train the New Workforce

Since there is no concept of a physical space with virtual call centers, it is important to have mechanisms in place to ascertain that your scattered employees are completing the training assigned to them.

You can adopt video conferencing or recorded tutorials to do so, or arrange for weekly calls, etc.

Provide the Equipment

A worker is only as good as the tools they use.

This is why you should ensure that you provide your employees with:

  • A good quality headset
  • A laptop that supports virtual call center software without problems, etc.

Virtual Call Center Best Practices

Virtual call centers can pose certain challenges in management, such as, for instance, remote work can’t exactly be “monitored” the way on-premises call centers can be.

This is why businesses come up with creative ways to ensure productivity stays high, as seen below:

Monitor the Work, Not the Workforce

Virtual call center agents aren’t always located on-premises. This often unsettles their managers as they aren’t able to see what their employees are doing.

This is why managers are advised to focus on the work their employees do, rather than the employees themselves.

Gamify Real Goals

Many virtual contact center platforms include options for gamification. It basically helps the managers keep their workforce engaged in a virtual social setting where they can compete with each other in games.

These games are created to facilitate virtual contact center agents to achieve their daily targets. A good example is achieving specific sales milestones to unlock rewards/incentives, etc.

Stay Updated

Virtual contact center solutions are based on technology, which continuously upgrades.

Your business needs to ensure that the call center software vendor has policies in place to provide you with the latest version of the software. This usually isn’t an issue with cloud-based services, as vendors keep updating their systems frequently.

Maintain Teamwork Culture

It can be difficult to maintain a teamwork spirit with a scattered team.

You can ensure that your team members stay on the same page and coordinate for the same goal using various tools and methods, such as:

  • Employee chat apps
  • Virtual events (like weekend virtual dinners)
  • Employee games and competitions

This is because these methods will help employees stay in touch irrespective of their location.

Virtual Call Center Best Practices

Best Practices for Hiring and Training Agents

There is no difference between traditional and virtual customer support employees when it comes to job responsibilities.

However, virtual call centers have the flexibility to work from remote locations.

This is why you should:

  • Ensure that you hire call center agents with fluent communication and interpretation skills
  • Train virtual call center employees before they begin work with the help of training sessions and interactive materials, as many virtual call center software packages come with training support for employees

Best Practices for Managing Schedules and Availability

While hiring employees for your virtual call center, don’t forget to check their availability status, meaning:

  • Are they willing to work a little extra on weekdays, as on some days, availability issues might disrupt the call center process
  • Businesses must start developing a pool of reserve call center employees to make up for days on which they are short-staffed
  • The scheduling of virtual call center employees also matters. You must try to schedule your top call center employees during peak hours

Best Practices for Improving Customer Experience

Do you understand how to set up a call center virtually?

After having taken care of the various aspects mentioned above, the next step is improve the overall customer experience by:

  • Asking your employees to humanize customer support services
  • Providing customer support to consumers in real-time for the best experience
  • Recording customer interactions
  • Collecting feedback
  • Forming personalized responses
  • Drafting consistent responses
  • Offering visual support can improve the customer experience

Best Practices for Improving Operations

To improve virtual call center operations, you can:

  • Adopt new technologies. For example, businesses can rely on AI-led chatbots to answer common customer queries in real-time
  • You can empower your virtual call center agents by providing them with the right tools. For example, call center employees can make informed decisions when they have access to previous customer interactions stored in a CMS
  • Monitoring KPIs/metrics to deduce loopholes, etc.

Wrapping Up

According to this Getvoip report, 95.7% of the call center professionals surveyed agreed that customer satisfaction is the most critical metric they need to track.

Strategies based on achieving sales aren’t relevant anymore, which means that a more long-term solution is required.

Did you know that over 90% of customer support professionals believe that customer satisfaction is the most essential factor for business growth?

A virtual call center setup can help you improve the customer experience as:

  • Customers will have access to support 24*7 with a virtual call center
  • Call center employees will be empowered owing to the flexibility of remote work.

Therefore, what are you waiting for? Start setting up your virtual call center now!

Frequently Asked Questions

How Do You Manage a Virtual Call Center?

The best way to manage a virtual call center is by:

  • Creating clearly defined workflows, even for automated processes
  • Establishing a Standard Operating Protocol for your service center employees

This way, they will always have the knowledge to take the next steps in case a query is unique.

What Do I Need for a Virtual Call Center?

To set up a virtual call center, your business needs the following:

  • Virtual call center software that has functionalities to manage the entire call center ecosystem
  • A stable, high-speed internet connection
  • Employees trained to use a virtual call center software
  • Headsets and other peripherals needed to respond to calls
How Can I Access a Virtual Call Center Remotely?

Virtual call center software has mobile-based applications that can be installed to access it remotely.

This is especially useful for call center sales agents who have opted to work remotely. The application requires the right set of login credentials to be accessed from devices other than those installed on the business premises.

How Much Does Virtual Call Center Software Cost?

Today, virtual call center software can cost anywhere upwards of $30. A majority of vendors provide this software in SaaS mode, meaning they are available on a subscription basis.

However, you can also opt to purchase the entire suite as a one-off investment instead of shouldering recurring subscription charges.

With that said, a subscription allows you to customize the functional modules according to your needs, unlike purchased software.

What Is the Benefit of Virtual Call Centers?

Virtual call centers help boost employee productivity by automating clerical, repetitive processes, and saving time.

Additionally, by reducing the turnaround times for query resolution, virtual call center software also helps in enhancing customer experience to a great degree.

This helps boost customer retention and improve the conversion rates of a business.

With a foundational role at Saas Labs, Anand has been a key player in establishing the Product Management function and spearheading the launch of our Conversation Intelligence solution. His expertise in AI innovation guides both the strategic direction of the products and a team committed to excellence.

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